Towards the Desert

For once we actually got an early start and left Ounara at the crack of 8:30.  No motorways any more, but the road we're driving is the main one towards the south of the country, so it's pretty reasonable.  As we headed south, we noticed the greenery running out, and desert starting to appear, particularly near the coast.  This was also marked by our first camel sightings.

 

Whereas in the north, the fields surrounding the roads are littered with small children herding goats, farmers harvesting crops and donkeys trotting along with cargoes of humans and goods, this is no longer the case.  We've passed several convoys of combine harvesters, plus a town which seemed to specialise in jobbing combine crews, with dozens of the machines lining the streets, but some of the farmers were still cutting their crops with sickles.

 

Today's destination was Tiznit, chosen partly because it has a reasonable campsite, and partly because it has banks, which open on Monday and will allow us to change more money;  almost all of our cash has been donated to the Moroccan petrochemical industry.  We passed through Agadir on the way, which was a quaint Portuguese town until it was levelled by a huge earthquake in 1960, killing 18,000 people.  Today it hosts mostly modern buildings, including another branch of the big French hypermarket, which we homed in on because it sold silicon sealant, which we need to plug an occasional leak in the roof.

 

The coast around Agadir contains many sandy beaches, which proved popular with the population of the city, who were out enjoying the pleasant weather.  There were also some surfing venues, although today's surf wasn't particularly impressive.

 

We arrived early in Tiznit, which was slightly frustrating as it would have been nice to have pushed on south, but there are no other suitable towns within reach today.  We headed off for a walk, to check bank opening times and also to look at the Jewellery Souk.  A couple of very friendly Moroccans tried to drag us off to their shops, and also to the jewellery factory, but we didn't really want to oblige;  it did highlight the age-old question of how to tell if somebody's being genuinely friendly, or whether they want something from you.  In a country such as Morocco where so many people are actually friendly and welcoming, you need careful judgment, so as not to offend anybody!

 

Back at the campsite we met a couple called Roy and Jo, from Hatherleigh, near Okehampton, who have been travelling for just over a year in their Mercedes van.  They've just come here from Iran, overland, having failed to get across the Pakistan border due to earthquake problems, and have nice tans to show for it.  We picked up a few tips from them.  They've not had many problems apart from odd bits and pieces like electrics playing up and inability to find the same type of gas canister twice in a row;  although they did one night have a bunch of stuff nicked off their roof, whilst they were actually in the van and awake.  (Ours is all locked down.)

 

Faced with an afternoon of not driving, I decided to try to get the air conditioning working.  With only a partial wiring diagram, there was some guesswork involved, but finally it jolted into life – woohoo!  We'll only be able to use it when we have a mains hookup, but in the warmer climates as we go south, it could be very handy.