Dwti Draig

A view from the driving seat.

(Lyn’s contribution to the blog).

It has taken us nearly 5 weeks to get from home to the desert. We wanted to make the trip down (and back) part of the holiday, but apart from driving on the right as we came off the ferry in Caen, France, there isn’t that much for me to write about, that Lucy’s blog hasn’t covered. 

When we came off the ferry in Morocco, however,  there is lots to mention.  We have now been in Morocco for just over 7 days, tracking mainly south from Tanger Med port to get to the most southernly and easterly point of this trip into Saharan Morocco.

Driving in Morocco has been VERY different; road markings are a mere guide with local traffic having their own rules. Traffic can consist of massive lorries belching stinking black smoke , all shapes and varieties of mini buses and small vans, (doors optional!) kids and old people on bikes, tuk tuks and donkeys. We have seen it all, and everything has passed me at some point though luckily I have managed to stay in front of the donkeys, so far!

We have spent about 90% of our time on the National Route 13 (N13) , a long twisty road running North to South, through the centre of the Morocco. On some of the ultra-new smooth sections of road that are flat, multiple laned and straight, I have had Dwti in top gear with cruise control on and enjoyed ambling along at our top speed of about 50MPH/80KPH, but so much of my time has been spent in much lower gears, as the road surface can disappear in an instance to a narrow, broken and many times repaired heavily cambered mess of holes, bumps and broken verges. This means we can sometime be crawling along at 15MPH getting bounced and shaken, holding on for dear life.

I know Dwti had huge tyres, big leaf springs and a cab that is also on suspension, so we can rock and bounce a bit, but when you sometime hit an section of road  that has you kangarooing and lurching for 100m or so, fun leaves the journey as you just fight and hope to stay on the road. Add the traffic behind you and oncoming, and driving can be quite challenging.

Life is also quite entertaining as inevitably there is traffic that wants to pass me. For long lines of traffic I will pull over and let them through, but a lot of the time a handful of cars will stay behind me until the last one joining decides to overtake everyone from the very back. This then sort of wakes up those closest to me to also over take. We see a lot of people blindly tailgating when overtaking, where there is a blind summit or even close to  corners themselves. This has Lucy and I screaming out loud and me sometime braking to avoid a pile up. To date it all just works and the cars,  vans and the bloody tuk tuks just sail down the road safely. 

A fellow traveller (my wife!) explained to me the Moroccan driving principle that now makes a lot of sense. “It is the responsibility of the person behind you to avoid you”. So at a roundabout, with two lanes of traffic, it is ok to go from inner to outer loop, to pass you and then at an exit to drive off and just stop, with no indication whatsoever. This is safe, as it is my responsibility to not hit you. I have this on video on Lucys blog, its incredible, but it does work. 

I have to mention police checks, at random locations, entries and exits to towns and normally under a tree there will be a group or a solitary police man standing or sitting about. On approach there will be 60/40/20/Stop signs (in Arabic & French). You have to come to stop and wait for the policeman to wave you forward. The said policeman may not be immediately visible, or he may be talking, so wait.  If you don’t, you are fined. Simple as that!

I must have gone through 50 checkpoints already but I religiously have to come down the gear box, with all the associated noises and air sounds and just stop or slowly roll up to the STOP point. Sometimes you may get waved through, we wave back as happy tourists. We have been saluted, waved at, stared at (they think Lucy is driving !!) and on one occasion as the window was open, thanked in English for stopping, but it their decision to wave you through.

Now we are in the south and in the real desert it is time to do some playing with Dwti. Why have all the gear and no idea (or not use it)?  I have ventured into the soft stuff, namely mud last year in Scandinavia getting stuck on Swedish and Estonian beaches,  but here it’s all about sand. On the way down we did venture up in to the High Atlas, camping at 2000m/6500 feet but that was about 30 miles on rough gravel tracks as we climbed higher and higher with only really the last 100m off road.

Our current location, just on the north side of the Erg Chebbi sand dunes, was about 3 miles of hard sandy desert, as we picked our way to the camp site we chose to stay in.  Lets see what we do next …….