🇲🇦 Morocco

Our plan for escaping the cold weather in Europe for this year was to discover Morocco. Living in Germany, this meant a bit of a drive through Belgium, France and Spain. We met some old friends along the way which meant the journey was a bit longer compared to driving straight through. We arrived in La Línea de la Concepción on Monday, 2 February, bought our tickets from “Carlos” (a tradition as we were told) and proceeded to our campsite which was next to Gibraltar. We took the opportunity and visited the rock for a couple of hours. At this point, we had no idea what was about to happen….

On day 2 of our Morocco journey we drove south as far as Tazentout. Since we were really fed up with the bad weather, there was no question that we wanted to get to sunny and warm weather as quickly as possible. It was a bit too far to reach our unofficial first goal Zagora in one day, so we checked the map for acceptable distances and then picked the best campsite we could find on Park4Night. That is how we ended up in Tazentout at Camping L´Escale de Ouarzazate.

Zagora, we finally made it! And, spoiler alert: it held all its promises and fulfilled all our wishes. We arrived and recognised a few things from some YouTube videos of other van-travellers, which was a funny experience! The Main Street was super busy as you would expect, shops, cafes, restaurants, schools, street vendors – and of course garage after garage with lines of campervans, overlanders and motorhomes waiting to get their work done.

Long before we had a van we were following a couple of “van-life” folks on YouTube. Most of them are no longer on our subscribed list, but one particular channel somehow managed to keep our interest for a long time. It is that channel that gave us the initial idea to visit Morocco. We saw in their videos that all kinds of RVs are going to Morocco and reassured us that you don’t need a monstrous overlander truck with massive tires to get anywhere interesting.

As I have alluded to in our last blog, we did an excursion into the “real” Sahara Desert, to Erg Chegaga. No, that is not the name of yet another Star Wars character, but simply means “Dune Chegaga” (actually, erg = “sea of sand”, but I hope you will allow me to call it a dune).

After our excursion into the desert we decided it was time to move on from M’hamid and our beloved campsite. We said our see-you-laters to our new friends and drove off. Our new destination was a place called Foum Zguid.

After sleeping in and enjoying a calm day (the young folks call it “chilling”) at Bou Rbia we made our way further West. We had found a couple of great spots to camp on Park4Night near Tissint. First, however, we needed to fill up on water and used a well next to a Mosque. It’s fantastic that they let you fill up for free!

Tata was one of villages that came highly recommended and it didn’t (fully) disappoint. It is a nice little quaint village and it has a river flowing through the middle of it … when there is water. Which there wasn’t much of.

Icht is another small little village in the south of Morocco. It is known for its ancient town that is partly underground as well as stone carvings that are supposedly dating back quite a bit.

Pretty much everyone we met told us about this fantastic and beautiful drive that we had to do. Really everyone! What is this road you ask? It’s the R107 which is actually a mountain pass. It’s not very long yet everyone also kept telling us to plan a full day for it, because of its beauty. We were intrigued and made sure to fit it into our itinerary.

Tafraout was first recommended to us by Heidi and Peter. For them it was obvious that one would have to stay at Tafraout. We heard about it the first time this very moment. This was quite funny, especially because when you are in Tafraout you understand it is one of the most travelled destinations in Morocco.

Morocco as a first-time traveller can be tricky at times. Not because it’s difficult to travel or constantly throws obstacles in your way — quite the opposite. It’s because the options for what to see next seem endless, and making a decision feels almost impossible. Leaving Tafraout was one of those decisions. In the end, we tossed a coin and headed further west towards Tiznit.

This post was tough to write, because it brings back some vivid memories. But let’s not jump ahead in the story. Then again, it only took 45 minutes to go from yaaay to noooooooo! As you might recall from our last post, we were leaving the wonderful campsite where we had been tucked away under palm trees, enjoying a sunny day after a couple of rainy ones.