My "Saharagelber" 300TD

Today we departed again, although, that was the plan. We bought some bread near a tiny village next to the camping. It was a big mess, waste everywhere, small children running around, some old mud houses and starved dogs. I was able to buy some vegetable oil here at this small shop, so I bought as much as possible. When we wanted to leave we spotted some baby ducks in the small streamlet close to the camping. They were alone, probably taken by the stream. We spend three hours to bring them back to their parents but failed in the end.
So at five o’clock in the afternoon we headed for Casablanca, there we had to get our visas for Mauritania, as it was unclear to us if we could get them at the border, we read it was not possible and would not take the risk.
We took the route from Azrou via Khenifra, Kasba Tadla, Oued Zem, Khouribga to Casablanca. We found an utterly ugly camping l’Oasis, somewhere close to the embassy, whch was good. The camping was just some place in the middle of the busy city, surrounded by walls.

On the road again, heading to Casablanca.

Morocco is beautiful!

W123′s all around!

Somehow our clocks were 2 hours ahead of time, we found out at the office window of the camping, so it was 22:30 instead of 00:30. This gave us some extra sleep, 7am in the morning is now two hours further away
We had found ourselves a good spot, away from the others. It was pretty quiet on the camping and we went to bed early, after we prepared at the sloppy toilets.

Today was relaxing day, finally get some REST! Apart from hanging in the hammock, reading, eating, hanging again (but somewhere else), doing the dishes, hanging aroudn again, filtering water, eating, drinking, we didn’t do much.

The nice camping in Azrou

Our friend at the campsite

Feeding the cat, which was named ‘Mitsy’ by Ramon.

Mitsy happend to be a beautiful cat.

Ramon played with the camping dog and a straycat today and we both enjoyed our peaceful rest. Today some spanish people arrived in their Landrovers, they were working on their brand new Landrovers, at least, they looked like new. I enjoyed the scene, two Landy’s arriving and they start to play mechanics directly, The cliche seems to be true, with a Landrover you spend half your holiday under the hood.

The cliche is true They just entered the camping and knew their place

In the morning we thanked our parking lot guards and we left, apparently they were expeciting a present besides our payment. We headed on for Azrou, there should be berber monkeys over there. We did an alternative road again, very small and sometimes bad roads.

The streets in Ouezzane

We then passed very small villages, where people have nothing besides each other and houses of mud. They’ve got their goats and sheep and work on the land. There were no cars or mopeds arond, the kids ran through the village to catch a glimpse of this yellow car moving though their village. We had spend quite some time on the small roads, sometimes halting so Melissa and Ramon could do a search for bones, which they collect. At one stop a boy walked towards us and wanted to chat, he was able to speak english, which happenend more times in the east of Morocco I found out.

Along the route through the rif mountains.

Conserving the hey with clay. In the back you see they let trees grow again on the hills, after years and years of cutting trees, big areas in Morocco are completely treeless and just sand and stones.

Houses in the tiniest villages.

At he end of the day we enter Ifrane, a very wealthy place often called the ‘Geneva of Morocco’. A decadent place with villa’s and a respectable university and lots of greenery.
We then drove some time after a smellly truck I decided to overtake it, then, while we were on the left side of the road we saw a roadblock, of course we had to stop and a severe looking police officer wanted us to pay 400DH. I thought he just made that up and refused to pay. This did not please him and he did not want to give my license back, he got mad and yelled at us that it was prohibited to overtake on that part. In fact he was right, but I refused to pay and made a scene of it. He walked towards the other officers to tell them I did not want to pay. They stood there talking for a while and then he came back, he told us because of the little boy in the back, he gave my license back and we could go on. I was stunned, I turned the key and thanked him and drove away, we were pretty much delighted. Darn, this was close! We saved about 80 Euro’s!

Driving through the plains

Looking for skulls and bones of animals, one of Melissa’s interests.

The plains

Big tree in Azrou

In the beginning of the evening we found a nice camping in Azrou. It’s a very nice camping in Morocco, which is very rare. This place is really a recommendation! I think it’s the only camping in Azrou, close to a big old tree of 800 years old, where there should live berber monkeys.
There was another dutch couple on the camping we spoke to. We chatted with them for a while and then had our dinner, a nice meal pepared by Melissa. Then we arranged a nice place for Ramon to sleep and we sat outside for quite a while and decided to stay here at this relaxing place. We sat outside and enjoyed the place very much.
Equipped with a rooftent, good chairs, a waterfilter and waterbags, good torches, a jumpstarter and even a table this time! It started to look like we’ve become professional campers.
At a certain moment we saw one of the people walk out the thet, this french guy, a father of a family walked towards the edge of the camping. ‘What is this guy doing?’ Melissa asked. ‘The toilets are the other direction, he won’t do what I think he will do, or does he?’.
Indeed, he used his torch to find himself a place and when somewhere behind the trees his torch went out. ‘No way!’ I said. ‘This filthy freak is going to shit over there, where Ramon was playing this afternoon’. I just couldn’t imagine she was right, the distance between the toilets was practically the same as the distance he walked right now. ‘Use the lamp!’ Melissa said. I took my torch and shone in his direction and then turned it off. He was still standing. I turned it on and kept the torch on this time. He started walking again, knowing he was ‘in the picture’
Slowly he walked back to his tent stood there for a sec and then walked towards the toilets. ‘Darn, you were right’ I said to Melissa. ‘Those awkward french people!’ we laughed.
We sat there for a while at our spot and enjoyed our first night on the camping. The ideas about we what we also could have done made us even laugh more, like the idea that we would wait for him to poop and then start flashing the light and making noises, oh well, our type of humor I guess

After a long and very interesting day, Ramon could go to sleep.