Oh what a day! It should have been a three hour drive to what is possibly the best campsite in Morocco. It’s just above Essaouira, and with a pit stop at a supermarket in Safi, plus a lunch stop, the timings looked right.
Started off on the coast road, but soon gave up as the surface was actually worse than Nottingham’s roads.
It took us forever to get across to the motorway though, on tiny roads going through villages, where so many people of all ages were just sitting around – it might be due to Ramadan as lots of places are closed. Plenty of bored kids around too, so they take it upon themselves to run into the road and try to stop any passing motorhomes. At first they smile and wave, and we wave back, but then if you don’t stop, they start shouting and become aggressive. This particular time, a nice shower of stones hit the back of the van. I think it’s standard practice from what I’ve read.
It has to be said that the majority of people do smile and wave and seem genuinely pleased to see you, especially the teenagers.
Finally got to Safi and did a mini shop in the huge Marjane supermarket. I suggested we had lunch there in the carpark, but Guy had found parking on the coast just twenty minutes in the right direction.
Bad decision. As we approached, we were soon completely overwhelmed with the smell of rotten fish as there was some kind of factory on the seafront. Both turning green, we decided to carry on until we found another spot.
Next up, the phosphate chemical works…it went on for miles. White dust everywhere. God knows how people manage to work there but the road was full of workers all waiting for a lift. We could barely breathe!
Then, it turns out that the road is closed. Google maps gave us a detour, but it seemed to actually be turning us into the works themselves. Not wanting to clock on, we went round in circles several times looking for the way out. No photos as we were too busy trying not to inhale.
In the end we decided our only option was to head back to the supermarket, have lunch there and then make our way back out to the motorway, which was a much longer drive but we had no choice.
Another bad decision. The road that we thought was a motorway just wasn’t! The N1 is not the A1 and it was awful. Surface-wise, just enough of a tarmac strip down the middle so that you could say it was paved, but to be honest we had to have two wheels in the rough for most of it! Then the towns. Mostly really grim, dirty places with people lying about in the gutter. Dogs everywhere. Goats, sheep, shepherds. Kids weaving in and out on motorbikes for the thrill of it.
So many donkeys and carts too ..if you took away the motorised stuff the scene would be completely biblical. Or, should I say Koranical?
Somehow we got through it all, counting down the kilometres as we went.
The last hurdle was going to be the last 1.8km of sand road that leads to the campsite which is completely in the middle of nowhere. My worry was that although we’d emailed ahead, at 6pm they might have let our pitch go, but it was fine. There were several pitches still available and the place is as lovely as we remembered.
Good job really as rain is forecast and we might not be able to get out until next week! 🤣
