It feels like a very long time has passed since I last sat at a computer. We left Morocco for Mauritania in a convoy of 6 very bright and silly cars which I will describe later. Onward we sped, south nearly 500 km from Dakhla, through that same desolate and nearly featureless landscape I wrote about before, rocks and flatness, and white sky. We carried on until the Moroccan border--everyone out in the blazing sun, building to building with passports, fiches, car documents, waiting, waiting, bringing documents, standing here and there. The Moroccan border with Mauritania is one of the main north/south crossing routes in Africa. This is not a tiny backcountry crossing. The Moroccan side was cinderblock, a barracks type of setup. A few coils of barbed wire, a couple of guys with guns, a lot of taxi drivers standing next to their orange Mercedes's was the bulk of activity.
Finally, stamped and sweating, we passed the checkpoint, to travel the "well marked piste" 4 km to the Mauritanian frontier. We had been told to "always keep to the right" when the piste forked, because the right side went to immigration and the road to Nouadhibou and the left is a smugglers piste that goes directly to Nouakchott, avoiding any legal formalities. Also, this is a huge "used" car market. I should also mention that the entire area is mined. Mined as in landmines. A small sign in old French told us not to stray off the piste as there were mines about. Nothing was marked, there were no little rocky borders along the piste clearly marking it--there was nothing except more of the desert we had been passing through, but I guess there weren't any goats or dogs roaming about.
We got lost in less than a minute. The piste was somewhat clearly marked, sometimes in several directions at once. Taking the right side only applied if the road split in two, not three. The piste was anything but smooth--it was so rocky it seemed more suitable for 4 wheel drives, and soft sand lay waiting in trenches. There was no sign of any Mauritanian checkpoint. We stuck with some other members of the rally--not our group, but we had (mistakenly) figured it would be no problem, we'd see our guys at the Mauritanian border. Soon we stopped for an altercation--young boy on a moterbike he had thrown across our paths and was out yelling at the lead car. We were supposed to pay him to guide us to the other side apparantly, and then he would take up to a campground in Nouadihbou so we all set off on the left side. Great.
So here we were, simply trying to cross a border, lost in a minefield, with 3 cars of other yokels, following some unknown kid leading us into a mafia motor market where who know what would happen. And of course we had no way to contact the cars ahead--all we could do was follow them.
Just when I thought we had done such an incredibly stupid thing that we deserved whatever happened to us, we scraped up a terrible stretch of piste to a tiny ramshakle hut, no flag in sight, only a torn apart sign in Arabic. I immediately thought this must be a trick, some enterprising people setting up a "frontier" in order to extract money by selling us fake visas or stealing our passports. But I was wrong.
The first thing I noticed was how incredibly slim all the Mauritanians were. Following immediately behind that was how incredibly poor and nomadic the country obviously is, and we were only as yet at the border. I have never seen a border like this and will try and describe. But first let me reiterate that this is the main north/south crossing in Western Africa.
A small clapboard hut was a combined barracks and visa office, mostly 2 x 4s and old wooden planks with flypaper and clapboard filling in some of the gaps. No floor. A tiny pink childs chair with a broken back sat in the space between the 2 rooms, with soldiers taking turns sitting in it, one thin leg crossed over the other. Each car was given a pair of forms to fill out, in very old French, so antiquated that none of us could understand the questions asked. Fortunately some French people came along and helped. We had several excellent French speakers and this was beyond all of us. After this we were guided and harassed to 5 guys crammed into a tiny ancient trailer, set up on blocks and painted "National Bank of Mauritania." They giggled as we had to change at very unfavourable rates in order to buy insurance at the next hut--a miniscule clapboard and cardboad box covered dark little office about 8 x 10 ft. An official slowly and labouriously filled out insurance forms in triplicate, taking about 10 minutes per car while the soldiers outside searched madly and voraciously (but it turns out not thoroughly) for alcohol, which is ostensibly outlawed in the RIM (Republic Islamic du Mauritanie) but a huge boon for them because they confiscate it to drink themselves and can also throw in a hefty fine if the passengers look wealthy enough. A shipping container (small size) made up the tourist office. But we were being hounded by guides, by people flogging this and that, and once we had our papers in order, fled through the barricades and over the rise, coming to rest out of sight of the actual border, to wait for our people. Even the Mauritanian flag was a tiny, faded affair.
Here's the thing with Mauritania: It's all desert, and the population sparse and nomadic. Sand dunes, camels, the large square Mauritanian tents, and the handsome, very tall and manly men, with their exquisite robes fluttering in the wind, dignified and beautiful. It's the translation to a settled way of life that seems to be the havoc wreaker. Since Mauritanian tents have no windows, and people live most of their lives outside, coming in is generally a matter of seeking shelter from the elements. So when permanent buildings are erected, shipping containers work just fine. And if something is built, it is often built in the manner of a shipping container--small, rectangular and windowless.
But the country is beautiful, it just took a little getting used to.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
From the Rooftop Bar of the Sahara Regency, Dakhla, Western Sahara
I can't really put my finger on why exactly this place is so appealing except that occupied places often are and Western Sahara and the Saharawi people are occupied by Morroco. It's not exactly the same sense of occupation you get in Gaza but it's an occupation nevertheless. I think the big attraction for Morocco is seafood and the possibility of oil. The largest fishing fleet in Morocco is based here in Dakhla. The town itself continuously looks as though everything is just about to open. It's mostly cinderblock and concrete but for some reason this is engaging and pleasant. There are a couple of little green spaces, and the oceanfront. Spanish is widly spoken, as well as French and Arabic and even English. There are plenty of soldiers. But there is not a great deal of activity going on here--the country (or territory) is pretty well entirely desert and also it's way out here on the edge of the world.
People used to wonder if the world had an edge and you may think it doesn't because it's round but I've got news for you. The end of the world is right here in Western Sahara.
I know this because we've been driving along it for two days.
The road from Sidi Ifni is basically hammada, rocky desert, and more hammada, with occasional bursts of sand dunes, or minor hillocks and then a resigned return to hammada, but flatter and flatter hammada, with smaller and smaller rocks, beaten into giving up trying anything complicated like sand dunes or small rises and eventually the hammada simply takes over and there is nothing but flat featureless stony desert and finally this gives up as well, completely exhausted, and the scenery stops entirely, only to rise again out of its addled dream on the approach to Dakhla, where the last 40 km along the penninsula traverses an astonishing landscape, through enormous sand flats that continue to the vanishing point and solid mountain walls beyond that. The sea, by the time you are racing along the Dakhla penninsula, is turquoise blue, glittering and beckoning. There is no development here, except the small concrete town itself, and the army outposts. A couple of tourism operators offer fishing trips, and there are a few vans of enthusiastic surfers from Europe, but this place sits 500 km south from Laayoune and over 1000 km south from Agadir, the last Moroccan city. And there is not much on that road except the occasional police checkpoint. As if that didn't give Dakhla anough of the end-of-the-world feeling, consider this:
This entire 1000+ km follows the curve of the NW African coast. This is 1000 km of completely wild ocean. There are no ports, no hotels, nothing except the very occasional beach, littered with shipwrecks. The ocean is huge and wild here--it doesn't invite you in to swim, it doesn't look as though one could pass a pleasant day offshore on a catamaran. This ocean you can barely look at. Seriously.
With the exception of the very rare beach, the entire coast is cliffs, jutting straight up from the sea itself. The swells pound directly into the cliffs with a roar and a huge oooof, and every few minutes one rolls in hard enough to shake the continent itself. The Atlantic Ocean pounding Africa.
The coast is uneven, and periodically chunks calve off into the sea, it must be. The cliff can be far from the road or sometimes only 20 feet away. The jagged cliffs are usually carved out from underneath so what looks like solid ground, terra firma, may only be a couple of feet thick. That means it might not even hold your weight, and it certainly won't hold a vehicle. If you, or your vehicle, were to get too close to the edge you would fall into the sea and perish probably within a minute, broken apart and drowned in the cauldren below. There is no beach. There are no sloping cliffs. Just the sea and above it: land. There are no rescue services here--no coast guard, no fire station. There is just the hammada, the stony desert. There is also, weirdly, fog.
This rolls in from the Atlantic, low and heavy, hitting the cliffs and boiling up them, spilling out onto the land like the steam from a witch's cauldron.
So you have this roar and thud and boom of the water, and the earth shaking from the force, and a foggy miasma--cold and gray.
People fish here. To me it's the picture of hell but people do it. They sit on top of the cliff, not getting close to the edge of course, with ultra long fishing poles, and they wait. Tiny hovels perch on this land between the road and the edge of the world, some alone, some in small clusters. They are used by the local Saharawi fishermen I think. Europeans also fish here, men anyway. I saw a few lone men, mostly French, sitting in folding chairs alone on the edge of the world, with a line disappearing into the fog below. I have trouble imagining a more horrifying time that this. And I can imagine well because we stopped in this place to eat lunch. I drove out to the cliffs edge but not too close as it already felt unsafe. There are no guardrails, no warning signs, nothing except a nebulous edge and some fog, and the sun behind it, making the light switch between gray and a hellish, dull yellow, like you get with a forest fire. Even before I had the food laid out, I knew the place was terrifying, and we ate in near silence, listening to the violent wild sea, and feeling the earth tremble with the incoming swells. Even Jonathan, who loves standing on edges of things, held back from this. And so, despite the noise, and the sense of the earth retreating, we could not actually see it. We could look across, to the waves crashing on the opposite side of the crevass, but we could not look over the edge at the water beneath us.
So this is what we drove though, and didn't stop at the cliff's edge again, thinking we'd have a bucolic picnic and a pleasant view. This is the ocean that took so many ships, many of which still litter the beaches. They have all been stripped, of course, long ago, and just stay wherever they have some to rest, in the surf.
We can no longer buy unleaded gas and so today will start using "super." Tomorrow morning we have an early start. We must leave at 6am so as to reach the Mauritanian border and complete the formalities before they close for lunch although this seems to trouble everyone else more than me. I just figure that if they close the border on us, we'll have lunch too! I just bought fresh vegetables and bread. And we have tea.
We have met up with the rest of the rally, finally. We are going to Mali with the Bamako Run. This is actually more challenging than the original race to the Gambia we have been signed up for. And now that we fell so far behind our group, (they have all reached Banjul, donated the cars, and flown home,) we will try to get to Mali. I got us visas for Mali in New York, just in case. After Mail, if we haven't killed each other, we are thinking of driving the volvo back to Gambia, to put it in the group 4 auction, the third week of February. This might be tricky, as the roads are of varying quality between Bamako and Banjul, but we are considering it. I am at least.
We have gone though plenty of checkpoints by this time, and have finally been asked for "une cadeau." I offered the soldier some cookies and he shook his head in a mixture of disgust and amazement and waved me through. I wonder how long that approach is going to work!
A word about the rally--it's 99% male. Don't know why this surprises me. There is one other woman I have met--she is actually hitchhiking one group to another. There are supposedly a couple of other women around that perhaps I will meet later but I went to dinner with 10 British men last night. Hmm.
People used to wonder if the world had an edge and you may think it doesn't because it's round but I've got news for you. The end of the world is right here in Western Sahara.
I know this because we've been driving along it for two days.
The road from Sidi Ifni is basically hammada, rocky desert, and more hammada, with occasional bursts of sand dunes, or minor hillocks and then a resigned return to hammada, but flatter and flatter hammada, with smaller and smaller rocks, beaten into giving up trying anything complicated like sand dunes or small rises and eventually the hammada simply takes over and there is nothing but flat featureless stony desert and finally this gives up as well, completely exhausted, and the scenery stops entirely, only to rise again out of its addled dream on the approach to Dakhla, where the last 40 km along the penninsula traverses an astonishing landscape, through enormous sand flats that continue to the vanishing point and solid mountain walls beyond that. The sea, by the time you are racing along the Dakhla penninsula, is turquoise blue, glittering and beckoning. There is no development here, except the small concrete town itself, and the army outposts. A couple of tourism operators offer fishing trips, and there are a few vans of enthusiastic surfers from Europe, but this place sits 500 km south from Laayoune and over 1000 km south from Agadir, the last Moroccan city. And there is not much on that road except the occasional police checkpoint. As if that didn't give Dakhla anough of the end-of-the-world feeling, consider this:
This entire 1000+ km follows the curve of the NW African coast. This is 1000 km of completely wild ocean. There are no ports, no hotels, nothing except the very occasional beach, littered with shipwrecks. The ocean is huge and wild here--it doesn't invite you in to swim, it doesn't look as though one could pass a pleasant day offshore on a catamaran. This ocean you can barely look at. Seriously.
With the exception of the very rare beach, the entire coast is cliffs, jutting straight up from the sea itself. The swells pound directly into the cliffs with a roar and a huge oooof, and every few minutes one rolls in hard enough to shake the continent itself. The Atlantic Ocean pounding Africa.
The coast is uneven, and periodically chunks calve off into the sea, it must be. The cliff can be far from the road or sometimes only 20 feet away. The jagged cliffs are usually carved out from underneath so what looks like solid ground, terra firma, may only be a couple of feet thick. That means it might not even hold your weight, and it certainly won't hold a vehicle. If you, or your vehicle, were to get too close to the edge you would fall into the sea and perish probably within a minute, broken apart and drowned in the cauldren below. There is no beach. There are no sloping cliffs. Just the sea and above it: land. There are no rescue services here--no coast guard, no fire station. There is just the hammada, the stony desert. There is also, weirdly, fog.
This rolls in from the Atlantic, low and heavy, hitting the cliffs and boiling up them, spilling out onto the land like the steam from a witch's cauldron.
So you have this roar and thud and boom of the water, and the earth shaking from the force, and a foggy miasma--cold and gray.
People fish here. To me it's the picture of hell but people do it. They sit on top of the cliff, not getting close to the edge of course, with ultra long fishing poles, and they wait. Tiny hovels perch on this land between the road and the edge of the world, some alone, some in small clusters. They are used by the local Saharawi fishermen I think. Europeans also fish here, men anyway. I saw a few lone men, mostly French, sitting in folding chairs alone on the edge of the world, with a line disappearing into the fog below. I have trouble imagining a more horrifying time that this. And I can imagine well because we stopped in this place to eat lunch. I drove out to the cliffs edge but not too close as it already felt unsafe. There are no guardrails, no warning signs, nothing except a nebulous edge and some fog, and the sun behind it, making the light switch between gray and a hellish, dull yellow, like you get with a forest fire. Even before I had the food laid out, I knew the place was terrifying, and we ate in near silence, listening to the violent wild sea, and feeling the earth tremble with the incoming swells. Even Jonathan, who loves standing on edges of things, held back from this. And so, despite the noise, and the sense of the earth retreating, we could not actually see it. We could look across, to the waves crashing on the opposite side of the crevass, but we could not look over the edge at the water beneath us.
So this is what we drove though, and didn't stop at the cliff's edge again, thinking we'd have a bucolic picnic and a pleasant view. This is the ocean that took so many ships, many of which still litter the beaches. They have all been stripped, of course, long ago, and just stay wherever they have some to rest, in the surf.
We can no longer buy unleaded gas and so today will start using "super." Tomorrow morning we have an early start. We must leave at 6am so as to reach the Mauritanian border and complete the formalities before they close for lunch although this seems to trouble everyone else more than me. I just figure that if they close the border on us, we'll have lunch too! I just bought fresh vegetables and bread. And we have tea.
We have met up with the rest of the rally, finally. We are going to Mali with the Bamako Run. This is actually more challenging than the original race to the Gambia we have been signed up for. And now that we fell so far behind our group, (they have all reached Banjul, donated the cars, and flown home,) we will try to get to Mali. I got us visas for Mali in New York, just in case. After Mail, if we haven't killed each other, we are thinking of driving the volvo back to Gambia, to put it in the group 4 auction, the third week of February. This might be tricky, as the roads are of varying quality between Bamako and Banjul, but we are considering it. I am at least.
We have gone though plenty of checkpoints by this time, and have finally been asked for "une cadeau." I offered the soldier some cookies and he shook his head in a mixture of disgust and amazement and waved me through. I wonder how long that approach is going to work!
A word about the rally--it's 99% male. Don't know why this surprises me. There is one other woman I have met--she is actually hitchhiking one group to another. There are supposedly a couple of other women around that perhaps I will meet later but I went to dinner with 10 British men last night. Hmm.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Western Sahara
We've stopped for a few minutes in Tan-Tan, our first town in the disputed Western Sahara. So far so good, except Jon has none of the important little fiches papers with him. These are basic information: name, passport info, profession, etc. Otherwise you have to fill the whole thing out by hand--labourious in the extreme! We have stopped at an internet cafe for this so I can write a quick blog entry.
It's clear, clean bright and sunny--the landscape is mostly rocky Hammada but we did see some dunes in the distance.
Last night we stayed in Sidi Ifni, but first I want to say that arriving on the coast was extraordinary. The surf was huge! Fierce, enormous, with perfect form, the breakers came rolling in one after the other, smashing into the cliffs below, the roar and spray reaching the clifftops. There is no question of swimming, but this part of the Western Africa coast is loaded with surfers. There are plenty of empty beaches and the surf is utterly amazing. Of course it's still the Sahara, and as I've already seen, everything about the Sahara is huge, like the California Redwoods are huge.
I expect we'll start seeing shipwrecks soon. It's no wonder, if the coast we've seen so far is any indication.
We have seen our first other participants at the side of the road and expect to hook up with more of them this evening.
Time to go and eat!
It's clear, clean bright and sunny--the landscape is mostly rocky Hammada but we did see some dunes in the distance.
Last night we stayed in Sidi Ifni, but first I want to say that arriving on the coast was extraordinary. The surf was huge! Fierce, enormous, with perfect form, the breakers came rolling in one after the other, smashing into the cliffs below, the roar and spray reaching the clifftops. There is no question of swimming, but this part of the Western Africa coast is loaded with surfers. There are plenty of empty beaches and the surf is utterly amazing. Of course it's still the Sahara, and as I've already seen, everything about the Sahara is huge, like the California Redwoods are huge.
I expect we'll start seeing shipwrecks soon. It's no wonder, if the coast we've seen so far is any indication.
We have seen our first other participants at the side of the road and expect to hook up with more of them this evening.
Time to go and eat!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
This Rally
This morning we saw dawn from Tafroute, another charming town in Morocco's south-it's rosy red and rocky, with the usual startling blue sky and friendly people. Argon trees dot the hillsides. Had a nice leisurely days drive from Tata yesterday, over some mean country, low lying rocky hills where cherry trees bravely face the incessant winds and cold. What look like stone scarecrows for evil spirts cover the hills as well.
Before we entered this hardscrabble land, we passed through more of the stunning Saharan vistas--mountains of stone striated with greens, reds, purples; entire landscapes of green rock. Once we came over a hillock only to see what looked almost like a fine grassy fuzz of spring. But it was a blanket of green stone, covering hill after hill.
It would be nice to know geology here. Stegasaurus looking vertabrae top all or part of some of the formations. Some of these mountains look as though they've been pushed over onto their sides, with their veins and ridges running vertical. We found an entire small valley where the stones look like petrified reptile skins, some partly worn away by sand and wind, others sharp as giant emery boards. Some of these stones have pieces of what looks like quartz sticking out of them. Makes you wonder what earth altering catastrophes happened and when.
Looks like we are now a kind of hybrid liason team in the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge. We are so far behind group 3 as to be effectively group 4. But we are way ahead of group 4 and find ourselves dovetailing nicely with group 5 which is actually heading to Bamako, Mali, but following our route as far as Nouakchott. We will be able to caravan across the desert with some of these people, I think. That was my only qualm, being so far behind, this soloing through the Mauritanian desert. But it looks as though we'll be meeting up with others in Layounne or Dakhla. Inshallah!
Before we entered this hardscrabble land, we passed through more of the stunning Saharan vistas--mountains of stone striated with greens, reds, purples; entire landscapes of green rock. Once we came over a hillock only to see what looked almost like a fine grassy fuzz of spring. But it was a blanket of green stone, covering hill after hill.
It would be nice to know geology here. Stegasaurus looking vertabrae top all or part of some of the formations. Some of these mountains look as though they've been pushed over onto their sides, with their veins and ridges running vertical. We found an entire small valley where the stones look like petrified reptile skins, some partly worn away by sand and wind, others sharp as giant emery boards. Some of these stones have pieces of what looks like quartz sticking out of them. Makes you wonder what earth altering catastrophes happened and when.
Looks like we are now a kind of hybrid liason team in the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge. We are so far behind group 3 as to be effectively group 4. But we are way ahead of group 4 and find ourselves dovetailing nicely with group 5 which is actually heading to Bamako, Mali, but following our route as far as Nouakchott. We will be able to caravan across the desert with some of these people, I think. That was my only qualm, being so far behind, this soloing through the Mauritanian desert. But it looks as though we'll be meeting up with others in Layounne or Dakhla. Inshallah!
Friday, January 19, 2007
Sahara
We finally got to the Saharas edge. I don't know what to say about this, nothing could have ever prepared me for it. Doesn't matter how many books you've read or pictures you see; this desert just defies belief, and we're on the merest outskirt. The first word that comes to mind is huge, as in mind boggling, larger than possible, absolutly enormous. Both of us sat silently, mouths agape, for the entire afternoon, only to mutter something, now and then, about stopping here or there, and then walking off into the expanse, only the sound of wind as company.
Huge mountains of stone puncuate the horizon, and indeed, all of the landscape, rising thousands of feet up from the desert floor. Harsh, inhospitable rocky mountains, baking in the sun like a diabolical furnace. Before them we have seen gentle rolling dunes, mile after mile after mile after mile of them, stretching off into the distance, to God only knows where, until, presumably, they roll up against the bases of the rock mountins, so far in the distance as to be unknowable. We have seen a tortured landscape of badlands, red and gold in the setting sun, stretching off into the great distance, almost to infinity. I don't know the name of these type of formations, geographically, but from the top looks similar to a table top mesa, only with giant rivulets taken from it, sucked perhaps by a gigantic prehistoric river, leaving behind something one might expect to see, inches high, in a dry creek bed. Only here in the Sahara, in this enormous landscape, such sand and rock formations jut hundreds of feet above the desert floor.
There is still greenery to be found: the occasional brave Acacia, small clumps of thorny scrub, a small yet vicious bush, bristling with three inch thorns. And then there are the odd rocks. For example, we stopped randomly on the highway. Went off into the desert for just a few minutes, to climb a hillock and look beyond, and there, casually laying on the desert floor, were round stones that looked as though they were once lava. Each stone was about a foot in diameter, and they probably weighed about 50 lbs apiece. There were 2 piles of these. No other stones around. And another couple of areas where these same stones were arranged in what looked like a pattern but it was hard to tell exactly what the pattern was. Could a person possibly have done this? In the US I would expect that yes, someone would have, but here? In the 20 minutes we were stopped, only 1 car went by. It's 150 km between Tata and Foum Z'guid. Most people here in Southern Morocco have other things to do than spend their time arranging rocks in the desert. Besides, rocks are used as markers for things, and one sees small piles of these, smaller, human sized rocks all over.
So who has done this?
They say the Sahara is the home of the djinn, the spirits of the Islamic world, and although I didn't really give it a thought before yesterday, it's easy and obvious to see how. Here, in this huge infernal cauldren, could only be the abode of spirits. The entire landscape looks like a room might if you opened the door and the children who were playing inside, fled in a hurry, and you were looking at the detrius of their games.
To say the Sahara makes me feel insignificant is only the beginnning. I can feel insignificant enough as it is. But to have this huge open maw yawning open and yet not able to venture into it, is shocking. I would like to come back to the Sahara with a four wheel drive, and go into it more than we can do now with our sturdy yet 2 wheel drive Volvo, but I can't harbour any illusions that it's possible to actually do more than scrape a tiny piece of the surface.
Small palmieres dot the crevasses still. These are mostly date growing areas now instead of mixed olive and date palm (Morocco has some of the sweetest, most succulent olive oil I've ever tasted and it's nearly all for local use.) Adobe villages surround the palm groves, adobe and stone.
We have seen camels now, both working and wild ones, and taken a (4x4 recommended) road from Zagora to Foum Z'guid. It took us about 20 hours, as we camped along the way. No moon and the edge of the desert made the stars blanket the night sky with billions of silvery jewels, so that we could even see by starlight. The Milky Way spilled in a huge gush across the sky, and we reminded ourselves that this is our own galaxy, that we live on a remote edge of this...
The quiet is also astronomical, it's a roar. And every waft of breeze is noticed, it could be a breath of God.
We stayed last night in Tata, an army garrison. Despite it's reputation as such, it's proven to be lovely, and has a certain low slung beauty amid the date palms.
Huge mountains of stone puncuate the horizon, and indeed, all of the landscape, rising thousands of feet up from the desert floor. Harsh, inhospitable rocky mountains, baking in the sun like a diabolical furnace. Before them we have seen gentle rolling dunes, mile after mile after mile after mile of them, stretching off into the distance, to God only knows where, until, presumably, they roll up against the bases of the rock mountins, so far in the distance as to be unknowable. We have seen a tortured landscape of badlands, red and gold in the setting sun, stretching off into the great distance, almost to infinity. I don't know the name of these type of formations, geographically, but from the top looks similar to a table top mesa, only with giant rivulets taken from it, sucked perhaps by a gigantic prehistoric river, leaving behind something one might expect to see, inches high, in a dry creek bed. Only here in the Sahara, in this enormous landscape, such sand and rock formations jut hundreds of feet above the desert floor.
There is still greenery to be found: the occasional brave Acacia, small clumps of thorny scrub, a small yet vicious bush, bristling with three inch thorns. And then there are the odd rocks. For example, we stopped randomly on the highway. Went off into the desert for just a few minutes, to climb a hillock and look beyond, and there, casually laying on the desert floor, were round stones that looked as though they were once lava. Each stone was about a foot in diameter, and they probably weighed about 50 lbs apiece. There were 2 piles of these. No other stones around. And another couple of areas where these same stones were arranged in what looked like a pattern but it was hard to tell exactly what the pattern was. Could a person possibly have done this? In the US I would expect that yes, someone would have, but here? In the 20 minutes we were stopped, only 1 car went by. It's 150 km between Tata and Foum Z'guid. Most people here in Southern Morocco have other things to do than spend their time arranging rocks in the desert. Besides, rocks are used as markers for things, and one sees small piles of these, smaller, human sized rocks all over.
So who has done this?
They say the Sahara is the home of the djinn, the spirits of the Islamic world, and although I didn't really give it a thought before yesterday, it's easy and obvious to see how. Here, in this huge infernal cauldren, could only be the abode of spirits. The entire landscape looks like a room might if you opened the door and the children who were playing inside, fled in a hurry, and you were looking at the detrius of their games.
To say the Sahara makes me feel insignificant is only the beginnning. I can feel insignificant enough as it is. But to have this huge open maw yawning open and yet not able to venture into it, is shocking. I would like to come back to the Sahara with a four wheel drive, and go into it more than we can do now with our sturdy yet 2 wheel drive Volvo, but I can't harbour any illusions that it's possible to actually do more than scrape a tiny piece of the surface.
Small palmieres dot the crevasses still. These are mostly date growing areas now instead of mixed olive and date palm (Morocco has some of the sweetest, most succulent olive oil I've ever tasted and it's nearly all for local use.) Adobe villages surround the palm groves, adobe and stone.
We have seen camels now, both working and wild ones, and taken a (4x4 recommended) road from Zagora to Foum Z'guid. It took us about 20 hours, as we camped along the way. No moon and the edge of the desert made the stars blanket the night sky with billions of silvery jewels, so that we could even see by starlight. The Milky Way spilled in a huge gush across the sky, and we reminded ourselves that this is our own galaxy, that we live on a remote edge of this...
The quiet is also astronomical, it's a roar. And every waft of breeze is noticed, it could be a breath of God.
We stayed last night in Tata, an army garrison. Despite it's reputation as such, it's proven to be lovely, and has a certain low slung beauty amid the date palms.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
So Gorges
We left Marrakech some days ago and drove east. Thats not our route to the Gambia but I wanted to have a look at some roses. Morocco is famous for roses, and other oils are distilled here too: verbena, rosemary, cedar and others. Actually, the rose is distilled here for rosewater, for the hydrosol only. There is not much, if any, commercial rose otto production. The rose oil one gets from Morocco is rose absolute, solvent extracted to a concrete and then taken from there to the absolute, removing the waxes and non-aromatic compounds.
Anyway, with the help and hospitality of a new friend, Hassan, whom we met on the road, we actually got to the gate of the royal Rose Maroc extractor facility. Its the wrong season for roses but nevertheless..........
We passed a lovely evening with Hassan, staying at his house in Tinanghir--not sure I spelled that correctly. We met him on the road, as he was completely stunned seeing the California license plates on the Volvo here in the backroads of Morocco.
So we had a couple of days distraction, driving through the Gorges of some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. I can imagine no place more beautiful than this, with the deep azure sky and all the tones of rock and stone, crags and sand, puncuated with palms and olive trees, and the occasional bright green carpet of alfalfa. The scenery is delectable, the people exceptionally friendly, and quite reasonable. The food is delicious.......Maybe we bring a group to Morocco......
Didnt get to the rosemary distiller either--just too much and too last minute I guess. Almost, but not quite there.
Jon is not happy as well--he has some problems and issues and can hardly wait to get to Gambia so he can dump the car and get back to work and Santa Barbara. He is not really enjoying this right now, which is really a pity, as I am so loving Morocco--it would be great to be here with someone who was excited and happy about being here as well. I think he likes Morocco well enough, but doesnt want to be on this trip right now, with me, doing what were doing, driving around. So he will fly back from either Gambia or Senegal, and I dont know what my next move will be.
But I am really happy to have come here--its a country Id love to visit more and in more in depth, especially the Berber areas.
I also love that we are almost in the Sahara. The Sahara is the place Ive wanted to visit for the longest time of anywhere. Even as a little girl I wanted to go to the great desert, with dunes and dancing stars, wind and silence. Even the name took my breath away: Sahara. Its so thrilling I could almost choke. We are almost in it, but not the part with dunes, just the stony, rocky, grim Hammada. Soon. Inshallah.
Anyway, with the help and hospitality of a new friend, Hassan, whom we met on the road, we actually got to the gate of the royal Rose Maroc extractor facility. Its the wrong season for roses but nevertheless..........
We passed a lovely evening with Hassan, staying at his house in Tinanghir--not sure I spelled that correctly. We met him on the road, as he was completely stunned seeing the California license plates on the Volvo here in the backroads of Morocco.
So we had a couple of days distraction, driving through the Gorges of some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. I can imagine no place more beautiful than this, with the deep azure sky and all the tones of rock and stone, crags and sand, puncuated with palms and olive trees, and the occasional bright green carpet of alfalfa. The scenery is delectable, the people exceptionally friendly, and quite reasonable. The food is delicious.......Maybe we bring a group to Morocco......
Didnt get to the rosemary distiller either--just too much and too last minute I guess. Almost, but not quite there.
Jon is not happy as well--he has some problems and issues and can hardly wait to get to Gambia so he can dump the car and get back to work and Santa Barbara. He is not really enjoying this right now, which is really a pity, as I am so loving Morocco--it would be great to be here with someone who was excited and happy about being here as well. I think he likes Morocco well enough, but doesnt want to be on this trip right now, with me, doing what were doing, driving around. So he will fly back from either Gambia or Senegal, and I dont know what my next move will be.
But I am really happy to have come here--its a country Id love to visit more and in more in depth, especially the Berber areas.
I also love that we are almost in the Sahara. The Sahara is the place Ive wanted to visit for the longest time of anywhere. Even as a little girl I wanted to go to the great desert, with dunes and dancing stars, wind and silence. Even the name took my breath away: Sahara. Its so thrilling I could almost choke. We are almost in it, but not the part with dunes, just the stony, rocky, grim Hammada. Soon. Inshallah.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Junk and More Junk
Today we did the sober chores we set out to do yesterday. Apparently it's quite something, this Volvo. Who knew they made cars? Volvo makes trucks! So it has been a bit difficult finding a spare wheel. We ended up in the junkyards out of town, acres and acres of them. Jonathan, despite thinking he knows nothing about cars, spent several hours switching between french, english, spanish and Moroccan arabic, endlessly haggling, explaining that this car is to be auctioned for charity, etc. Meanwhile, the chaos never ends; it only changes. A group of guys jack up the car, but they do it incorrectly, balancing it on a spare wheel, and, predictably, it begins to fall. So they grab it by hand, 5 guys holding up a volvo station wagon while the ringleader helpfully climbs inside and applies the (broken) parking brake.
It seems to have been a complete sucess, however. We have a new spare wheel, and tyre!
We also paid a visit to the last hypermarket for 2000 miles; the last til Senegal I think. We stocked up on foods: olive oil, cheese, salt and pepper, juice, harissa sauce........Fruits and vegetables we can probably find en route.
That was pretty well the entire day. I think we will stay one more day here and then trundle off to the Middle Atlas region. We are not so far behind as we had thought. Everyone seems to be playing the part of the tourist. The rest of our group appears to be nearing the Mauritanian border. I think, even with our veering off to the Valley de Draa, that we'll be okay.
It seems to have been a complete sucess, however. We have a new spare wheel, and tyre!
We also paid a visit to the last hypermarket for 2000 miles; the last til Senegal I think. We stocked up on foods: olive oil, cheese, salt and pepper, juice, harissa sauce........Fruits and vegetables we can probably find en route.
That was pretty well the entire day. I think we will stay one more day here and then trundle off to the Middle Atlas region. We are not so far behind as we had thought. Everyone seems to be playing the part of the tourist. The rest of our group appears to be nearing the Mauritanian border. I think, even with our veering off to the Valley de Draa, that we'll be okay.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Marrakech
So glad I came back to Morocco. The last time I was here, also with Jon, was during the Ramadan that fell as the Americans were blasting the Iraqis for invading Kuwait back in 1991. Morocco was not the most welcoming country. It is now.
After driving through the rest of the farmland, the countryside became stonier and the vegetation sparser the further south we got. Here in Marrakech you can see the snowpeaks of the Atlas Mountains rising behind the city.
This city, like Casablanca, is built not on a grid but on the French "etoile" system, meaning, for me, chaos. I used to be better at directions but somehow have lost this skill.
Happily, although there is a big modern new part of the city, that looks like as if it sprung up from the bowels of Palm Desert (without the wasteful water use,) the old section, the Jameeah El Fnaa, is bigger and more chaotic than ever, with an endless souq, and giant open space, rather like a dozen Washington Square parks with the same kind of frenetic activity, and more. In the evening dozens and dozens of restaurants pulse beneath strings of electric lights as food is frantically shelled out to thousands of hungry diners amid smoke and the yelling of barkers. Small girls armed with mehendi grabbed me as gazed at a menu and before I knew it I had a henna design that will dissolve in a couple of weeks.
We started off the day soberly trying to outfit ourselves for the desert and wound up streaking around the market looking at incense, eating, trying on clothes, and playing with musical instruments. We are completely knackered.
I found some very interesting things from the Middle Atlas area: Indigo, which is absolutely hypnotizing, and some incense called Fasookh, used to take away the power of black magic. This is a secret mix of resins, gums, and I don't know what else. The bakhur wallah kept it hidden in a box below his cart. It was very expensive too, but I still don't know what's in it.
We ate at one of those ridiculous tiny insane places that make you swoon with delight. This was a teeny wee fish sandwich place. Could seat 4 of us in the back but we all had to move when one wanted to. Thank god I still have the enzymes to digest fish! They were some small, filleted creatures, thrown in plenty of crackling hot oil, and then mashed into a half a fresh Moroccan almost flat bread (not pita, nothing like that sad little thing.) Then this very popular, friendly, large man with horn rimmed glasses stuffed eggplant of some delicious sort, and a zucchini mixture, and some tomato garlic sauce thing and whatever else he had, into the sandwich, and we ate stufed into the miniscule back of the stall, whooping with delight, much to the delight and amusement of the line. I hope to one day figure out how to upload my photos here as I can't explain how to get there.
I am slowly getting some French speaking abilities back, which is useful, as nearly every country we will be in is French speaking. But Jon is ridiculous with his language abilities. Forget French, he speaks it just fine, not to mention Spanish, and can't really remember Arabic too well, he claims, but it's moot as he's already speaking Moroccan Arabic, which is entirely different anyway. Here I am the one who spends more time in the Middle East but beyond eating and aromatics I am nearly useless. Jon is already happily swimming in colloquialisms, and I can barely remember how to ask for the toilet!
People have been very nice, absolutely charming in fact. No problems as of yet. I think we'll be here another couple of days since it's taking us so long to our acts together. After Marrakech I want to travel down to Ouzarzate, and then further into the excitingly and a little alarmingly named Hamada du Dra'a. There are roses somewhere in there, including the famous (?) black rose of something.
After driving through the rest of the farmland, the countryside became stonier and the vegetation sparser the further south we got. Here in Marrakech you can see the snowpeaks of the Atlas Mountains rising behind the city.
This city, like Casablanca, is built not on a grid but on the French "etoile" system, meaning, for me, chaos. I used to be better at directions but somehow have lost this skill.
Happily, although there is a big modern new part of the city, that looks like as if it sprung up from the bowels of Palm Desert (without the wasteful water use,) the old section, the Jameeah El Fnaa, is bigger and more chaotic than ever, with an endless souq, and giant open space, rather like a dozen Washington Square parks with the same kind of frenetic activity, and more. In the evening dozens and dozens of restaurants pulse beneath strings of electric lights as food is frantically shelled out to thousands of hungry diners amid smoke and the yelling of barkers. Small girls armed with mehendi grabbed me as gazed at a menu and before I knew it I had a henna design that will dissolve in a couple of weeks.
We started off the day soberly trying to outfit ourselves for the desert and wound up streaking around the market looking at incense, eating, trying on clothes, and playing with musical instruments. We are completely knackered.
I found some very interesting things from the Middle Atlas area: Indigo, which is absolutely hypnotizing, and some incense called Fasookh, used to take away the power of black magic. This is a secret mix of resins, gums, and I don't know what else. The bakhur wallah kept it hidden in a box below his cart. It was very expensive too, but I still don't know what's in it.
We ate at one of those ridiculous tiny insane places that make you swoon with delight. This was a teeny wee fish sandwich place. Could seat 4 of us in the back but we all had to move when one wanted to. Thank god I still have the enzymes to digest fish! They were some small, filleted creatures, thrown in plenty of crackling hot oil, and then mashed into a half a fresh Moroccan almost flat bread (not pita, nothing like that sad little thing.) Then this very popular, friendly, large man with horn rimmed glasses stuffed eggplant of some delicious sort, and a zucchini mixture, and some tomato garlic sauce thing and whatever else he had, into the sandwich, and we ate stufed into the miniscule back of the stall, whooping with delight, much to the delight and amusement of the line. I hope to one day figure out how to upload my photos here as I can't explain how to get there.
I am slowly getting some French speaking abilities back, which is useful, as nearly every country we will be in is French speaking. But Jon is ridiculous with his language abilities. Forget French, he speaks it just fine, not to mention Spanish, and can't really remember Arabic too well, he claims, but it's moot as he's already speaking Moroccan Arabic, which is entirely different anyway. Here I am the one who spends more time in the Middle East but beyond eating and aromatics I am nearly useless. Jon is already happily swimming in colloquialisms, and I can barely remember how to ask for the toilet!
People have been very nice, absolutely charming in fact. No problems as of yet. I think we'll be here another couple of days since it's taking us so long to our acts together. After Marrakech I want to travel down to Ouzarzate, and then further into the excitingly and a little alarmingly named Hamada du Dra'a. There are roses somewhere in there, including the famous (?) black rose of something.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Casablanca
For some reason I had it in my head that Casablanca was smallish and picturesque. In fact, I wondered if there would even be enough facilities here to take care of what we need to do.
I was wrong.
I don't know big this city actually is, but picture New York, without the grid system or skyscrapers, polluted air swirling before you, no street signs, only masses of friendly helpful people, reluctantly ceding inches to the car as you slowly creep through the throng. It's deafening, crowded and chaotic.
It's kind of okay though. The food is excellent and this goes a long way with me. And there's nothing wrong with a little mayhem.
We are here to get Mauritanian visas but have just been told at the consulate that we can come back for them tomorrow. It comes down to this: do we feel lucky?
If we drive to the border and try there, I think we can get the visas on site. I think.
But if we are unsucessful, then it's back here to Casablanca and the extra day a week from now. But I have a feeling we'll be taking our chances. The very pleasant men at the consulate here said there is no way we will get visas at the border. But who knows if it's true? Of course they are going to say that.
Our hotel is located in the middle of the international hotel section--all about glimmer the towers of Hyatt, Sheraton, Meridian. Of course, ours, the Hotel Central (I think,) doesn't even have a bathroom door, only a curtain. And the beds were damp. Very damp.
But the lobby is cozy, and there are some plants outside. The concierge is adorable. What more can one ask? But I think we'll be pressing on to Marrakech today.
On a final note, yesterday I drove all day through Morocco. It was mostly bucolic farmland, small farms, people plowing with their animals-no machinery. Eucalyptus, olives, oaks were the dominant trees. There are quite a few rallies coming through here on their way to the Sahara, mostly in huge, testosterone bulging desert trucks, covered with stickers, and French or Italian license plates. Some of them have signs proclaiming they are on a Raid of Libya and that they are veterens of 2004 Raid Tunisia! These are the kind of vehicles you could probably survive a nuclear war in. Down come tiny ladders from the cab and middle aged European Sahara explorers tumble out, power bars and electrolyte drinks in hand. I hope to get a good photo of our demure little volvo in the middle of a nest of these giants.
The Moroccan police have recently acquired a large and obviously exciting shipment of radar guns. These are being put to enthusiastic use and we have to be intensely vigilent. I already got stopped once, but was too much trouble to deal with, I suppose, as I confusedly gave the wrong papers, and answers, and others sped by, noticing the police already engaged.
I think we probably have the only blue volvo station wagon with California plates in all of Africa.
I was wrong.
I don't know big this city actually is, but picture New York, without the grid system or skyscrapers, polluted air swirling before you, no street signs, only masses of friendly helpful people, reluctantly ceding inches to the car as you slowly creep through the throng. It's deafening, crowded and chaotic.
It's kind of okay though. The food is excellent and this goes a long way with me. And there's nothing wrong with a little mayhem.
We are here to get Mauritanian visas but have just been told at the consulate that we can come back for them tomorrow. It comes down to this: do we feel lucky?
If we drive to the border and try there, I think we can get the visas on site. I think.
But if we are unsucessful, then it's back here to Casablanca and the extra day a week from now. But I have a feeling we'll be taking our chances. The very pleasant men at the consulate here said there is no way we will get visas at the border. But who knows if it's true? Of course they are going to say that.
Our hotel is located in the middle of the international hotel section--all about glimmer the towers of Hyatt, Sheraton, Meridian. Of course, ours, the Hotel Central (I think,) doesn't even have a bathroom door, only a curtain. And the beds were damp. Very damp.
But the lobby is cozy, and there are some plants outside. The concierge is adorable. What more can one ask? But I think we'll be pressing on to Marrakech today.
On a final note, yesterday I drove all day through Morocco. It was mostly bucolic farmland, small farms, people plowing with their animals-no machinery. Eucalyptus, olives, oaks were the dominant trees. There are quite a few rallies coming through here on their way to the Sahara, mostly in huge, testosterone bulging desert trucks, covered with stickers, and French or Italian license plates. Some of them have signs proclaiming they are on a Raid of Libya and that they are veterens of 2004 Raid Tunisia! These are the kind of vehicles you could probably survive a nuclear war in. Down come tiny ladders from the cab and middle aged European Sahara explorers tumble out, power bars and electrolyte drinks in hand. I hope to get a good photo of our demure little volvo in the middle of a nest of these giants.
The Moroccan police have recently acquired a large and obviously exciting shipment of radar guns. These are being put to enthusiastic use and we have to be intensely vigilent. I already got stopped once, but was too much trouble to deal with, I suppose, as I confusedly gave the wrong papers, and answers, and others sped by, noticing the police already engaged.
I think we probably have the only blue volvo station wagon with California plates in all of Africa.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Onward
We finally got going. I flew to London to meet Jonathan and the car--unfortunately also carrying a horrible hacking cough. But we managed to retrieve the car and, astonishingly, to get on board a ferry for France. It's astonishing because, like Jonathan, I had completely failed to take into consideration the European portion of this trip. This challenge is through Europe and Africa, not just Africa. Somehow it completely slipped my mind that the first 3 days were entirely in France and Spain, racing along the peage at mind-numbing speed, not slowly jutting along a forgotten camel track in the warm and dry Sahara, but paying $5-$8 a gallon for gasoline and and watching rain sodden scenery flip by as we sped south.
We are in Tarifa, Spain, at the very bottom of Europe, ferry tickets in hand, and a nice hotel with a big bathtub for me to soak away my sickness. Looking at our Overland Sahara Guide I am again startled to learn about item after item that we don't have, some of which we'll buy tomorrow at the market, like food and water, and some of which we'll hopefully find in Morocco, like sand ladders.....We are getting along okay, a little better than the first few days, when I seem to have been fantastically irritated the entire time. It's easy to fight with Jonathan, at least for me, although apparently he gets along with some people.
We are many many days behind the rest of the Challenge. This may be beneficial, or not, it remains to be seen. We may have to figure out some alternative way through the mined area between Western Sahara and Mauritania--we were supposed to go by convoy. Oh well.
We've spent the last hour sitting here scaring each other with what we don't have and didn't think of but Jonathan swears he camps in the desert all the time, (that would be in the Mojave desert, in California,) and that he can rig things up and tie knots and has plenty of general survival related capabilities. I am less skilled in camp making and navigation, but as a New Yorker I substitute these tactile abilities with excellent "people skills:" persuasion, tenacity and gregariousness. I also have my 5 tenets of Tae Kwon Do to fall back on: Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self Control and Indomitable Spirit. I hope this will be an effective substitute. As for now, it's on to the bar...
No pictures as yet--it´s too complicated to figure out how to get them up.
We are in Tarifa, Spain, at the very bottom of Europe, ferry tickets in hand, and a nice hotel with a big bathtub for me to soak away my sickness. Looking at our Overland Sahara Guide I am again startled to learn about item after item that we don't have, some of which we'll buy tomorrow at the market, like food and water, and some of which we'll hopefully find in Morocco, like sand ladders.....We are getting along okay, a little better than the first few days, when I seem to have been fantastically irritated the entire time. It's easy to fight with Jonathan, at least for me, although apparently he gets along with some people.
We are many many days behind the rest of the Challenge. This may be beneficial, or not, it remains to be seen. We may have to figure out some alternative way through the mined area between Western Sahara and Mauritania--we were supposed to go by convoy. Oh well.
We've spent the last hour sitting here scaring each other with what we don't have and didn't think of but Jonathan swears he camps in the desert all the time, (that would be in the Mojave desert, in California,) and that he can rig things up and tie knots and has plenty of general survival related capabilities. I am less skilled in camp making and navigation, but as a New Yorker I substitute these tactile abilities with excellent "people skills:" persuasion, tenacity and gregariousness. I also have my 5 tenets of Tae Kwon Do to fall back on: Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self Control and Indomitable Spirit. I hope this will be an effective substitute. As for now, it's on to the bar...
No pictures as yet--it´s too complicated to figure out how to get them up.
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