6th June - Tiznit

Nicki reporting! 

Today I awoke to the sound of what sounded like rats on the roof! After a while I established the noise was actually birds, they were hopping around and hitting the metal with their beaks, being rather inquisitive. We set off at around 9:30 after David had topped up the oil. We began by back-tracking down the road for 2 miles so we could make the most of the Western Sahara fuel prices before we crossed the border about 1km further on from where we camped!

We reached Tan-Tan at lunchtime and used the internet. We bought our bread for lunch here, which David (who had the nice bit of bread) enjoyed and I (who had the rock-like piece of bread) did not. The afternoons drive took us from the flat, open plains to the Middle Atlas mountains, which provided stunning views for our drive. There were several stalls selling huge watermelons and also cacti dotted around. 

In one town we got stopped for speeding (tut tut David!) His speed gun showed us doing 67kph in a 60kph zone, but luckily he didn't fine us. Apparently it would have been a problem if we had been doing 70kph, phew. We also stopped to give two boys our two 5l water bottles, which they took after looking at us rather blankly, I think our days of handing out old water bottles while being mugged in the process are over!  We think they generally have running water here so don't really need them.

Just before we arrived at Tiznit we drove through a storm of bugs which splattered nicely all over our windscreen! Apart from that we arrived uneventfully at the campsite, the same one David and Abby stayed in last time. David and I have just taken a walk into town to buy vegetables for tonight's leftover-from-yesterday curry and the temperature is very pleasant. We found some wonderful things for sale, like fresh peaches, cherries, red and green apples, plums, apricots, peppers, parsnips…along with fresh chicken (hanging next to the live version cooped up in cages, a bit like eating a McDonalds next to a field of cows). It is a well equipped town, the first we have seen for weeks, which signals our return north. And no desert in sight.