Hello! So, it's been a while since I last wrote. We left Chefchaouen about ten days ago and went south. We kept going together with Florian and we've had some little adventures and meet many nice people on the way.
The first night on the road again we tried to find a parking shortly after Fes and drove up a mountain and were going to camp in the woods. While trying to park, an old man in a traditional hoodie dress stopped his car and started motioning for us to turn around and follow him. He didn't speak English and hardly any French so he just used animated hand gestures and made different sound effects to communicate. It was getting pretty dark and the wind was blowing in some heavy rain clouds, so we followed the man and parked right outside of the little village on the mountain. The old man had to go off on an errand, but later he invited us for dinner. He was such a nice man and the food tasted fantastic. When we first saw him on the road he looked like a shepherd, old and grey and with his hoodie over his normal clothes, but he turned out to be quite a wealthy man and he was telling us all sorts of stories with his animated hand gestures and sound effects, it was like playing charades. We even got breakfast the day after. So incredibly nice to just get invited to someone's home like that.
After that we kept going through snowy mountains and desert. We spent a few nights bush camping on the way.
We brought five bikes with us on the roof rack from Germany and we sold them in a little village after passing Midelt. It was pretty funny actually, we stopped the car and looked around, one guy stopped and we asked if he wanted to buy a bike. He wasn't interested, but he called some friends. In a matter of five minutes there were thirty men standing around the car with Tano up on the roof auctioning out the bikes. People were so excited and everybody were shouting and waiving around money. We sold all the bikes pretty quickly and we could then fill up the car with fuel with the money.
We drove on and arrived in a little oasis in the desert called Meski.
Tano new a few people there from his last trip and we had a really nice time there, staying for four nights. They cooked us wonderful tagine in the evenings and we sat around the campfire socialising.
I got sick after a few days there. I don't really know why, maybe I ate something or maybe it was the water, but I threw up in the morning and then slept the whole day with a fever. It was okay though, the next day I was feeling back to normal again.
With me back on my feet we got on the road again. We drove to some nice sand dunes called Erg Chebbi and camped right outside one of the many hotels there. We saw many camels and you could go on a camel ride into the desert and stay a night in the dunes. It felt a little bit too touristic though, so we left the next day.
We drove on and bush camped two nights in the mountainy desert area. We lost Florian on the way, so it was pretty quiet with no people at all. No one inviting us for tea, not even a lonely shepherd with his herd waking past. People are so friendly and helpful here. If you just stop the car for a lunch break someone living close by will invite you for tea. Or if you are lost in a city, suddenly there will be someone driving up next to you with his motorbike asking if you need help.
The night sky in the desert was so majestic out there in the middle of nowhere, there were a million stars and the Milky Way was really clear and visible.
Just before Zagora we met up with Florian again and found a camping in the centre of town. We thought we'd go out for dinner tonight and see what Zagora has to offer.
Bye bye!