From Marrakech northway
Marrakesch, Fès and Chefchaouen
These 3 cities and their places of interest we didn’t want to miss out. Marrakech was definitely our favourite. This city is vibrant, lively and stays true to itself despite the huge amount of tourists visiting it. We stayed with Björn – a compatriot – in his wonderfully re-decorated Riad Enija in the middle of the old town (medina). He has done a very good job restoring the old buildings considering the local culture and architecture.
The big and well known Djamâa-el-Fna square changes every night into a huge open air restaurant. It’s really amazing to see the many different small eateries which court clients. We loved it, especially given the fact that we love to be wooed 
In Fès we had a cool-daddy-guide. Though Gabi had a clear list of “must to see” and a clear statement “must to avoid” – like carpet shops for example – he didn’t care and just delivered his standard program, topped with a visit in a carpet shop!!!!
However, what was really impressive was the open-air tennery in the medina.
Chefchaouen is cute, but one can do without it. The original Andalusian style is far nicer in Spain and has on top “jamon crudo”!.
The normal every day madness
One of the many different mineral water of Morocco stems from Sidi. And it was in Sidi where we had to refill our water tank – how handy! As usual we ask at the gasoline station for water, but nobody wants to give us some – very strange. All of a sudden a farmer approaches us and asks us to follow him. Which we did. He guided us to a place 5km away where 2 other young farmers were about to fill their 3.8 t tank. In the middle of a field is a little water access for the locals, where everybody can grab mineral water for free. We turned immediately into locals and filled out tank as well! So cool.
Whenever the situation allows it we camp wild somewhere in the nature in nice location. Today we’ve chosen a place close to a small village. So we can observe the locals coming home with their animals (donkeys, sheep, goat) and with the bus. One of the bus passengers posed as a police officer and wanted to see our passports. We gave him our self-made copies of our documents and he was happy – we as well.
In the middle of the night we hear somebody knocking at our door. We got up and saw policemen in uniform in front of the door. They wanted to see our passports as well – in the middle of the night????!!!! We didn’t give our passports but filled in the forms they usually ask for as we can do that quicker ourselves. We complain that this is bullying. They apologise and let us go sleeping again.
After a 4 hour ride – quite exhausting – over a beautiful pass we had to find out that the street is closed after Tilougguite. The winter was too hard and therefore the street is not yet ready. Which means simply turn and drive back.
The next pass in the Rif mountain area is another story. We start easy. The street is indeed quite narrow but the landscape is bucolic and the street climbs up steadily in little loops. There is snow; nothing to worry about. We are used to it.
As far as we can imagine the street has been cleared a couple of days ago with a caterpillar – the width between the snow walls is exactly as wide as the bucket of the digger. Slowly the walls get higher and higher – even for us – around 3.8-4m! The side-mirrors get folded in and we couldn’t open the doors anymore. We are still driving up and up and up…. We hope nobody has the same idea from the other side, or at least only something really small, which we easily could push away. After 2 hours (it felt though like 5) highly concentrated silent driving we arrived at the other side of the mountain. No bigger harms other than some lost prevention strips was the result. But we felt that was more than ok 😉
As we often drive through mountainous areas we encounter here and there a bridge. Often we see “5t” and something in Arabic letters on the signs. We believe that the translation of the Arabian copy means something like “don’t worry, it’s more or less 5t”. We prefer to believe that as our truck weighs 10t. And today we know that we were correct: all bridges made it, though some of them didn’t look like!
Such a mobile-home needs power; for example for the water heating – yes we are wimps! One day our generator definitely said good-bye – now power anymore while standing. Fridge gets warm and no coffee machine. While driving we can charge the batteries, but that’s not enough electricity for the water heater, so no warm shower in the morning. We had to do it the good old way: boil water and wash yourself. And because of the fridge we cannot rest a day or so in the nature. We need a solution.
An in a nice remote natural preserve, which we could enjoy completely on our own, the clutch gave up. Didn’t allow us to change gears anymore. Start and stop only the hard way with the engine.
In the middle of nowhere is nobody to help so we decided to start the truck and not stop until we found a garage – hoping nobody would cross our way, as the street was definitely too small to let 2 vehicles passing each other. We were lucky. We made it through the entire natural preserve without another car coming along and we managed to turn into the major road without disturbing the traffic too much. After 120km, slowly, we arrived in Fès. It was a quiet drive!
The normal shopping madness
In the tannery of Fès we wanted to buy 2 sheepskin rugs for our camping chairs. It seemed to be the right place here with tons and tons of sheepskins. But the tourist price they’ve asked for seemed to be a bit high. Luckily we could check with our handy the prices in Switzerland for a similar rug – and they were even cheaper than the Moroccan price. The negotiations were a bit one-sided, but hey we paid 40% of the original offer at the end.
We travel with some luxury, one of which is our Nespresso coffee machine. We love this coffee and most of the colleagues we met here as well. Which led to the situation that the calculated stock wasn’t sufficient. But we found a Nespresso shop in Marrakech on their website. Big smile on our face! Hop in the cab – and we got enough capsules until home.
In Marrakech you get nearly everything, so we asked Björn to help us searching for a generator. The shop was huge with many different kinds of generators.
Obviously they tried to sell the biggest they had, but unfortunately that one didn’t fit the space we had. So I’ve chosen a smaller one. It was really hard to convince the sales stuff and the manager, that I only buy it if I could try it (yeah, you learn your lessons ….). Of course the guys didn’t like the idea to “use” the machine in reality – but somehow I was convincing enough so we tried it in our truck. And yeah it delivered the power – so done deal. Great news we have electricity again!
Changing gears manually without a clutch is a bit delicate. So we decided in Fès to trust the small garage, which assured that they can repair it and let them to tow away our truck. On the street in front of the tiny little garage they took down the clutch and analysed which parts they needed to order. Saturday the order went to Casablanca, delivery Sunday morning and in the afternoon we could drive back to the hotel with our truck. And the costs for all this wouldn’t even cover the analysis/check-up time in Europe.
The loneliness
We drive quite a while through the countryside and natural preservation area without any little villages where you could get food – bread for example. So at the end of the day we arrive at a beautiful little lake in the mountains and decide to camp there overnight. Super idyllic, but no bread. Now we can rely on Gabi’s knowledgeableness. Before we go to bed she’s preparing special dough and places it into the pan. In the morning the dough has come up and we could bake it in the pan. Our first bread in the pan: delicious.
At another lake nearby Tanger we found again a wonderful camp space with a great view over the lake. Nobody there. All of a sudden a man appeared with coffee and cake. He liked the fact that we’ve chosen this place to stay. He wanted to chat a bit and some entertainment. The other day he came with a cup of tea – he didn’t know that we had our little Nespresso machine with us 😉
