Givin' it some beans!

Zagora. 6th May. A pretty full-on few days behind us and we're having a rest. Another one...well, it is a holiday. Mike would prefer to be driving and looking around the next corner, Sue wants a lie-in and a chance to catch up with Other Stuff. So, we're loafing about in Probably The Best Campsite in Morocco.

We arrived in town late yesterday afternoon after 2 long days drive from Tata via Lake Iriki and Erg Chegaga. The run up to Tata was an "easy day" on tarmac and we decided to drop in on a site we've used on previous trips to do the laundry properly and have a hot shower to get rid of the now almost-ingrained dust. With the weather now calmer and warmer we're beginning to relax into a more comfortable routine that isn't driven by the wind direction.

Having driven from Mhamid to Foum Zguid on the "northern Iriki" route before, we wanted to get into the dunes and along the Lake using the more interesting-and unexplored by us - southern route. This took 2 full days to accomplish. The conditions on the track - corrugations, hamada, some deep sand sections and 37 degree temperature made for a bit of a challenge. Navigation was pretty straightforward most of the time as we were following the cairns built by the Dakar rally teams.

"...don't rely on the waymarks"..if there are any. Lake Iriki.

The tracks had moved from the original plot by a little, but not enough to make a difference as long as you don't rely on the "waymarks" - painted stones, vehicle wrecks etc, as all of these have apparently disappeared -unless our GPS reads differently to Chris Scott's when he wrote the guide 10 years ago! Sue was getting quite frustrated that her DR nav was getting us to the correct coordinates but the promised landmark was nowhere in sight. This can be a little worrying....but with a bit of encouragement from the Driver to use the "bigger picture" we got along just fine. But it was hot.

Crossing dry Lake Iriki was a dream drive compared to the washboard surfaces of the tracks. This has got to be our Least Favourite surface to travel on - everything shakes itself to pieces if it isn't made to industrial standards or firmly bolted together. Elly vibrates and rattles like a can of spanners, the compass spins like a top and is completely useless, things fall out of the overhead racks and electronics stop working. Altogether unpleasant. Last trip it was this that fractured a brake pipe and we lost all the fluid from the back brakes. There are 2 methods of dealing with it, apparently; either go as fast as possible and try to reduce the vibration by getting away from the "natural frequency" or go very slowly to reduce the intensity. We've tried both, but with the potential for further tyre damage we opted for the slow speed "solution". This gave us an average over the 2 days and 300km of about 20 kph...not exactly supersonic.

On the chott of Iriki this speed quadrupled. Like driving on tarmac by comparison. No need to follow a track, just set a heading and drive it. This is what we wanted so we could practice the astro nav, a decent horizon, no constraints on where to point the wheels and be able to hold a steady speed, more or less. We had a good play with our gear again and got better results this time.

We set up an overnight camp well away from the edge of the lake as we didn't want to be disturbed by early risers racing past us at dawn, as this vast flat surface seems to be used as a race track by all the dune buggies and Rally Raiders, of whom there's more later.
We stopped a little earlier than usual to clean up. Hot and getting hotter. Nice to relax at the end of a day like that.

 

Another great bedroom window vista

A cooling breeze and, later, cooler beer. Life, and the view, is good.

The clear horizon across the lake made life easier for the sun shots, but we did have some success with the "artificial horizon" method of a bowl of water with a drop of cooking oil in it. This needs a steady platform to work so was useless when it was really windy, but the oil damped down some of the ripples to give a clearer reflection.

Pouring oil on troubled water....

The Soup Dragon needs to remain absent from the kitchen during the process, though. With the arithmetic and sun-spotting being done on the bonnet, the rest of the vehicle needs to be dead still! The method also doesn't work beyond about mid-morning or before mid-afternoon as the angles get too great - the shot is made using the sun's reflection in the water.

Since the angle of the reflection equals twice the angle of the sun above the horizon, anything more than 50 degrees is too much. With the noon sun at about 80 degrees up, we need to see the edge of the earth properly to make a decent shot. So far we've managed to get within about 8 miles of the GPS position which isn't bad for the non-precision plastic sextant we're using. Can probably get it closer with more practice.

The astro compass is a different animal with much better manners.

Fiddle about a bit so it looks like you know what you're doing

This is, or ought to be, quick and simple to use. We've got consistently good results with it, getting within 10 degrees of the vehicle compass most of the time, and sometimes - see below - much better than that. Given the variation in all of the elements involved, this ain't bad at all!

The result shows a true heading of 006-and--bit degrees

The biggest problem we've had in getting consistent results is actually mounting the hardware so it stays level during the calculations. It's designed to fix to a solid, specially shaped mounting, not the bit of ally tube that otherwise serves as a wheel brace lever. This ally tube is, in turn, fixed in place temporarily to the light bar with a bungee loop...not exactly rock solid. If I was doing this properly I think I'd have to make a decent mounting point for it. However, the results have proved that cheap boat compasses with adjusters, properly "swung" can be reliable enough for what we need them to do.

Honest, this wasn't a "fixed" shot. Compass heading is, with 8 degrees of Variation subtracted, within 5 degrees of true.

...and while on the subject of compasses and navigation in general, yesterday we met these chaps...

They overtook us in a storm of dust and noise. Some 10 minutes later we stopped for a cup of tea, and they reappeared. At first, Mike misunderstood what they said - he thought they were offering advice because they thought we were "perdu" - lost. No, the opposite. They were lost. Not only that, they had no map, almost no water and no idea where they were or which direction to go to their destination. We got the map out, showed them our position, refilled their Camelbacks and pointed out the track to follow to get to Mhamid. "It'll take you about  two hours, watch out for the soft sand. Just keep heading East". That advice ought to work, provided they had some idea where "east" was...they had no compasses, either. People die that way. Shouldn't be allowed out on their own.

The dunes and soft sand of Erg Chegaga kept us entertained for most of the second morning, having dropped the tyre pressures to about half the previous afternoon as the going got sandier. As anyone who's driven in deep sand knows, momentum is the key to progress, so when we got into the dunes we were trying to keep the speed up to a maximum without breaking anything. Driving in soft sand is like driving on snow - steering takes a lot longer to have any effect and it's not very precise, but the "ride" is as if on silk - no vibration or road noise. Since you more "slide" around corners than "steer", if you meet someone coming the other way in a hurry, things can get interesting. The "someone" yesterday was a French rally "Raid" doing their sand section, and obviously against the clock! They were hammering along, in the opposite direction, and with just as much - or as little - directional control as you'd expect. Mainly Peugeots, Toyotas and things that looked like mini-HumVees, all belting past in a cloud of dust. Our first inkling that this was all about to burst upon us was the sight of 3 trail bikes with race numbers parked in the middle of the narrow track like they owned it. Riders were having a chat a few yards away, but still in the middle of the road. We skittered past the bikes and slid almost sideways to avoid their owners, giving them a good dusting down in the process. These guys were the lead element of twenty or so 4WD mates, all driving their vehicles like they'd just nicked 'em.

Quite a high-profile event, we presumed, as they even had a helicopter at the checkpoint.
Once clear of this mayhem, we had a bit of our own. With the flat midday light it's difficult to make out the contours of the ground, and we hit one particular bump quite hard. Elly's front end flew up and was on the way back down when the rear wheels hit the leading edge of the bump. This threw the back end up faster than the front end was coming down...I'm sure you can imagine the result. Front wheels hit. Hard, and dug deep into the sand. Back wheels followed and we almost stopped dead. A rapid flooring of the gas pedal kept us from digging in but we flew upwards out of our seats; Mike's head hit the padding on the roof, Sue - uncharacteristically not strapped in - got a bit of whiplash, a bruised elbow and rid of some choice expletives. Contents of overhead lockers and storage nets all over the place. No other damage, luckily, but a bit of rearrangement had taken place elsewhere:

Later, when we removed the spare wheel in Zagora we found that we'd parted company with our small pickaxe. This is used for digging "catholes" - a spade is useless most of the time - and was secured from falling "down" or "off" but not "up". It must've been catapulted from its stowage and is probably now stuck in some poor unfortunate "Raiders" tyre. Je suis desole!

A large party of French tourists joined us for tea.

We stopped for a tea break to sort that out, and while we were doing it a local turned up with a flat tyre. "Did we have a pump?" I thought about lending him our footpump...but no, that'd be no joke in this heat. We used our compressor to get him sorted out, and learned some more vocabulary in the process. A nice guy with a sense of humour.

Mike at the wheel of the Most Photographed Landrover In The World

Having decorated the wreckage above with some stickers of our own, we didn't go to Mhamid but took the track north to Tagounite and the road to Zagora. We went straight to Garage Iriki who've looked after us before - despite the attempts by several interceptors to divert us to alternative purveyors of garage services - and they repaired our punctured tyre and dented rim while we waited. 

And while we waited, the place was bedlam. Pretty much the entire street is a garage workshop and the dozens of French rally cars we'd met earlier had beaten us there and were being sorted out for the following day. Like a pit lane at a Grand Prix. Shouting, arms waving, revving engines with no silencers, air wrenches rattling like machine guns, hissing blasts of compressed air, high pressure water hoses, horns, radio chatter, yelling into telephones, taxis honking their way through the chaos, some nutcase playing a bongo drum and mopeds racing about taking parts like our tyre off to other shops. "Our" bloke just put the tyre onto the seat, climbed on top and off he went, legs splayed out like he was riding a water buffalo. 90 minutes later and we have another serviceable spare wheel at a cost of 150 dirham, about £12.50.

"Luvly Jubbly" - The Zagora Mechanics' catchphrase

While we waited, Sue got on with some Other Stuff, and Mike talked Man Stuff with Les Frogs. And his friends.

They all looked the same from a distance - Mike included. Dirty shirt, shorts too short, boots too big, wristwatch too large and one suntanned arm. His right, theirs left.

Lots of other locals about, too. Obviously the kids had cottoned on to the fact that the street was always full of foreigners with money. So they were trying to capitalise on that buy "giving" us "cadeaux". Once accepted, these little gifts would turn into a bit of leverage.."Et pour moi? Quelque chose pour moi?". The acceptance of a model camel woven out of grass will cost you dear. More worrying is the initial approach: "My names Monique, what's yours? You look nice. Can I give you a little present? A present, you don't have to buy. Because you're nice". All this from a pretty girl, smartly dressed. Aged about 5.

We also got the obligatory approach from carpet merchants, fossil sellers, a guy making model Landrovers out of palm trees and hotel "runners" all looking for customers. We did manage to sort one gem out of all this - the address of Probably The Best Campsite in Morocco. It isn't advertised as that, but it's so good we decided to stay another day. Camping Palmeraie d'Amezrou, if you're ever passing through. N30.18'51.4 W005.49'46.8. Tell 'em we sent you.