After my off-road adventure near Toudra and Dades, I swore to myself: never off-road again! I did not want to wreck the bike right at the start of my trip. By the very next day, however, this resolution had proved impossible to keep. I chose the route from Ouarzazate to Taznakht. The alternative would have been a 200-kilometre detour. Encouraged by my Russian biker friend Alex, I took this road. The famous Fint oasis was supposed to be along the way, a location used in various Hollywood productions. The road was actually fine. So I rode along quite happily at 80 km/h, admiring the scenery. I felt that off-road riding was making amends. My happiness was briefly interrupted when I tried to turn off towards Fint. The access road needed rather more than a little repair, and after a few metres I was stuck in the sand. Thanks to the oasis guard (no idea what his duties involve: counting the palm trees every morning? Making sure nobody steals the oasis?), I managed to get free, took a souvenir photo and disappeared back onto the good road.
There is plenty to say about Morocco’s roads. They have everything you could wish for and everything you hate: from freshly laid tarmac in excellent condition, through old roads full of holes, to ‘theoretically passable’ routes along dry riverbeds that do not even deserve to be called tracks. Or so I thought while I was still travelling in Morocco. I am writing these lines in Mauritania, and my opinion has just changed completely: Morocco’s roads are excellent! It is all a matter of perspective… But let me start at the beginning.
One striking feature of travelling through Morocco in your own vehicle is the sheer number of police checkpoints. In the interior I was always waved through. That changed as I headed south. The intensive checks begin shortly before the border between Morocco and Western Sahara (which does not actually exist on the ground). The first two were not really serious checks at all. One policeman stopped me because he was bored and wanted to show that he spoke Swedish. His colleague was quite impressed to discover this too. The second stopped me simply because he saw the motorcycle and was a BMW fan himself. We spent a few minutes discussing the latest BMW models. He knew his stuff! Neither officer wanted to see my documents, though.
The procedures were a little different the next day. I was already curious about what the police would ask me. I finally reached Western Sahara, and from then on the checkpoints were actually there to check things. In most cases I had to show my passport, explain my occupation, state my nationality and provide assorted other details: where I had entered Morocco, the make and model of my motorcycle, where I had stayed and where I was going next. By the tenth time, I could say all this fluently in French. Another two weeks in Morocco and I would surely have been able to do it in Arabic too. Even so, every check was slightly different. There were stern-looking officers and very laid-back ones. Some were delighted to meet someone from Germany; others were annoyed that they could not converse with me in French. Policemen gave me grapes and biscuits. One even apologised for stopping me. Although I lost time, I found these breaks a welcome change from the flat, rather monotonous desert scenery. I really have to say that every policeman behaved properly, and some were very nice as well. Whether they also asked me something nasty or cheeky in French, such as ‘Can I have your sister’s phone number?’, I cannot judge. The checkpoint language course had not got that far yet.
Alongside the police, there were plenty of army bases to be seen in Western Sahara. Understandable, given the unresolved conflict. Spain withdrew as the colonial power in 1976. Today Morocco controls most of the territory, while the Sahrawi independence movement, the Frente Polisario, controls a smaller area in the east. A ceasefire has been in place since 1991. A UN-proposed referendum on independence or integration with Morocco has still not taken place. The parties could not even agree on who should be allowed to vote.
Meanwhile, facts are being established on the ground in the occupied territory. Morocco is investing heavily in infrastructure, building wind farms and actively encouraging settlement. You look in vain for any indication that you are in a territory with a special status. Along the road I kept seeing enormous Moroccan flags, and in public buildings and hotels, equally enormous portraits of the king.
My account of the last few days in southern Morocco, or Western Sahara, would not be complete without a few words about the towns that welcomed me and their rather peculiar hotels. The first was Boujdour. I read a short review of the Hotel Jawhara on iOverlander and was pleased with the low price: 100 dirhams, about ten euros. A biker also mentioned that there was somewhere secure to put the bike.
And indeed there was: my motorcycle was given a parking spot on a red carpet in the hotel’s disused restaurant! What luxury! Just imagine how wonderful my room must be, I thought.
At first glance the room was not especially beautiful, more on the modest side: two single beds, no window, but a wardrobe, a cabinet and, very importantly, a private bathroom with a shower! The hotel owner showed me everything and quickly repaired the shower while I was there: he screwed the shower head back onto the hose and gave an embarrassed smile. Then he wished me a pleasant stay and disappeared.
Normally, after a long day, you would lie down and spend at least an hour recovering from the ride. But the shower would not leave me alone. Why had the shower head been lying beside the hose? The guest before me had probably decided that no shower head was better than a broken one. I tested the contraption myself. A proper jet of water came at me! The shower head flew out of its holder and I got wet. Right, I thought, dear hotel owner, you certainly did that on purpose. You reckoned I would put up with it like the previous guest and shower with the hose in my hand. I admit I considered that option too, but rejected it. I will get you moving, you lazy bastard, I thought, and went to reception. I did not have to spend long explaining the problem. The man immediately picked up four other room keys, and off we went in search of spare parts for my shower. We found a new shower head in one room and a washer in another. Put together in my bathroom, they produced a shower that actually worked perfectly.
Flushed with success and my own assertiveness, I decided to inspect the room more closely. The absence of a television had never bothered me, so that was not worth mentioning. The cabinet, with only a quarter of its glass door left, was fine too. The tap’s painfully slow drip was more of a problem. To get your toothbrush wet, you had to hold it underneath for about two minutes. But hey, I now had a wonderful shower that worked really well!
Back in the bedroom, I wanted to inspect the wardrobe too. Its construction was rather unusual. It had apparently been built at the same time as the room. Later, you simply fitted wardrobe doors to it, and that was that.
Suspecting nothing, I opened the wardrobe door. I froze. There was a giant cockroach on the top shelf! It was so big! At least as long as my middle finger. It was moving its antennae, which were as long as its body. Our eyes met. Shit! I thought. This already qualified as a medium-sized pet, and I had just disturbed it in its home. The home was properly furnished too. Little black balls lay everywhere, their purpose and function not immediately clear to me. Most likely these were the offspring to come, because I could see another monster cockroach in the corner. A couple! I had never seen anything like it. I had to give them names! Kevin and Chantal seemed appropriate. Chantal did not move; Kevin appeared more curious. He plucked up all his courage and came towards me. I flinched! Was he angry with me now? Better leave them in peace. I took a few more photos to upload to the app, so that other prospective guests would not miss out. Then I closed the door. A crunch in the gap between the wardrobe and the door suggested that Chantal had moved after all, and had chosen her new position very badly. Kevin became a widower. And I spent the night in my own sleeping bag.
After that experience I was determined to spend the next night in my own tent on a campsite. Unfortunately, that did not work out. I rode into the centre of Dakhla and found another hotel. Once again, secure parking for the motorcycle was my deciding factor. At least that was one less thing to worry about. The room would work out somehow. Just keep your buttocks clenched in the shower and nothing will happen. This hotel was expensive, though. Would that be reflected in the standard of accommodation? The owner wanted 200 dirhams, about twenty euros. The friendly woman at reception would probably have been willing to help me out, but she was not allowed to. The boss arrived. I asked whether I could stay for 150 dirhams. He said he had already offered me a special price. Normally the room cost 300 dirhams. We negotiated back and forth for a while, and thanks to my negotiating tactics I was eventually allowed to pay the original 200 dirhams. Compared with the hotel in Boujdour, though, the room was worth it. Twice the price, but cockroaches half the size. I also had a window, and outside it a mosque with a minaret! Cool, I thought. No need to set an alarm!
I went for a walk around town that same day. Dakhla is well known among kitesurfers! But the beautiful lagoon lies miles outside town and has its own hotels and campsites. To put it diplomatically, the town centre is almost certainly not a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage status. It is undoubtedly functional, with all kinds of shops, restaurants and (quite seriously now) a really excellent vegetable and fish market. Otherwise, the town unfortunately has very few architectural highlights to offer and little to impress anyone in the way of sophisticated park design. Nice to have been once. I will come back in twenty years, I promised myself.
The next morning I wanted to pick up a postcard and a stamp quickly. My first spontaneous thought: the post office must have them. How wrong I was. I rode over and parked the bike outside. I smiled at a soldier and asked him in my head whether he could keep an eye on it for a moment. He smiled back! All right, the bike was safe.
The people at the post office did help me. After a discussion lasting about ten minutes, I managed to explain what I wanted. An employee came outside with me and pointed to a stationery shop about a hundred metres away, where I could supposedly get everything I needed. I walked over (still thinking of the good soldier watching my bike) and went inside. They did indeed sell stamps! Unfortunately, nobody knew how much postage I needed. So I simply took two, worth eight dirhams altogether. There were no postcards.
Back to the post office, then. It turned out I needed a nine-dirham stamp for Europe. Now the post office was forced to open its stamp vaults to sell me the right one! One task done. But where could I get a postcard? And, with all due respect, what on earth would a postcard of this town show? Apart from the mosque and the fish market, nothing seemed worthy of appearing on a postcard, especially one destined for abroad. Another postal worker took pity on me and showed me on Google Maps where there was another post office.
So I rode there. I was not going to give up that easily. On arrival, the whole story started again. No postcards.
I was close to despair when a group of soldiers arrived right beside me. With that much authority, surely they could help. And one of them had a gold star on his shoulder! So I approached the group and addressed the general directly. I explained my exceptionally important concern. He took me by the arm and we went back into the post office. Despite his thoroughly general-like presence, he was unfortunately unable to make postcards appear out of thin air. Then he phoned around a few people. No luck there either… He apologised, shook my hand, rounded up his troops and drove away. I finally gave up. I still have the stamps.
Before crossing into Mauritania, I stopped for one last night at another hotel about 80 km from the border. It was OK: a working shower, medium-sized cockroaches and electricity to charge my gadgets.
I went to bed, but with the same uneasy feeling in my stomach as two weeks earlier in Spain: another Moroccan border where I could lose my drone. I got up again and repacked everything. I hid the flying machine inside the rolled-up tent. Perhaps it would work as it had on the way in? Hope dies last.