(18) 25 March. To the Beach!

Over the last few days we have enjoyed the sights and challenges of driving off road across mountain plains, over and through mountains, desert and wadi. Today we head further west to add driving along a beach to that list, or at least positioning ourselves to do so.

 Before leaving we climbed the hills around the camp site to take the obligatory sunrise photos and in doing so found some prehistoric rock carvings, groups of simple concentric circles but clearly man made; it seems this area is known for them. It was then time for the off. 

Today promised to be quite straightforward. After regaining the dirt road we headed towards Akka and tarmac. It was then a drive west towards the Atlantic coast. It has been a pretty uneventful day. At one stage we needed fuel for one of the cars, something which highlighted the foibles of the Moroccan world. Fuel stations are few and far between on our 180 mile route and the first one we came to was shut. However, someone there agreed to ring the owner and get him to open up so we waited. And waited. We passed the time high-fiving and laughing with the local kids who had gathered around the cars and then we heard the call to prayer at which point we thought we would never see the owner but we were assured he was on his way and indeed he was.

However, when he arrived he sadly reported he had no petrol so it was back on the road to the next garage with a plan to tow the Mercedes should it run out of fuel on the way. This next garage too was shut. We asked a passing soldier if there was another garage nearby and I know our French is not that good but I am pretty sure he asked us if we wanted some contraband fuel to which we guessed the correct answer was 'Non, merci.'. A lady in the shop next door rang the owner at home to get him out. Through miming she suggested he was sleeping off a large lunch. He eventually turned up and opened up, then promptly ran out of petrol after filling one car with 30 litres. Still, we now had enough to be going on with.

We arrived at the town of Guelmim near the coast where we stocked up on meat and vegetables from the local market then headed off again towards the coast proper. Our plan had been to camp on the beach but we have now ended up somewhat further inland on the empty coastal plain. It is overcast and certainly lacks the magic of last night; it is fairly featureless and we have swarms of mosquitoes to contend with. But of course there is the ten mile drive along the beach tomorrow to look forward to, once the tide has gone out...