Day 27: To the dunes
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Wed 1 Dec 2010 19:05
|
Day 27: Wednesday 1 December 2010. Kasr Yasmina, Erg
Chebbi, Morocco. N31 12.813 W00359.310 Distance driven 198 km
Today dawned fine and sunny with no wind and a crystal
clear sky - what a change from yesterday! After a late start, and saying goodbye to all our friends, we pulled out of Tinehir
heading for Mazouga. It was a good fast road through Tinejdad through
pretty featureless countryside with desert all around us and some sand drifts on
the road following yesterday's storm. One or two locals used these drifts to try
to get us to stop to give them lifts by standing in the narrowed road. We
saw herds of camels strategically placed by the side of the road as "tourist
traps" and, as we neared Erfoud, many new 4 star hotels built in the kasr style,
all advertising camel rides, Berber tent experiences etc.
We stopped for a lunch break before Erfoud and pulled
off the road in a deserted area under the shade of a palm tree. We had
no sooner started to eat lunch than a lad on a bike appeared and came over
to us asking for a pen, then food, then money. Jenny gave him some new
bread and a hunk of chorizo, from which he took one bite and promptly threw
the rest away before continuing his demands for money. He was soon joined by a
friend who took up the same patter and together they became a real nuisance and
almost threatening. We just packed everything away and drove on. We
find this the least attractive side of Morocco. We feel almost like a
giant magnet - as soon as we stop we are surrounded by scroungers, who
won't take "no" for an answer and are very invasive of our privacy. Many of them
are just out for anything they can get and don't look particularly needy,
appearing to be well fed and clothed. In the mountains it is very
different - the requests are more polite and the locals appear much poorer
and more deserving. In the mountain areas thee was a constant demand
for shoes from farmers and shepherds clad in decrepit footwear held together
with wire and string. If we had spare shoes we would gladly have given them
away, but we are travelling with only 2 pairs each. I did give away an
ancient pair of yellow Crocks to an old shepherd who appeared amused and
mystified by them!
From Erfoud we came through Rissani and then off-road
towards the dunes for 14 km to Kasr Yasmina, an old kasr built of mud and straw
not operating as a hotel on the edge of the dunes. We are camping in
the hotel grounds and have refused the usual tourist events such as camel rides
to the dunes, or sleeping in a Berber tent 100 m from the hotel! Maybe
we'll get up early and walk to the dunes to watch the sun rise!
We have had a session looking at our future programme
and have decided that we need to press on now, so the target is to leave
Marrakech by 5 December and be over the Mauritania border by 10 December.
That's over 2,500 km of driving, so we need to get going! Tomorrow we
are looking to start out on a 250 km off-road "piste" from Mazouga to
Zagora.
|