Morocco (3)

	On the way to the Cedar Forest of Azrou we happened upon a family in distress. Their small Kangoo van and its ten or more occupants had slid off the track and into the forest. As we passed we could see that they were having more than a little difficulty extracting the car, so we offered the use of our Waffle boards to bridge the ditch to the road. So elated at the heroic rescue, the family insisted we come home with them for a culinary reward. The hospitality was fantastic and after a huge meal of bread/cake/cheese/honey/chapattis/tea/tea/tea, we offered our thanks and felt rewarded enough to head on but were then explained that this was only pre-tea nibbles and that were in line for proper diner later. We chatted late into the night and were almost fed to death with chicken and spaghetti, until we were fading fast. Who ever occupied the main bedroom was evicted for our convenience and pyjamas were provided. We made a early start the next day but Mama Fatima would not let us out of the door with out bellies full of chapattis and pockets full of biscuits.

	We passed through the Cedar forests and snapped some photos of our first big African mammal, the Barbary Macaque’s, who were also being overfed by Moroccans and tourists. That evening we parked in among the huge dunes of the Great Erg Chebbi near the Algerian boarder. Forsaking the more popularised and tourist-ridden dunes of Merzouga town, we found great solitude in having our own massive pile of sand to climb all over.

For our first real off road overlander experience we chose one of the pistes described in the Sahara Overland handbook. The 280km long piste from Merzouga to Tagounite. We loaded the waypoints into our GPS and reading the descriptions in the book in reverse order (we were going the opposite way to the books description) we headed into the wilderness.

We spent the first night camped on the clay of a dried up lake, enjoying solitude, a campfire and just each others company. In the morning as I was lying prostate on the floor photographing flowers, I thought I heard footsteps. I turned my head and standing just four feet from me (like something out of the Shining) was a Berber child. He silently opened a pencil case and unwrapped a poor array of fossils onto the ground.

	I was so captivated by this silent film-like apparition, that I ended up buying a particularly poor specimen for five dirham. The rest of the family including two small children with scabby faces soon joined us. I gave the mother some hibiscrub and explained to clean three times daily. We didn’t however succumb to demands for money for photographing the camels.

	The truck was performing magically after its weight-loss diet and made light work of the piste. We were now relishing being people who actually need a GPS, and having one that doesn’t talk back. Lunch on the second day at a particularly nice Auberge (Aghbalou Ramlia, GPS co-ordinates N30º,42,415 W04º,22,922) with two Berber brothers, one of whom cadged a lift to the next village 30km away.

It is possible to complete the piste in one fast day but we really enjoyed the remote camping experience so drove off the piste and high onto a volcanic ridge on the boarder of Algeria. We showered and settled in for the night around the campfire, watching 180 degrees of lightning storms on the horizon. The fire burnt down and we turned in for the night, one of the most terrifying nights. You see, we hadn’t really banked on the lightning storms actually visiting us. All in an instant the wind swung 180 degrees and intensified blowing the fire away as the rain and hailstones battered the now rocking van. Being the only large metal object on a high point in an electrical storm was a new experience for us both, and as neither of us could work out if rubber tires were insulation enough, we cowered in the middle of the bed counting the seconds between thunder and lightning. After an hour or so things settled down and sleep came fitfully.

In the morning whilst tinkering on the van, a Berber shepherd appeared out of the ether. He had little interest in selling anything but settled down to watch the new entertainment. I offered him tea (English style with 8 sugars) and we exchanged milks. We tried the slightly cheesy aromatic goats milk, whilst he had the pleasure of the mildly nutty soya milk. He preferred the goat. We squatted and shared our pistachios and some of his dates and chatted about nothing since we shared no common language. On leaving, he gave us a small piece of meteorite as a gift and wandered into seemingly nowhere.