31 Oct 2004. Sidi Akhfennir.

In the morning we go with Shiagar and Hassan to the oasis, for breakfast of dates fresh from the tree in a bedouin's tent.

Then we're off down the Atlantic coast, with several stops to point and laugh at the wild landscape, and the fact that we're within sniffing distance of the Sahara. I'm holding Thomas back with my 150-mile-a-day year-long dawdling, but by sundown we're both starving and happy to stop at Sidi Akhfennir, where the hotel's on the beach, the Ricard's on the table and the tagine's in the oven.

A French couple who've left Ivory Coast after 30 years because of the trouble, with only the clothes on their backs and a car, tell us they met the locust swarm not far south of here. It turned the sky black and the road to mashed-insect sludge. Looking forward to that...