Monday 26 October

Heading north through the Rif mountains to our penultimate destination of Chefchaouen perhaps one of Morocco's most charismatic towns with its blue houses combined with the fabled lawlessness of the Rif region made for an interesting diversion from the scheduled route.

Hoodie violin gang

and hot gossip

streets

and alleyways

Sunday 25 October

A strange silly day in Meknes, involved a Moroccan guide who could only speak german which subsequently had to be translated into english by our Dutch tour guide, something got seriously lost in translation in what can only be described as the dullest ditchwater blurb ever heard, so to avoid death by useless information we entertained ourselves with Monty Pythonesque humour including silly walks.

The later part of the day was taken up by a visit to Volubilis the largest Roman archaeological site in Morocco.

Volubilis archaeological site

with some French reconstruction

Wednesday 21 October

Moving on, we continued our northerly track to Midelt across the Middle Atlas mountain range via the cedar forests of Azrou, for those who like macaque monkeys Azrou is where they hang out by the road side.

Saw no monkeys, just camels on a cliff

and the vanishing Kasbahs

Thursday 22 October

A planned 4x4 excursion to the Cirque de Jaffar and lunch in a Berber home morphed into a gruelling trip in an ancient mercedes minibus that was totally inadequate for the task. So to cut a long story short it was an ordeal of the first order. The only saving grace of the day was a beautiful walk around Cirque de Jaffar.

The Cirque de Jaffar

Walking in the Cirque

Nomad woman in the Cirque

Dying cedars due to 7 year drought

Tuesday 20 October

On perhaps the wildest ride of our lives, we took an off road 4x4, 300km round trip from the Todra valley to the Dades valley and gorge, an eight hour dirt road trip through the high atlas mountains as featured in:

http://www.dangerousroads.org/africa/morocco/628-gorges-du-dades-morocco.html

We spent most of the day grinning at the wow factor of the ever changing landscape taking more photos than a Japanese tourist as we tried to illustrate this vast vista.

Our circuit started out from Baddou campsite in Tamtatouchte and our guide was Ahmed the campsite owner. From there we headed north in his 4x4.

Our route highlighted in green

Ahmed and his trusty 4x4

The asphalt ends at Agoudal the most northerly point of our circuit, a fertile valley farming village.

Todra valley at Agoudal

Berber farmers hard at work

Nomads on the move

Berber nomad

This is the time of year that nomads move down the mountains for the winter as this area will become impassable due to snow cover.

Nomad summer mountain dwelling

Our intrepid crew

Mountain views from 3000m

More of the rolling landscape

Dades Valley

Trouble ahead

Back on the asphalt at Dades Gorge

and a Berber 4x4 fully loaded

Monday 19 October

A salt mine visit via a river bed walk, now we think we know why some Moroccan tap water tastes of salt, the ground water flows through seams of salt in the Atlas Mountains, turn on the tap and hey presto salt water.

A mountain oozing salt

Rivers of salt

Linda at the salt mine entrance

Mule train salt transport

Sunday 18 October

The Todra Gorge was the highlight of the second leg to our next campsite, our base for the next 3 days, it is further up the Todra Valley located in a village called Tamtatouchte.

Todra Gorge

Bridge washed by snowmelt

Tamtatouchte Baddou campsite

Baddou pool and wifi tent 

Saturday 17 October

The start of our long trek north, re-tracing our route for part of the way towards Ouarzazate through the Drâa valley, braking our journey with an overnight stop at Agdz. Our campsite was in the grounds of a Kasbah surrounded by date palms. By good fortune we arrived at the time of date harvest and the owner subsequently gave us an informative tour of the palmeraie and her Kasbah. Amazing.

Agdz, date palm campsite 

with Kasbah

We met a couple of Aussies on site from Western Australia who were in the process of travelling around the world in their Nissan 4x4. Their 60,000km journey so far included shipping their camper to Vladivostock and driving across Asia, mainly through Russian held territories including Mongolia.

Justin and Jen with their camper

Their journey so far

Thursday 15 October

A pre-dawn start took us by 4x4 into the Sahara desert, after an hour or so the bitumen road disappeared at a town called M'Hamid el Ghizlane not far from the Algerian border, once a garrison town for the French Foreign Legion camel corp. Thereafter for the next 3 hours there is no road, only tyre marks, sand rocks and more rocks and sand. Our destination for the day is Erg Chigagga a spectacular vista of sand dunes stretching some 40km across the desert, the only way to get there is by 4x4 or camel.

It's a 50 day camel ride to Timbuctou from here

getting there is half the fun

and not so much fun

A camel filling station

Camel-cam big vista

Taureg blue men with tablet

Desert lunch stop

Cooling down waiting for lunch

The bread oven in action 

The end product, desert damper

with an 'eat my dust' finish

Wednesday 14 October

After the obligatory camel ride, we met some hardened travellers at the campsite. Firstly an Austrian couple in their 70's who have travelled to most places in the world that you could possibly imagine over the last 20 years in their purpose built Unimog. Their adventures included 7 different crossings of the Sahara desert.

The Unimog (fuel consumption 20 litres per 100km, road speed 50km/h)

Our other neighbour was a dutch guy called Pim who had just returned from a two year trip around Africa on his own in his old Toyota Landcruiser. He had some amazing stories to tell, perhaps the most curious one was that this was the first car he has ever owned.

Pim and his not always trusty Toyota

Camel riding chic

Linda (white turban) on a cute camel 

Paul gets the ugly one

Camel-cam shadows