Eastbound

Alcohol. We need a resupply, at least, some of us do. The rest of the team has a reserve supply in the form of Fourby. Remember him? Barry the Bloody Beer Barrel. Tonight, we punched his head and pulled out his tongue, having given him a good chilling all day as we tootled along. I can announce with confidence that at least some of us are content that our needs have been met. Not a bad pint, considering what it’s been through over the last month. Sue is finishing the San Miguel and looking forward to a visit to the wine shop in Ouarzazate tomorrow. I hope to God it’s open…

Today’s been a relaxing bimble along the backroads, with spectacular views over the valleys towards the High Atlas. You’re probably getting a bit bored with all the superlatives, but there’s not a lot that compares with this place, given that it’s all so close together. We’ve seen deeper gorges, twistier roads, higher mountains, bigger dunes but never all within 3 hours drive of each other. Today we squirmed our way up and down over miles of mountain roads, going 5 miles side-to-side to make one mile of real forward progress. The trouble, though, with all this scenery, is that eventually it starts to become a bit repetitive. You can have only so much of a Good Thing. The Law of Diminishing Returns. I did that at “O” – Level. Gives away a lot, right? It also makes picking the best shots for this blog a time-consuming process, so be prepared for revisions when we have more time to be selective. In the meantime, here’s a cross-section of what we’ve seen today:

You’ll perhaps notice how, if we don’t include a bit of Daphne in the picture, there’s nothing from which to get scale or perspective. Take the picture of the “big rocks” for instance. These boulders were just lying about by the side of the road. And they were bigger than the average house. Not cliffs, mind, but just bloody huge stones, just lying about. So, if you’re getting fed up with seeing apparently gratuitous views of a wasp-coloured Landrover or bits of it in every shot, like That Annoying Bloke at the office party, it’s for a good reason.

Once again, though, the need to shelter from the wind became a focus of attention as we approached the time when we’ll start arguing over nothing because we’re both knackered. Mike’s been driving all day on roads that require constant attention or we’ll just overshoot a bend and undershoot our retirement dates. Sue’s been navigating and doing the en-route housekeeping – feeding the driver sweets and water, mainly, as well as some knitting. (What?) And the Ship’s Log, of course, without which this record would be much harder to complete.

So, a generally uneventful day. Not so for one unfortunate in a sporty black hatchback who roared past us on a long uphill stretch this morning. We stopped for lunch and caught him up some miles down the road. He was (the car, that is) upside down on the wrong side of the road. The two occupants – or rather, former occupants - were sitting rather dejectedly alongside while a local chap who’d stopped to help was on the phone. It had obviously happened just before we arrived on the scene. We offered help, but none was required. An expensive end to their Day of Rest. It’s Friday, right? The roads and village streets were full of people in their “Sunday” clothes, taking the air, going to the mosque, generally socialising. Normally we can drive through a village and see no-one, and very few in some towns. On Friday, it’s like someone’s kicked over an anthill…

Saturday morning, and we notice Daph’s rear end is leaking from another place now – the aft differential gearbox. Nothing much, but there’s a trail of oil coming from the filler plug and now wetting the bottom of the housing. It’s not possible to tell how much has gone, but probably, looking at the casing, very little. We upsticks and drive into the nearest town to get some EP90. No, monsieur, it doesn’t come in a plastic bottle with a handy pull-out filler tube like you ‘ave at’ome. If it’s difficile, vous avez besoin d’un mechanique et deep pockets.

We  - that is, Mike, gets underneath with the oil, now in the bottle previously used for brake fluid and the best – in fact only – kitchen funnel. This has been pronounced perfect for the job, and the oil – not a lot, as we expected – is added.

 Now the fun bit:

As Mike is replacing the filler plug, it screws in a bit farther than normal. Ever curious, he screws it in a little further, expecting it to come up against resistance as it gets tight. It doesn’t. Instead, it screws “itself” right out of the other side of the casing….Mike is now left with the socket extension bar, with the plug loosely attached to the end of it and basically hanging free inside the box. If it comes off, it’ll drop into the diff gears and we’re, as they say, stuffed.

Mike says that at this point he felt like a Bomb Disposal Officer must feel when he realises he’s just lifted a pressure switch on a booby trap, and the day is about to be spoilt. Without being able to see clearly inside the hole, he now manages to reverse the screw-in to a screw-out, engaging the thread in reverse without pulling the plug off the socket bar. If it'd come off inside the casing.... A very delicate operation which is unusual for a Landrover. This takes a very tense few minutes as the thread binds – does he turn it back “in”, or hope for the best and carry on turning “out”….? He was, of course, successful, but it was a knifedge thing. Big sigh of relief!!!

We’re now in Ouarzazate and have performed the promised raid on the Pop Shop. Fifty quid lighter but we’ve earned it….I don’t think I’ll be doing any of this writing stuff tonight, somehow. Hic.



24 hours on.

A new day. 17th April. 24 hours later and we’re sitting by a river below a dam, having crossed the Atlas Mountains via a number of tortuous, steep and single track roads. The upper parts of these are obviously being bombarded by rocks the size of garden sheds from several hundred metres above, and the results are plain to see in that the road surface, once smooth, is now like the face of a teenager – scarred, full of holes and with the odd patch of makeup to disguise the damage beneath. On occasions we’re back onto an unmade surface and working around bits of road that are now just air, with a drop of almost 2000 feet to the next hard bit.

There are two major passes through the Atlas, which we – predictably, I suppose – ignored, and decided on a less-used but equally scenic alternative. The problem with routes like these is that they tend to cling to the edge of the hillsides with little option for taking a side-road and camping. There are no flat bits. Sue noticed a comms mast and correctly guessed that there would be an access track and a “flat bit” where we could park up, and so it was. A little closer to the road than we’d like, but good enough at a pinch. After all, we had the benefit of some wine to ease the pain, and once the sun went down there was little, if any, traffic. For the first time in many nights there was no wind so we slept well apart from a momentary awakening at about 3 am as a rain shower passed through – yep…we’re back in a European climate. A night at about 7000 feet above sea level, and it’s a bit chillier than we’ve been used to.

Today we decided to take a slower drive through the scenery, taking in the Sunday Souk at Demnate and the famous waterfall at Ouzoud. The latter was a typical –by any standards – tourist “tick” with all the trappings that you’d expect. As it was Sunday, the World and his wife n'kids were having a day out, and we met them all at the falls. These were indeed a spectacular sight - the little brown "blobs" than you can see at the centre left of the picture are boats full of people, quite a way below us. The way to the bottom was a winding and very steep path, lined the whle way with kebab stalls, trinket shops and the equivalent of our seaside postcard shops. Since they were all selling much the same stuff it makes you wonder why they bother, or maybe it's another one of those fabled "co-operatives", where they all pool their takings at the end of the day...? No, I don't think so, either.

But the souk was a revelation, in that the Moroccan way of markets is a bit different, to say the least. How the individual merchants compete with each other is hard to understand…there’s a site covering perhaps 3 acres, with stalls selling pretty much everything and all grouped together according to what’s for sale. This means that all the fruit and veg is in one area, all looks the same in quality (variable) and is all much the same price. How do the locals decide where and what to buy?

And what to buy? If you want a chick to raise as a chicken, you choose your own, of course. But what criteria do you use? There is clearly a yardstick, but having watched a number of savvy housewives making their choices, we couldn’t see that there was any difference.

This contrasted with some of the stuff for sale at the roadside. The twisting mountain roads would suggest that there’s no habitation within walking distance, but on every hairpin bend there’s a kid or maybe several, all trying to sell a bunch of flowers, or herbs, or a bag of nuts. Apparently miles from anywhere. Have these waifs been dropped off by a parent in order to drum up a few Dirham from the “passing trade”, or is this their way of making pocket money? Whatever, the abuse we get as we pass by without stopping suggests they’re no strangers to the game. We have some views on this, and perhaps in a future post we’ll expand on these, but at the moment it’s just p*ssing us off! The result is that we are inclined to avoid any contact with the locals we meet, which, of course, is the complete opposite of what we want. The kids are the main culprits along the road, but we've had some interesting exchanges with adult visitors to our desert camps, too.

In the meantime, we're getting used to the other stuff that makes driving here "interesting". Given that the roads are generally pretty rough - the tarmac, if it exists at all, is potholed, crumbling at the edges and generally dodgy. At best, it's only one vehicle width, so passing traffic has to move over a bit - half on, half off; and if your half happens to have a sheer drop down one side, that's just too bad. So, one would expect that drivers would treat this hazardous situation with appropriate respect, right? Wrong. At least, not the respect that we expected.

 The truck shown above was a one-off, or rather, a one-on. Most of them had at least three blokes riding on top, and one we passed had about ten, plus the rather loose-looking load tied on with ratty string - no pussy ratchet straps here!

Now we're into the mountains - the Middle-Atlas - and making progress is slow but always interesting. We looked out for a good camping spot for an hour but there was nothing flat enough for a bivi-bag, let alone our set-up, so we felt driven to find a "proper" campsite for a change. The only one on the map was miles up a winding mountain road and turned out to be closed. Luckily we spotted an olive grove many hundreds of feet below us in which there seemed to be a lot of cars and picnickers...eventually we found a way down to it and had a very pleasant night next to a stream that trickled out of the tailraces of a huge dam. The gorge we were camped in must've been really impressive before the top half was filled with water.

As it was, we were spared the normal nightly gale and once the Sunday strollers had packed up, we were virtually alone. I say "virtually" because there was one old chap wandering about who stopped for a chat. We had a good natter in a mix of languages and Sue felt really pleasd that we'd managed to have a "civilised" exchange with someone without being asked for a donation to his personal enrichment fund. Later, while eating supper, the Old Chap turned up again...
Having turned down his request for "Wahed Uro" (one euro) "For what?" we couldn't get an answer to, he stomped off into the darkness, muttering under his breath. Sigh....Oh well!