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Africa: North to South, Part 1

Africa: North to South, Part 1, Morocco and Mauritania

Simon and Jennifer
2006-04-26 10:13:00

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Morocco

We arrived in Morocco on 23rd November, only just squeezing on to a packed ferry! By the end of the week we had glimpsed some of the best scenery Morocco has to offer including our first view of the snow capped Atlas Mountains, a beautiful lake in the Ifrane region, sun sets over kasbahs and the abandoned mining village of Ahouli near Midelt (more spectacular due to the amazing feats of engineering than the scenery itself.)

After a week we decided to become a little more adventurous and started following some of the smaller routes marked on the Michelin map. Hmm, the good old Michelin Map, that got us into trouble on more than one occasion! We got a little lost and ended up driving around various tracks, all leading to berber camps rather than the piste we wanted! After getting over their natural wariness of these strangers driving into their camp the Berbers we met assured us the piste did exist, but whether it was our bad French or their directions we never did find it, instead we found our way to the back entrance of a little village. Judging by the look of amazement on the faces of the villagers, land rovers do not usually appear from across the river, they were so busy staring they even forgot to wave, and the children forgot to come running demanding stylo, bon bon and dirham (the local currency). Thankfully one or two of the local residents recovered enough to wave us through the tiny back streets and onto a main road from which we easily relocated ourselves on the map and continued our journey.

One of the lesser trodden routes we took was around the Cirque du Jaffer, this will be forever remembered for the midway pancake stop where Simon tossed and cooked pancakes over an open fire at Jennifer's request, they've never tasted so good! We also spent a couple of days bush camping by a canyon, this will always be remembered for Jennifer waking up in the middle of the night convinced ...