Blog 7 - Thu 10 Sep 09. Casablanca, MOROOCCO

Well - we have finally got our Mauritanian visas, after a bit of a run around.First we headed to Casablanca, where there was supposed to be a Mauritanian Consulate that issued visas.You are supposed to be able to get them at the border, but I have read recently of a few people being refused them at the border - entailing a 3000km round trip back to Casablanca to get one… not really worth the risk.Anyway, it turned out that the Consulate in Casablanca no longer exists, so off to Rabat we went (thankfully only 100 km north).Having eventually found the Embassy, we duly handed over our passports and money to a typically officious little bureaucrat who did little to advertise the advantages of visiting his country of origin, and were told to come back tomorrow.

So off we trotted to find somewhere to stay the night.Clive was a bit tired & said he didn't want to drive more then an hour & I had seen what seemed a nice area just to the north of Rabat (on my very large scale map!)…… 3 hours later and (a very, very hungry) Clive & I were digging Itchy out of a very deep sand bank! Oooops - I was not flavor of the month.It took us over an hour to get poor Itchy out and the use of EVERY piece of recovery kit we have (shovel, sand ladders, winch etc etc)."Good practice" I chirped… you can imagine what reaction that got!So when Itchy was duly unstuck we decided to camp - right there!

Having decided we could afford a lay-in, it started raining at 0700hrs, so a mad rush ensued to pack up & move Itchy completely out of the sand before the rain turned everything into a sticky mess that we were never going to get out of.Out we got (only having to deploy the winch once this time) - breathed a sigh of relief & then looked at ourselves…. hot, sticky and covered in sand from head to toe.Great!At least we had time to get cleaned up before returning to the Embassy, collecting our visas from the now suspiciously chirpy bureaucrat and drove off south into yet more rain. Hey Ho!All good fun & we are still both smiling and, more importantly, talking to each other!

Sat 12 Sep - 100+km north of Essaouira.It's raining…lots!

Writing this blog as we sit in Itchy looking out through steamed up windows (no… not THAT) into the fog & rain!We have decided to stop as the Moroccan driving is bad enough when the road conditions are good, so you can imagine what it is like when the visibility is reduced to 5 yards.We feel like that middle-aged couple who have gone to Scarborough for the day, sitting forlornly in the car looking out at the deserted beach through the driving rain eating fish paste sandwiches! Only we're not eating fish paste sandwiches & we're not forlorn - this is all part of the adventure!We have hit the rainy season in Morocco, which is supposed to last until the end of Sep, but better have it here where the infrastructure is relatively good than further south where the roads start to deteriorate somewhat.What it should mean is that we hit the best time to travel through Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Fasso, Ghana etc… then we get more rain as we hit the Equatorial countries, but you can't really do this trip and avoid all the rain, that's just the nature of the seasons here.

So, at the moment we are planning to head roughly to Essaouira and look for somewhere nice to loiter for a week or so… then off to Mauritania for early Oct.

Later the Same Day....

Now in Essaouira - it's stopped raining & we have found a camp site, so will be mooching around here for a couple of days.

Thanks for all the comments about the 'servicing' (Mum, Nigel & Sheri!) - I had a feeling there might be a couple!!