Atlas

February 2-28 2015

River valleys, gorges and other scenic highlights

The sun shines, though it’s a bit hazy. We start early – around 9.30 am – and search for the entry into the track. After a couple of wrong efforts we asked the people in Itra who showed us the way in the middle of the village. They warned us and made us aware that the track is in really bad condition and that one had to master some nasty Oueds (dry rivers). This was our trigger to try it. The landscape was as usual really breath taking. But driving was quite challenging. As we had to cross some really nice Oueds and even went over a rocky pass with our heavy vehicles there were more than enough moments to take pictures and videos. So all devices have been used: GoPro, cellphone, Canon Video camera…. Whow, hope with this material we get a nice film at the end!

After a calm night we faced another huge task: the biggest Oued we’ve ever seen with very steep banks! The guy at the other side signaled, that the way ends here. Of course it stopped there, as his family had their fields on the exit of the Oued. After short negotiations we could drive through one of the fields…

The street towards Gourrama is tarred – an easy drive. Slowly we got closer to the mountains. We managed to drive carefully through the first couple of little villages, but then we had to drive through the bed of the river – a huge scree, which makes it really comfortable driving there. Whenever we saw people from the little micro mini small villages along the river they told us that this is a dead end way. But we had to find it out ourselves: we drove until the big wall – definitely the end of the track. We turned around and half way back we decided to camp there. Bad decision, immediately we felt like animals in the zoo. The locals came from everywhere down and sat in front of our trucks and watched us. Peter had a great idea: doing the same. So he sat on our stairs and gazed back at them. And hey – it worked, after a while they went home ;-))

So we did learn, that there is no way up from this side of the mountains. We decided to go a long way round to try it again from the other side of the mountain chain.

After many, many curves, some of them really really tight we arrived in BouReddine. The village we tried to reach from the other side already. During these exercises Gabi speeded up her truck driving experience so much already that she’s thinking about joining the rallye Paris – Dakar.

The people in the village are super friendly and the teacher invited us for a cup of tea and offered information about the next part of the track. He affirmed that there is a way to the other side of the mountains, but nothing for big trucks like ours.

Good news: there is an earth road to a street we found on the map we could use as an alternative to finish our round tour. So again driving in another river bed and about 10 km way through wonderful gorges.

Gabi did really well driving, nearly on a professional level, through all difficult passages. Which means she will not handing over the steering wheel anymore when it becomes interesting. Damn ;-))

And like the day before we have seen entire hillsides full of rosemary. It’s amazing: you look at the horizon, you see a lot of little green bushes, and when you come closer you all of a sudden realize that this is one of your favourite kitchen herbs!!! FANTASTIC.

And yeah, joy and happiness: we found the other village and our road to the other track leading us from Misour to Beni Tajjite.

The east of Morocco is in terms of scenic landscapes absolutely fantastic. And on top it is not yet developed so there is a lot of untouched nature left for off-road fans.

Our Generator and other glitches

Our Generator is not working anymore!!!! That means no hot water and no coffee in the morning, uaaarrrggghhhh!!!!

The route brings us to Boudenib, a place at a bigger road which offers some services. We seek out the local mechanists to let them repair the generator. The guys putter around and manage it to start again. The filter was full of dust – of course after these many kilometres of desert and earth roads.

Drip, drip, drip: it rains. And Peter – the poor one – has to go out to the generator. It’s not working again, which means we have to use the generator of one of our travel colleagues. But hey, what happens? After a minute or so the other machine stops as well. Ok that’s serious now: no shower and no coffee – not the perfect way to start your day!

Searching for the reason – always while it’s raining of course – we detected, that we banged the cover of the generator far too hard, so that the electric cable gave up and produced an electricity stop.

This led Peter to put on his full Barbour outdoor equipment including his yellow Berber slippers to grab both tool boxes. After breakfast we melted the 3 strands and put insulating tape around them. Now the cable works fine again.

Good morning dear troubles…. How boring a day would be without anything going wrong? Now the heating doesn’t work and it drips through the roof hatch – luckily not the one in the bedroom. The explanation for the heating was found quite quickly: spoiled by the experience in Tafraoute, where we didn’t need to re-fill our gasoline tank for the heating we never thought about it again. And now the tank was simply empty ;-))

So Peter went with Francois, the owner of Rekkam the camping in Boudenib where we stayed, to the village to get a re-fill. In the meantime I could use Francoise electric heating; so great as it was quite cold.

Later on we wanted to put the old generator on the roof of the lorry to create space for the new one we’ve ordered.

And secondly Peter wanted to kill our partition panel. Whenever we charge our batteries with electricity from the land line, and this electricity was not working 100% stable, our panel felt free to go up and down, whenever it liked.

Yeah such a rainy day gives time and room for improvements and repairs….

1. Generator

First of all the tank needs to be cleared. Unfortunately it’s completely full. Peter had to suck to get the fuel running through the pipe, uuuääääähhhh; the nice smelling, freshly shampooed beard was now perfumed with gasoline. And not only the beard, entire Peter. Now the generator sits comfortably on our MANroc roof, but in return our dining room window is broken. The machine slipped off the ladder when the guys lifted it up and swung into the window.

2. Partition Panel

Peter could stop the panel. Once he removed the cover of the blind and shortly before he decided to cut the cable it came to his mind that there could be a cut-out for this. And hello, there was one: cut-out including tumbler, all existing. Thanks to this vandalism has been banned for once ;-))

We leave the campground to collect our new generator. But when we arrived at the shop they told us that the machine didn’t arrive yet. Due to heavy snow fall the last few days, a lot of the streets in the mountains were closed. So none of the expected transports got through. Ok that was an explanation we had to take on board. Result is we have to work around somehow until we reach Marrakech.

Roads and traffic

The exam for the driver licence in Morocco follows its own rules: you have to drive with your car a rectangle and backwards. That’s it. At least on the countryside. Therefore it sometimes becomes quite adventurous on the streets. For example this day when we drove to Gourrama. Peter asked me if I noticed the motorbike driver behind us, who wanted to overtake us. Imagine, we are in the middle of a tiny little village, our colleague with the other big truck right in front of us, super small little streets, curves, narrow. I try to move a bit out of the way, there is not a lot a truck can do in such a small street. The young guy starts overtaking, looks back to us, smiles and wants to overtake the truck in front of us…. And it happened like it had to happen: on the other side a yellow Mercedes taxi cab turns up, decelerated, moves slightly to the right, the motorbike to the left and here we go both meet each other. The motorbike driver falls down, gets up and hobbles a bit. We stop quickly, but see immediately that nothing serious has happened. In that moment the slightly injured bike driver changed into a near to death accident victim. We left the fabulous actor behind us and went on with our tour.