Wednesday 25th..
A pleasant night at Camping Karla although the wind’s been getting up and the loose bits of the tent were flapping and cracking like loose sails on a windjammer.

We say our farewells to the staff – and it takes some time, given the need to have more tea and a tour of the fossil shop – and get directions to 1. the souk in the village and 2. the start of today’s adventure. We’re off on our first “off road” excursion.

Morocco is well known in some circles for the opportunities it gives for off-road driving on unmade roads or tracks ("pistes"), an activity that attracts a lot of adverse comment back home, and is practically impossible where we live. For those familiar with Chris Scott’s book "Morocco Overland", we’re doing MS11 with the aim of getting to the back of Erg Chebbi (the big sand dunes) for a night out under the stars. Finding the start of the route took a while, as Chris’s description says something like “after the Ziz, turn off left”. Well, as far as we were concerned “the Ziz” was the river we'd followed yesterday and there was only one place where it crossed the road in the area we thought it should. Thirty minutes of faffing about, and Mike set off on a compass heading as we knew pretty much where we needed to go, and there aren’t too many reasons not to just set off in a straight line. There’s nothing in the way and ultimate freedom to choose the direction we go. After a while we realised our mistake. The “Ziz” referred to is a petrol station.

Once we’d connected with the piste we had a great day. The photos don’t do justice to the sense of remoteness that being away from tarmac in this environment can give. The maps are small scale so are not much use for normal car navigation, and the compass, odometer and general “feel” are pretty vital tools. We had a sat nav but this wasn’t playing too well, so we went by the route description in the guidebook and had no difficulties.

With the route, that is. As the day went on it became increasingly windy, so much so that Mike gave up getting out of the truck to take photos as he risked losing the skin off his arms in the windblown sand.

It really wasn’t too much of a problem until later in the afternoon, when we got into a very sandy area running south towards the dunes, our destination. If you’ve ever been on a mountain in winter when the snow blows across the surface and you can’t see your feet, it was like that. A normal day on the Cairngorm Ski area, in other words. This made picking up the track difficult as it was invisible under the “sand mist” a lot of the time. We knew we needed to head roughly south, so Mike watched the compass, I watched the sat nav, and we both watched for obstacles and drop-offs.

Progress wasn’t bad until we had to turn west, into the setting sun. We’d already decided that a night out under these conditions was going to be quite an unpleasant experience – one we didn’t need to have – so we were heading for the road to the north of Merzouga. This was a challenge. A lowering sun and now howling wind and blowing sand made conditions very difficult as we were looking straight into a rose-coloured fog. We ploughed onwards, not relishing the prospect of a night trapped in Daphne’s back end, so to speak. In fact, if we’d paused to make a proper plan we’d have bogged in to the deep soft sand, so momentum and determination got us through..

At one point we had to do some sharp manoeuvring to regain the right direction, and this coincided with a group of three locals on mopeds coming the other way, headlights blazing, which was the only reason we didn't run straight into them. Mutual avoidance having been achieved, they asked us if we wanted a guide because there was still “ beaucoup de piste” still to negotiate. We declined on the basis that we would do no worse on our own than we’d do trying to follow a Motobecane, and there’d be a good chance we’d run them over anyway, given our limited visibility.

We got back to the tarmac just as it got dark. Luckily. Given the terrain and the weather, Mike said that there was no way that he’d try to drive it at night. We retreated to Camping Karla to recuperate, but what a day! Big smiles (and glasses of stuff) all round.

Thursday was a day off. We thought we’d earned it. Apart from catching up on some domestic stuff, like laundry, we spent some time surveying the site for an entry into the Moroccan Camping Guide. We’ll send this off when we get back, but the guys at the site are clearly keen to get their site publicised, so we don’t mind helping them do it. Our reward is a ride to the hotel in the village and a liquid lunch…