Sue has perfected the use of our gas stove to produce really first-class meals. Tonight we ate chicken thighs wrapped in turkey 'ham' with edam cheese in the centre, secured with cooking string and gently fried, served with mixed salad and accompanied with chapattis made from scratch. This was followed by oranges soaked in rum served with dark chocolate....the ability to make bread in the van without an oven gives us longer range for wild camping as we are not reliant on having to touch base with shops.
As we packed up on Saturday, a couple of shepherds turned up and we spent some time chatting. They touched their mouths and wagged a finger as they approached, which I guess was their way of saying "It's OK, we're not begging for food". Very pleasant, both of them, and clearly very interested in Daphne and our tent. They moved off and sat on the walls of a ruined shelter a few yards away. A few minutes later another arrived. This was a different situation completely. While the first visitors were middle aged and talkative, this later visitor was a teenager, dressed in Adidas kit and equipped with an Android phone. Not equipped with good manners, though. He didn't understand French nor my basic Dharija, asked for a cigarette using sign language, and looked annoyed when we said we didn't smoke. Then he wanted my shirt. No? How about the shoes, then? All this with sign language. I was busy at the same time with stowing the tent and busting for the loo. Not to put too fine a point on it, I needed to squat. There wasn't any cover for hundreds of yards so I was going to have to move away some distance, and I wasn't happy to leave Sue on her own with this character. We lost no time in slinging everything into the back, and I made to say goodbye to our friend, shake his hand and wish him luck. He shied away with a look of disgust and wouldn't touch me.
We cleared off and I found a nice little gully not far away. A close call! Today's plan is to reach Tendrara by way of Borj de Bel-Frissate. The N19 - which we suppose is the road running southeast that we're on, should take us to a crossroads where we'll turn right for 25kms or so to reach Metarka and hopefully some sandy tracks. The N19 was marked as such on one of our maps but has been tarmac'ed recently which was a little disappointing but increasingly common across the country. Anyway, the navigation still wasn't leaving me with a "warm and fuzzy feeling" that all was as it should be. Distant hills seemed to be too far left when they should've been to the right of the nose. The roadside markers showing "N19" and the distance to Matarka didn't make sense either, indicating that we were closer to it than we should be. Well, we concluded once we drove into Matarka that the N19 wasn't where it's marked on both the maps we're using. If it had been, we'd have had to make a 90 degree right turn off it 25 kms back to get where we are now. No matter, we have a fix and can now make some sense of what we're looking at - at least they can't move the mountains. Reaching B de B-F we got off the road and set a heading from the compass that's take us across country and eventually to Tendrara. About 25kms of driving, and it looked as if we 'd have some tracks to follow. Things went well until lunchtime and a short break for food.
The afternoon's drive was a little more "interesting", you could say. With the masts of Tendrara visible on the horizon to confirm our compass, the nav should've been staightforward. The tracks that we'd been occasionally picking up now went in the wrong direction so we tried to force a way through off-piste. This became a real struggle. The ground was almost completely covered with broken rocks about the size of half bricks and large clumps of scrubby grass that had nutty centres. A really rough ride, and of necessity done at a crawling pace in low range and occasional difflock. Steep slopes scrabbled up and carefully inched down and dry stream beds - not really oueds - that were too deep to drive down into and too wide to straddle. Short of getting the bridge mats or shovel out, we did our best to find places to cross these without the risk of getting stuck. Obviously it's impossible to keep any constant direction and after several dozen retreats from blind alleys we had worked so far into this maze that getting out by a simple reversal wasn't going to be easy, if even possible. The shaking and banging around Daph was getting was worrying me too, and eventually she protested - the rear side door on Sue's side burst open when one of our Wolf boxes slammed into it. These had all been lashed down but had worked loose enough to burst the lock when hurled against the inside. The door refused to latch shut so we had to tie it off with a strap across the cab to stop it opening too far.
The battering continued as we decided to adopt Plan B and head back west to find a track - any track - that'd relieve the stress and give us a breather. We'd reached the "point of no further progress" at a wide oued that had so many side-shoots and steep crumbly banks that there was no way to cross it safely and it completely blocked any more eastbound travel. This might have been the reason that the tracks we'd used previously all went north-south...nobody goes east from here.....doh!
We found our way out, of course, even though we were both thinking at one point that we'd be spending the night out there. Tendrara was a bit of a One-Horse Town. We stopped at the Ziz (service station) where there were a number of guys sitting around the fuel pumps. The sign was broken and no-one made any attempt to get up and operate the pumps. A question revealed that there wasn't any fuel and their rather surprised reaction at it suggests that there hasn't been any for a very long time It's mentioned in Chris Scott's guide book, and that was reprinted in 2013. I was told that there might be some "cent cinquante metres" along the road, but as this was basically a stone's throw away it didn't take long to find that this wasn't an option either. Trying to replace our gaz bottle was a similar story, so we gave up and went back into the boondocks to find somewhere to camp - hopefully far enough away that we'd be undisturbed.
Sunday morning. Good night's sleep. We were "investigated" shortly after we stopped by a guy in Toyota 4x4 who presumably was making sure we were OK as he didn't stop, just drove back to the piste and disappeared. The only other activity we saw was this guy - the local equivalent of the milkman:
He went past a couple of times, and the object on the cart is, I think, a water tank. We assumed he was doing the rounds of the Berber camps we'd seen when we drove in.
It's always a concern that our presence might encourage unwanted attention, and we try as best we can to stay out of sight. With a Landrover this colour, that ain't so easy, so I'm always happy when Daph has got a good layer of crud attached.
The military use cam nets to disguise their vehicles. We do it "different"....
OK, so it resembles a Pikey's boot sale, but you have to admit it addresses a lot of those Principles of Camouflage they go on about in Rambo movies...Shape, shine, silhouette.. blah.. blah.. yawn. Time for some different kinds of maintenance, too:
and with water being a precious commodity, one can't afford to waste it....
We did the laundry yesterday too. Our bit of plumbing pipe did a really good job, especially since it had a really good shake. I was actually surprised to find that we still had it, and everything else, still on board after that experience.
A stop in Bouarfa was now necessary to resupply the food locker, get the gaz bottle replaced and get more diesel. All this was achieved for a lot less, in terms of cost, than back home. Two loaves of bread, two 5 litre bottles of water and a refill of the 907 gaz would rush you about £35. The bill in Bouarfa was 65Dh, about £4.30. OK, so the gaz bottle has seen better days, but hey - gas is gas.
OK. Next stop Figuig. We've been calling it "Fig-wig" but this has caused some confusion locally, particularly with the Gendarmerie, so for the benefit of future travellers as ignorant as us, it's "Fig-eeg".
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