My "Saharagelber" 300TD

This morning we strolled over the camping and breathed in the atmosphere of traveller who all have great destinations. Some stay in Morocco, and lots are heading for the sahara, some are travelling through the whole African continent and some are just travelling the world in a couple of years.
Today we drove to Tan-Tan, we saw this camping on our Michelin map. After some driving we found out we had taken the wrong direction, we had some bad roads but it was worth taking these road, as the environment over here is pretty nice.

Our place, not too good, directly in the sun, but it was just for one night, as we will continue for the Sahara now!

Americans, so BIG TRUCK, ‘nough said

An Unimog truck, also way too big if you ask me.

Yeah, what to say about this? Higher as an average house! Just the biggest truck I’ve seen, 6 wheel drive MAN truck. Higher price than an average house too, must be around 250000/300000 dollars I guess, including living room, bathroom, and so on.

Old firearms Mercedes overland truck, 1/100 of the price of the MAN 6×6 overland truck I think.

We had to take some stony and sandy pistes. We finally arrived at Fort Bou Jerif, in fact this really was an Oasis! It is a great bastion which is really a recommendation, it’s in the middle of nowhere. We had some great dinner over there, it was good food which made this place really a perfect one. After dinner we sat outside below the starry sky, from this place you can see a massive amount of stars.

Coast line

Their filosofy: If it’s able to drive, it’s not too much to carry on the roof.

W123 Taxi, Agadir, Morocco

W114 taxi, Agadir

Taxis in one of the duty-free, sandy villages in the western sahara. In various parts in Morocco they have their own color, as in other african countries. Here you see the often used white/blue combination and the sandy brown color, which is the same color as they were originally in Germany. Most of the time they use the 240d’s with manual gearbox.

On the Transatlantic route. Here you see the W123’s where 7 people are stuffed in the car, sharing the taxi costs to cross the sahara via the transatlantic road. Most of the time they use the 240d’s with manual gearbox.

W123, queen of the saharan highway

Very motivating with 40-something degrees celcius

Another queen of the sahara, all stations are Peugeots of the 504 type, and not the T-modell of the Mercedes W123 somehow.

Around Tan-Tan, a stony part of the Sahara

Around Tan-Tan

Camping in the open at Fort-Bou Jerif

I went to the embassy very early and took a freezing cold shower, so I immediately woke up completely.
When we I came the man from yesterday told us to come back at 2pm. I felt miserable, I saw ourselves sitting and wait here for days, everytime another story. I told him we were promised to pick the visa up today at 8 am. This man told me to wait and called someone else.
The man from yesterday came towards me and was friendly. I decide to play fair and gave them the receipt, and just told them sorry. I had to be honest. He was very friendly and accepted my excuses. 2 minutes later I was outside again with the visa, Yes!
Ramon felt better today and we went off into the direction of the Sahara! During a stop we sat down next to a river and ate a good lunch. Some guy walked towards us and started kissing and hugging us. Melissa told hem to go away but he decided to stay and beg for our water.
It looked like he was drunk or something but we did not smell any alcohol. With some hassle we pushed him away, because clearly he did not understand that his company was not wanted. Finally he left us and crossed this river by just walking through it.

There are many shipwrecks along the coast.

Road to Essaouira, along the moroccon west coast.

Salt winning

We continued to Essaouira which was a very nice route to drive. A nice coast line, salt winnings and nice farmlands. With 100743km on the meter we arrived at the camping. There were quite some overlanders over there, among them were some pretty big trucks.
I think there was one of those trucks from Klaus Darr, a big 4wd MAN truck, comlete with bathroom, living room and kitchen. I think it’s way too big, you can only drive on the bigger roads and it’s not so easy to just go into the bush. It would be nice though, to have some comfort when you depart for a couple of years. There was an old fire truck too, the well known Mercedes truck from the sixties which is still manufactured in South Africa. It probably costed 1/80 of the price of these big overlander trucks and will probably do too for a trip of a couple of years.

On our way to the Sahara

As you probably know, I take through-the-wind-shield pictures every now and then.

A short stop for a picnic

Today we got up early, it was darn hot last night. The fan lasted till six o’clock, then the jumpstarter was empty and from then on it was too hot to bare again. After all, it would have been better to sleep on the roof in the shade and outside with a bit of wind.
We were a bit grummy this morning, cause in the room across there was a family with a small daughter. They woke up at 6:50am and when they were packing the room they let her talk very loudly and had no notion of other people they held awake this way.

The way you see it the most, full of people, sometimes 7 persons (2 on the front passengers seat).

Marrakech, Morocco. They drive sometimes a couple of million kilometers here, one Taxi driver said.

Before we left Marrakech I searched for a shop where I could buy something to hold the stool on the roof, because we had to travel the rest of the journey with that huge unhandy stool I bought.
Next time we’re in Marrakech we will try to find our way a bit further away from the big touristic Djamaa el Fnaa square.
Close to the parking lot we bought 220liter vegetable oil and left Marrakech. When we were at the embassy we had to show a receipt, which we did not get. No receipt? Then no passports. ‘You DID receive a receipt’ they said stringent.
‘No passports back!’ Then we had to wait, important people were told about our problem and we had to wait and wait. They asked Melissa in and out and then we both had to come in. They were mad at us for not having this receipt and we were mad at them because we didn’t get one!
I told them we had to get it back, not our problem that THEY made a mistake. The we finally were told we could get it back, but not today, it will be tomorrow. Great.
So, we went back to this crappy camping again, ironically named ‘Oasis’ I guess. Well, it was such a nice place anyway, we loved to stay there, *Sigh*.
Then Ramon got sick, he started to throw up and we’ve put him to bed early when he was able to sleep.

We bought a boatload of vegetable oil in Morocco

Cheerio!

Early in the morning we had breakfast on the roof, with a view over all the roofs of the buildings in the old medina. We had a relaxing day today, it was about 40 degrees so too hot to do something. I started to read about the sahara (Sahara overland, by Chris Scott). We sat on the roof all day. In the evening we went to the Djama el Fnaa again, to have some food. We recognized the funny man who was working here 8 years ago too, we recollected this guy, he had grown a bit more fat but it was definitely the same guy, at stand 25. We used to call him Eddy Murphy, he makes a lot of fun and is entertaining the people who are passing by to attract them to his stall. Marrakech is not the place like it was some years ago, it has lost a bit of its charme, it’s very, very touristic now and the moroccons here lost their natural interest in people and are only interested in your money. But still, Marrakech is among our favorite destinations.

Our hotel in the old medina.

Eating at stand 25, Djamaa el Fnaa

Buying something in Marrakech is a tedious job, everytime you need to start the whole procedure again when you see something you’d like to buy. This ‘what-does-it-cost, no-way, that-is-way-too-expensive, I’ll-offer-you-this, etc. etc.’ thing is fun for the first time in Morocco, but it’s quite irritating if you just want to look around and know the prices of thing to decide if you want to buy it or not. We delved in the souks close to the square but wanted to get out asap. We were definitely not interested to stop at every stop and play the game.
They all start to scream at you ‘Hey! Hey! Want to look! Look at this! We have special price for you! Where are you from? Hey stop! Don’t leave!’.
We know their trick, they ask you where you’re from and then classify you. Whey you say you’re from an asian country youre finished, they charge you the maximum, statistics learn they pay nearly the price they ask. Then, I believe second worst are americans, they seem not to be familiar with the process. West European aren’t much better either. South Europeans are better and even more the north Africans. Of course, the Moroccans theirselves know about the whole game and pay the least. I read this in a Lonely Planet before and Melissa and I started to give the strangest answers possible, like Antarctica, Sudan, Irak or just Morocco. Then they stare at you and look funny at you, their trick doesn’t help them further. Then they start to guess Then we start to ask them the same questions ,like wher they’re from.
Melissa was looking in a shop for a nice cushion and I was just standing next to her in the shop. One guy started to talk to Melissa and so the other started showing stuff to me, as I was standing a bit bored (hoping they would leave me alone, which did not seem to work).
I told him I’m not interested in anything but he kept on showing stuff to me. He ended up telling me that I’m not interested in moroccon handcrafts. I told him, I was, I wanted to buy his old stool he is sitting on all day. That was possible he said (of course, they would sell their own hands if you make a good offer). He asked me if I really liked it, I told him it was real ‘berber quality’ to make a bit fun of the moroccan way of trading. He could laugh about it and played the game too. He pointed at the broken part of the chair and how it was fixed wit some cheap rope saying ‘real quality!’. ‘Yeah, yeah! Real good souvenir! Real solid berber wood material from the atlas’ I yelled. He started to trade in the moroccan way too, he asked 200 dirham! So I did what I usually do an started with a stupid offer of 1 dirham, we had lots of fun and ended up at 50 dirham, still way too much for this crappy stool, but we had fun and I paid it. The other guys from the shops around all came to see what was happening and laughed.
He told me that this stool had to be packed very good and we had to take good care of it. This was the only thing we bought in the souks, we went to the market place again and gave Ramon another Henna tattoo, this time we bargained and we got if for 20% of the price from yesterday.
Tomorrow we’re heading for our visa again in Casablanca.

There’s enough food for vegetarians too

If you weren’t hungry, you sure will when crossing the Fnaa square in the evening.

And yeah, it’s like this every evening

Cheese!

Getting another henna tattoo.

This moron proposed to get a picture of Ramon and him. Then he charged us money for it. Yeah right! I suggested him to pay us, as it seemed equally reasonable to me.

Today we heard at the embassy we had to wait for the visa for one and a half day, but I read on het Internet they are able to issue them on the same day, asking and begging did not help, this seemed to be the procedure.
We didn’t want to be disappointed so we decided to head for Marrakech and forget about this as soon as we could. Which was easy, because Marrakech was one of our favorite places in Morocco and we wanted to show it to Ramon.
The road between Casablanca and Marrakech is somewhat boring, some parts were nice though, sometimes you drove in between the big bold mountains, some parts were beautifully red colored, and now and then the colourful combination of these red stones and the green trees.
We passed the Oued Oum river and some smaller rivers.

The boring camping in Casablanca, named “l’Oasis”, pretty ironic if you ask me.

If you need to change the engine, you just don’t tow the bus, but do the replacement on the highway itself and having someone getting the parts you need, awesome!

The taxi’s are green over here.

The 100k milestone!

The place were we’d hit the 100k milestone in Morocco.

After a while we entered Marrakech, parked our car at a guarde parking lot and started exploring Marrakech and find ourselves a hotel. It was darn hot over here and we decided to buy some orange juice, especially Ramon needs those vitamins. As we walked on the square they all started to scream and wanted us to buy the juice at their place. We stopped at the first one but decided to buy a one juice at one person, so we distrubute it equally. The two other guys we laughing and we’re happy we did this, the first one ended up with selling just one juice and wasn’t too happy with it
We had some experience with the moroccan way of trading but today we got fooled again, they did not tell us what it costed but ‘helped’ us by picking ‘the right coins’ when they ask to show them what you have, acting as though they will help you out with the foreign coins.
So we paid, 5 at one place, the other 3 and the third one 4 dirham, well, whatever .

At the Djamaa el Fnaa, in cosy Marrakech. It was damn hot that day!

Ramon getting a henna tattoo

Djamaa el Fnaa

Djamaa el Fnaa

Ramon wanted a henna tattoo so one of the woman agreed with 100 dirham to create one. They offered a small free one at Melissa’s arm but this small one got bigger and bigger and we ended up with paying for both the tattoos.
No freaking way! We got an agreement. I kept on saying no and we did not feel guilty, we know that trick
Then we ate some food at the restaurant with the view over the Djama el Fnaa square and went into the old medina to hotel Essouira, where we slept on the roof some years ago. After trying to book a room they told us that they need our passports, which were at the embassy in Casablanca… There was no way to book us in because this is a strict procedure and they could get fines for it. We had to go to the police station and arrange some papers stating that we are who we are, which would cost money too (of course) So there we are, in Marrakech and no place to sleep. We decided to ask the next one, paying directly and see if we could arrange something.
2 hotels furthers we asked the guy and explained our problem, he told us after thinking for a while it was no problem, he only had a room for four persons, which costed 200 dirham (around 16 euro’s), so that’s no problem, we were in, without the hassle of going to the police station.
We went to the car to get our stuff, we decided to take the jumpstarter, the 12V-220V converter and the 220V fan, because it was darn hot in that room, 35 degrees in that room is no exaggeration!

Typical hotel in Marrakech, the old medina