Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / A Morocco Masterclass with Amazing Overland Founder Mark White

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A Morocco Masterclass with Amazing Overland Founder Mark White · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Ashley Jordano, and today I'm sitting down with Mark White,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: founder of Amazir Overland. Mark is an expert on all
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: things overlanding Morocco, and we're sitting down today for a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: masterclass full of tips on overlanding Morocco, including geography, the language,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: how to get to Morocco from Europe, temporary vehicle import permits, culture,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: what to do during Ramadan, and Mark shares his favorite
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: campsites throughout the country. Thanks for joining, and we're recording
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: this podcast from the field in Zagora, Morocco. And I'm
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: here today with Mark White. He is an overland expert.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Dare I say on Morocco. So welcome to the podcast.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Mark, thank you, thanks for having me take pots.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, tell me a little bit about your
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: background because you wear many hats.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, I do. So I start writing back at
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: the beginning. I started coming to Morocco with a group
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: of old friends twenty to twenty five years ago now,
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: and the early days we'd fly in, rent an apartment,
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: rent a car, explore the country, do all the main
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: tourist sites. And I always said to people when we
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: were driving and we saw those dirt tracks going over
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: the mountains. One day, I'm going to buy a suitable
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: vehicle and go and see where that track goes. So
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: twenty eleven got made redundant, so bought my first land Cruiser,
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: came out to do a trip, and the idea was
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: to do one trip and then sell the car when
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I got back home and go back to a normal life.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: But I kind of got hooked. So from then on
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  Speaker 3: I was coming back every year as I had been
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: for a period of time, flying in and doing the
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: normal tourist stuff, just on an annual holiday three weeks
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: each time, exploring more and more for remote parts of
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: the country, getting further away from the tourist trail and
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: the guide books each time we came back. Twenty to
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: fifteen I ran a trip for the UK land Cruiser
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  Speaker 3: Club and we had eight cars come, big group of people.
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  Speaker 3: Interesting trip, and then started to think a bit more
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: about doing more and more overlanding and spending more time.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Twenty twenty seventeen I left my job in civil engineering,
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: decided that I didn't really want to go back to
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: it and wanted to do something different, but didn't know
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: what I was due to come out for three weeks holiday,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: decided to come out for three months, came out, had
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of fun. The following year, got approached by
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: a couple of guys from the land Cruiser Club.
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  Speaker 2: Trip to do a running.
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  Speaker 3: Route all the way down through the western Sahara to
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: the Tropic of Cancer and back again. So he came
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: back out again and another year of enjoying myself and
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: spending money which I had saved up over the years,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: which soon started to run out, leaving me with an
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: option of trying to find a new way to generate
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: an income and keep the wheels rolling. So I decided
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: to set up an overland tour company specializing in Morocco,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: which we called Amazeir Overland, which ties into the name.
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  Speaker 3: The indigenous people of North Africa give themselves the Amazear,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: which means three people. So I felt that was quite
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  Speaker 3: a good tie in with overlanding and connected me to
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  Speaker 3: the region I was looking at specializing in. It was
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  Speaker 3: a bit of a slow start, as a lot of
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: new businesses are. You'll try to break into a market
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: which is established, nobody knows who you are, so the
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  Speaker 3: first couple of years were quite slow nineteen or twenty seventeen,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I helped Chris got update the latest edition or the
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  Speaker 3: current edition of the Morocco Overland guide Book, did some
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: of the root research, and then twenty nineteen Chris got
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  Speaker 3: in touch with me about running as a support vehicle
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  Speaker 3: for a trip he's written about in the Journal Down
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: into the Western Sahara twenty twenty, infamous year we all
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: know so well. I arrived in Morocco beginning of March
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: with a set of customers booked in. Came in with
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: some customers, and four days after we arrived in Morocco
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  Speaker 3: they closed the board as COVID took its grip on
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  Speaker 3: the world.
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  Speaker 2: I ended up trapped.
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  Speaker 3: In Morocco for four months, had the most fantastic lockdown
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  Speaker 3: I think anybody had during those times, and then had
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  Speaker 3: a two year delay to getting back here while Morocco
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  Speaker 3: considered its react response to COVID and reopening the borders
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: of the various political issues, which meant some of the
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  Speaker 3: ferries didn't run for a long time. And since since
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: things started back up to normal again, I've been back
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  Speaker 3: back into running trips in Morocco over the last eighteen
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  Speaker 3: months now and just at the start of spring season
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  Speaker 3: for twenty twenty four.
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  Speaker 4: Awesome. So in addition to your tour.
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  Speaker 1: Business, oh yeah, another admin responsibility.
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  Speaker 3: So it doesn't just stop with running tours and showing
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  Speaker 3: people around the country. I do a lot of voluntary
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  Speaker 3: work helping run several Facebook groups for West Africa, Morocco,
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  Speaker 3: North Africa. I've got one for the new Land Cruiser
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  Speaker 3: two fifty and then we also run a SOS Overland
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  Speaker 3: group for Morocco and for Western Sahara, aiming to help
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  Speaker 3: people out who get into difficulty, maybe need recovery or
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: mechanical assistance. So it's a volunteer network trying to help
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  Speaker 3: things that keeps me busy in between running tours. When
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: we came out September twenty twenty two, the self and
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  Speaker 3: good friend of mine, Pete, who lives in Morocco with
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  Speaker 3: his Moroccan wife, we got chatting and we decided we
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  Speaker 3: were going to start organizing an overlanding event in Morocco,
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  Speaker 3: just as a bit of fun initially and trying to
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: do something for the community while they were here in Morocco.
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  Speaker 3: And after some conversations over a couple of beers.
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  Speaker 2: We developed and rolled out pizzas on the piece, which
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  Speaker 2: is as far as I know, it's a unique event
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  Speaker 2: in overlanding events.
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  Speaker 3: The concept is part social gathering, part tresure hunt, and
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  Speaker 3: with the added advantage that we're making pizzas in the
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: middle of nowhere. So we advertise the date. We do
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  Speaker 3: it mid October each year, and we try. We decided
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  Speaker 3: on that date because it's a good time for people
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  Speaker 3: starting a West coast overland trip, so people are starting
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  Speaker 3: to head their way south at that time, so we
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  Speaker 3: can pick up people justin Morocco on holiday, we can
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  Speaker 3: pick up people who are just starting a longer term
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  Speaker 3: Africa trip. The first event was a great success and
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  Speaker 3: a lot of the people who came were just starting
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  Speaker 3: West Africa trips. They met others who were going to
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  Speaker 3: be on the same route, and a lot of them
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  Speaker 3: stayed in touch and made good friendships through that event.
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  Speaker 3: The concept is we publish in advance the date for
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  Speaker 3: a rough location in Morocco, and we give people a
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  Speaker 3: few locations within maybe a four hour drive of the
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  Speaker 3: actual location. We take orders for pizzas in advance, and
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  Speaker 3: then twenty four hours before the start of event, we
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  Speaker 3: published GPS coordinates and people have to come and find us,
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  Speaker 3: and not everybody does unfortunately, and we do sometimes wonder
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  Speaker 3: if you're planning a six month to a year overlanding
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  Speaker 3: trip and you can't find a GPS coord ordinate, maybe
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  Speaker 3: you need to do some more more learning on navigation systems.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a perfect opportunity yea navigation.
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  Speaker 3: Last year we ran our second event, which was as
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  Speaker 3: well received as the earlier one. Thirty odd pizzas cooked
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  Speaker 3: in the middle of the Sahara. We had twenty or
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  Speaker 3: something overland vehicles, everything from a kir Picanto higher car
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  Speaker 3: up to a full four x four expedition truck found
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  Speaker 3: where we were and everybody sat down and had a
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  Speaker 3: laugh and we cooked pizzas and took photos and swap
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  Speaker 3: stories of adventures. And it's a great event. And the
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  Speaker 3: next one will be the nineteenth of October this year.
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  Speaker 1: Perfect so people can get an opportunity if they're like
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  Speaker 1: you said, if they're down for a two week vacation,
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  Speaker 1: or if they're heading further into West Africa or even
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: as far as Cape Town. That's a perfect way to
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  Speaker 1: be in person, connecting with other people in the community
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  Speaker 1: that you might actually be running into multiple times.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it makes a big difference whether you know.
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  Speaker 1: When you're in person like that, it's a whole different
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  Speaker 1: feeling than on social media or in a Facebook group.
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  Speaker 3: I think you get a much better feel for people
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  Speaker 3: and you form better friendships talking to people in person.
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  Speaker 3: And it's such a great fun event. It's really good
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  Speaker 3: fun to put on, and we're very grateful for everybody
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  Speaker 3: who comes along and makes it a success, because without
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  Speaker 3: the people who attend, the event is just being Pete
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  Speaker 3: sat in the desert with a pile of some ingredients,
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  Speaker 3: and that soon gets boring.
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  Speaker 1: So tell me, you're doing these trips, you're managing these
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  Speaker 1: Facebook groups, you're doing the pizzas on the peast? What
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  Speaker 1: brings you back to Morocco over and over and over again,
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  Speaker 1: Because you're talking to me.
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  Speaker 4: Earlier about how.
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  Speaker 1: All of your overland experience almost is in Morocco and
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  Speaker 1: you just keep coming back, And so that's why you're
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  Speaker 1: so specialist when I think is so unique in one
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  Speaker 1: area like that, what brings you back every time?
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  Speaker 2: It's just, oh, there's so many things about Morocco.
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  Speaker 3: It's a country of huge contrasts. And as you drive,
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  Speaker 3: as you arrive from Europe into the north of Morocco.
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  Speaker 3: You're in a very Mediterranean landscape, lots of greenery, lots
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  Speaker 3: of farming, quite an affluent but every half a day
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  Speaker 3: driving in Morocco, the landscape changes and it's completely different
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  Speaker 3: to the one you were in the day before, so
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  Speaker 3: that the landscape is just breathtaking.
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  Speaker 2: The mountain ranges.
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  Speaker 3: We've got five different mountain ranges here, all of which
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  Speaker 3: are unique in what they look like, the altitude, the
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  Speaker 3: plant life, for the animal life. The climate is fantastic,
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: particularly compared to the average UK weather. Being able to
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: spend on a good year, I get through to March,
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  Speaker 3: from March through to December with sitting outside and enjoying
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  Speaker 3: outdoor life, nice temperatures, blue skies. The people of Morocco
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  Speaker 3: are just some of the most welcoming people I've ever met.
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  Speaker 3: And you'll get stopped in the middle of nowhere, invited
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  Speaker 3: in for a mint tea with some Berbers or some nomads.
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  Speaker 3: You'll get invited for go and have a meal with
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  Speaker 3: people and there they're just fantastic. And I've never experienced
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  Speaker 3: hospitality like the Moroccans do.
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  Speaker 2: And it's a say, it's just a country which clicked
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  Speaker 2: with me.
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  Speaker 3: On those early trips, and a lot you see a
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  Speaker 3: lot of people. They come to Morocco, they do a
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  Speaker 3: traditional two week holiday to Morocco, or they come on
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  Speaker 3: an overlanding trip and they do a few weeks in Morocco,
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  Speaker 3: they go home. So we've done Morocco, we've seen everything. Well,
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  Speaker 3: after twenty five years, I still haven't seen everything. I'm
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: still finding new things to discover, new areas. I haven't
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  Speaker 3: been through new tracks to explore unexpected things out out
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  Speaker 3: in the middle of nowhere, old old foreign legion forts
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  Speaker 3: and prehistoric rock carvings of this. All this history is
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  Speaker 3: so accessible and it makes a day out on the
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  Speaker 3: track so much more enjoyable when you come around a
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  Speaker 3: corner as a fort or something you didn't expect to
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: be there, and I suppose.
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  Speaker 2: It makes you feel a bit like a real explorer.
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  Speaker 3: From days gone by when we didn't know much about
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  Speaker 3: the rest of the world.
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  Speaker 2: And it's yeah, it's just such a fascinating country. I
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: go every down again.
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  Speaker 3: I have conversations with people like we did yesterday about
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  Speaker 3: other parts of the world. And most of my bucket
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: list places to visit are North Africa. I don't have
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  Speaker 3: a big desire to do the west coast of Africa
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  Speaker 3: or the east coast, but Algeria, Mauritania. Marley, there's something
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  Speaker 3: that I guess I've fallen in love with deserts on
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  Speaker 3: a huge level and there's just so much to explore.
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  Speaker 1: True, and like you were saying, the landscape is so different,
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  Speaker 1: the scenery is so different. Can you give a bit
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: of a breakdown on the geography of Morocco, because there's
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: like the high Atlas Anti Nor from.
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  Speaker 3: A start at the top and work our way down,
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  Speaker 3: all right, So Morocco, it's what twenty kilometers from Europe.
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  Speaker 3: It's it's it's very close to the southern tip of
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  Speaker 3: Spain and Gibraltar. It's got a Mediterranean coast and an
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Atlantic coast. The Mediterranean coast for landscape is very similar
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: to what you would see in Spain and southern France, Italy, Greece,
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  Speaker 3: et cetera, but with an Islamic twist to it. Just
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: inland on the north coast of Morocco, you've got the
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  Speaker 3: Riff Mountains, quite heavily populated, lot of cultivation.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I was really surprised when we came in. How like
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: you said earlier, how green it is, and how fertile
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  Speaker 1: the landscape is, and the that they get up there.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it's a part of the country which
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: is better to explore in the summer months when the
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: south is much hotter. It's got some interesting history along
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: with Riff. The local tribes and the Riff have been
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: notoriously difficult for the Moroccan government to control for centuries,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: and that has its own own unique twists and interests.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: And as you move down south through the middle of Morocco,
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: you come down past Mechnaes and fs Fez, home of
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: one of the oldest medinas in the world, with the tanneries,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: which are interesting to visit if you can deal with
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: the smell. And then you get into the Middle Atlas Mountains,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: which kind of run north south between the Riff Mountains
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and the High Atlas, home to big cedar forests, green
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  Speaker 3: rolling mountainside we've got wild barbary macaques in the mountains.
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  Speaker 3: There are wild boar and again a very different landscape
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: to the Riff Mountains, not quite so heavily populated, less farming,
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  Speaker 3: arable farming, and more sheep farming, herds of sheep and grazing,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: some forestry going on, and they split the country down
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  Speaker 3: the middle to the west. The landscape, it's quite a
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: flat area of Morocco very again, lots of agriculture, quite
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: an affluent part of the country. All the way out
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: of the coast around Casablanca El Jadida, that area not
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: such a good area for bits of.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Interest and overlanding.
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  Speaker 3: In my opinion, it's not quite as exciting as the
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: rest of the country. East of the Middle Atlas Mountains,
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  Speaker 3: you've got the Recon Plateau and Morocco's empty quarter. Very
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: sparsely populated, but an interesting area to explore because it's
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: not visited by tourists. And over the years I've becoming
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Tourist numbers in Morocco have increased dramatically, helped by easy
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: Jet and Ryanair of the budget airlines coming here. But
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: the east of Morocco is still very rarely visited by
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: tourists and there's not much of a way of tourist infrastructure,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: so people don't go. So it's like being in Morocco
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: twenty years ago, a much more genuine, unspoilt part of Morocco,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: and it's an area which has tucked away away from
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: the towns and the cities out in the middle of
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: nowhere some fascinating historical items from.
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  Speaker 2: The early part of century.
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  Speaker 3: So as the French came into Morocco to establish for
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: protectorate in the early nineteen hundreds, they came in from Algeria,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: so a lot of their initial footprint on Morocco was
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: on the far east side. So there's a whole string
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: of old Foreign Legion forts out there. There's the remains
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: of the old Transahara railway, which the French were trying
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: to build from the Mediterranean coast down to Timbuktu and
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: beyond in an attempt to take away trade from the
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: camel caravans coming across. And there's this old colonial, abandoned
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: railway system out there in the middle of the desert,
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: easily accessible by vehicle. Fascinating places to explore. There's the
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: sites of epic Foreign Legion battles where a small unit
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five Foreign Legion soldiers fought offer a
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: cavalry army of four thousand Berber warriors. There's a lot
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: out there to hunt down and look for.
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  Speaker 1: It did feel like we were out there a few
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, and there's so many tracks and it just
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: felt like you could go down so many different tracks
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and explore. And we saw I think one vehicle on
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: those tracks the entire time we were there, maybe one
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: or two, and a lot of more motorcyclists, but still
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't heavily traveled by tourists Verlanders in
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that area.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a part of part of Morocco. More people
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: should explore, and it's got so much for Overlanders to
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: look at and enjoy out there and discover. And it's
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: very easy to sit down and give publish a list
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: of GPS coordinates for all these interesting things. But again,
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: I think there's a much greater sense of satisfaction stumbling
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: across some of those things yourself. We've been given a
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: little bit of a hint or a pointer, go and
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: have a look here, there's something which will interest you.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: It's especially for the first visit.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I feel like you have your first visit, you get
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: your bearings a little bit, and then you have so
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: much more confidence the next time to be like, let's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: go off of this road and do more exploring and
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: drive around and see what we can find.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: And I think a lot of a lot of Overlanders
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: who from Europe particularly.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Who come out to Morocco. A lot of them are
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: on a.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Short two week holiday and they're trying to tick the big,
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: the big, high profile items off on their trips, so
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: they don't They don't often have the time on their
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: trips to think that track looks interesting, let's go and
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: see where it goes, because it doesn't fit. They need
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: to get to that next item on the list of
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: things we must see while in Morocco, and I think
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: that's a shame for a lot of people.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: I suppose my.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Experience of moving from a sort of normal tourist into
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: an overlander in Morocco was that I'd done most of
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: the tourist stuff before I so when I was coming
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: in the early days in the land Cruiser, all my
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: interest was spending as much time off the ashvelt as
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: possible and doing as much exploring as possible. And then
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: in later years, as I was spending six months a
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: year in Morocco, I had a lot more time to
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: explore and go down tracks which weren't on a map, so.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know where it goes.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it's a dead end valley with
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: a little village at the end, or it's an epic
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: mountain pass crossing the whole Atlas, and that's having the
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: time to do that just coming back.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Highly accessible to a lot of Europeans, obviously because we've
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: seen so many here. Because I think of it almost
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: like similar to Baja to North America. You're seeing like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of snowbirds come down. It's the closest far
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: away place. You know, once you cross the board, it
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: feels completely different. So being pretty highly accessible means that
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: you can keep coming back and maybe taking a little
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: chunk of our little region and really honing in on it.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But speaking of which, we were talking about the
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: big highlights.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: The big highlights.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: We've come down to the middle of the country with
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: the Riff Mountains for Middle Atlas, for Wreckham Plateau, and
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: as you're working your way south, you get about halfway
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: through the Middle Atlas Mountains, where you get down to
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: maybe an hour's drive north of Marrakesh, and then you
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: start to save a high Atlas looming on the horizon
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: in front of me. Depending on the time of the year,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: there'll still be snow on the mountains, and that's when
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: the sense of adventure really starts to kick it.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I think the.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: North of the country there's a lot of great stuff,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: but for me it's the high Atless Mountains and south,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: which is where the really top overlanding is in Morocco.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And the high Atless Mountains.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: Run from the Atlantic coast, hit the Atlantic coast between
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Essawira and Agadeir, and they run all the way across
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: to Rishidia Midelt on the east end. The tallest mountain
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: range in North Africa. I think Mount two calls over
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: four thousand meters. I forget that. There's some stunning driving.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: You can spend a week above two and a half
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: thousand meters on tiny, narrow mountain tracks, valleys lined with
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: small traditional Berber villages. My recommendation for the High Atlas
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: is come and see it in the spring Arch April time.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: There's still the snow on the peaks of the mountains,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: but all the wildflowers and the alma and blossom are
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: coming out. Everything's green and lush and vibrant. It's just
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: a spectacular time of year to spend time in the mountains.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Highest drivable point in the mountains three thousand, seven hundred
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: meters submit of Gibelt Asia just south of Midelt, I
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: say multiple passes are over three thousand meters. A lot
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: of the good tracks are being sadly lost to development
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: and progress for the country. Morocco's road building program is
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: progressing at a rate which is absolutely astonishing, so it
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: keeps us busy trying to keep on top of where
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: the Ashvelt is and where it isn't. We've lost almost
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: all of the north south off road crossings of the
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: High Atlas Mountains. Now there's one section left which they've
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: been working on for a few years with a view
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: to ash Felt it and that's the route from an
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Agdal in the High Atlass Mountains down to Bullminda dad
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: is through the Daddy's Gorge and there's a short section
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: of peace still from Tisianwano. It's just under three thousand
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: meters south out of the mountains, which is still a
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: stunning drive. So if you're coming to Morocco, go and
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: do that one now while it's still still a dirt track,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: it would still be a stunning drive with Ashvelt.
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: But it's a different feel.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: It's a different feel to it that There's also a
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: lot of east west yes tracks to do, and I've
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: put together one of my standard tours which I normally
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: run each spring, is a High Atlas tour. It's ten
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: days doing the full length of a High Atlas off
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: road as much as possible. It's been a great success.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: It's got some really interesting scenery. We start at the
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Atlantic Coast, which it's a lot of rolling hills and
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: olive plantations, argon groves, agriculture, and we cross over heading
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: east get we skirt around the south side of Mount
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Tucule up onto some high plateaus. Nice bit of wild
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: camping up there. Sometimes the temperatures could be a bit cool,
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: and we take in several of the high altitude passes.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: We've got some stunning tracks along sheer cliff faces, running
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: alongside the edge of a river in a steep valley
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: and all the way into mid Delt. And our next
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: one is mid April, and one of the things we're
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: going to try and do with that trip is we're
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: going to try and reach the summits of Jabel Asia
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: three thy seven hundred meters. Not being up there yet,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: we're not sure how much weather damage has been over winter,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: but we're going to go and have a look and
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: part of the adventure.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Totally it's incredible that you can go from being that
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: high and there's snow, and then you can come down
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: south and southeast and you're Indians.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, I mean we're right on the edge of the
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: Sahara here in Zagora. In a day's drive, you can
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: be up at Ukemden, just south of Marrakesh, which is
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: one of Morocco's ski resorts with Swiss chalets, snow on
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: the ground ski lift. Okay, don't come to Morocco for
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: a skiing holidays. It's not the best skiing in the world,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: but there are a few ski resorts. But yeah, a
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: day's drive from well we thirty degrees at the moment,
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: bright sunshine up into the snow of the mountains is possible.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: And that's another thing that makes it so multi layered
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: here is that you can be on the coast surfing,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: you can be in Murrakesh doing you know, city tours
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and staying in a riad or going to a home
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: mom or going through the Souk But then you can
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: also be up in the High Atlas hiking or.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: It's incredible diversity.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: It's a country which I think for visitors offers almost
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: everything you want. You can you can come and do
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: your extreme sports. There's a lot of wind surfings, kite surfing,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: surfing along the coast all the way from from Casablanca
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: area all the way down to the bottom of Morocco
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: down to Dakla. A lot of opportunities for water sports,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: some fantastic landscape for mountain biking, and again we're seeing
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: since COVID a lot more people coming to Morocco for
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: cycling holidays very popular with the Campo van Brigade, the Overlanders,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: the package holiday makers. There's there's just something for everybody,
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: and it's at the moment Morocco's in is position with
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: its tourism industry where if you want to come and
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: you want to have a week, two weeks however long
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: in five star luxury, the very best treatment in the hotels,
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: you can expect to find anywhere you can do that.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: If you want to come here and live on ten
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: fifteen euros a day and camp and eat out at
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: local places, you can do that as well, so that
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: there really is something for everybody here for sure.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: We got to the High Atlas.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: One of my favorite areas to spend time, particularly in
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: the spring and late springers things start to get a
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: little bit hotter in the desert. South of the High
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Atlas Mountains is where you start to get into the
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: desert areas of Morocco. There's some, I'll say some a
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: lot of online debate or scientific debate about technically where
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: the Sahara starts. Different sources put it in all all
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: sorts of different locations. Tour companies will tell you it
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: starts in one location just because they think it's the
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: romance of the Sahara will sell a few more holidays.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: But really, with Morocco, once you get south of the
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Atlas Mountains, you're starting to hit the desert regions.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: What's the feeling of the Sahara like? How do you know?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Where is it? What does it feel like? How is
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: it different exactly?
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's almost impossible to quantify a thing.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: You could say it's a slight change in the air,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: but that's probably just the dust in the wind. But
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: you certainly coming south through the Atlas Mountains, if you're
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: coming due south from Marrakesh or further east of that,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: As you get out the south side of the mountains,
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: you notice the landscape has changed and it's there's less vegetation,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: it's clearly more married.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: There's more dust, more rocks.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: There's that very noticeable difference in the greenery you've seen
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: further north in the country. If you come south through
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: the Atlas Mountains closer to the coast, so sort of
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: agadeer across to that area. You come down into the
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Draa Valley, not the dra Valley, the Seuss Valley, which
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: is a big agricultural areas about one of Morocco's main rivers.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of fruit and vegetable production goes
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: along along that valley, so that that area you don't
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: get quite that same sense of getting into the desert area. Great,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: and then then we've still got two other mountain ranges
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: to get through before we really get to I guess
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: what most people really think of the deserts. You've got
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: to the west end of Morocco. You've got the Anti
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: Atlas Mountains, which again are completely different to the other
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: mountains you've seen. Brilliant for geology enthusiasts because there's no vegetation,
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: there's no top soil, you can see the strata of
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: rock formations. Great area for exploring, lots of fantastic roads,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: a lot of old granaries, agade as I call them,
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: on the top of the hilltops, which were a fortification
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: for the local villages to protect their valuables if they
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: were attacked by a neighboring tribe. East of the Anti
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Atlas Mountains you've got Jibelsarro Mountains, which like the others,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: they're all very different. These are often called the Black Mountains,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: very dark stone, some fantastic rock formations. A lot of
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: people say it's very reminiscent of some of western Usa
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: and the Monument Valley.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: And that side of things.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: And it's also it looks all a little bit Lord
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: of the Rings and Middle Earth landscape and get a
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: very different area to explore. Some some great driving through there,
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: some interesting historical site. So there was a the local
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: tribe in that region of Morocco fought the French for
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: the longest, the eight eight Ata tribe, and there's a
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: war memorial up in the mountains to a famous battle
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: with them where a handful of the tribesmen held off
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: quite a significant force of the French foreign legion and
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: the normal French military people in Morocco at the time.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: And south of both both those mountain ranges is when
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: you get into the real desert and the real fringes
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: of the Sahara.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Coming across from from the east.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: Sides along the Algerian border, you've got a third Massouga
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: and Erguchebe, which is one of Morocco's big june areas.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: They're the tallest and dunes in Morocco. Some scientific research
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: has revealed that the sand in the base of the
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: dunes is over thirteen thousand years afowls.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: An article you shared about a staring stardom being found, yea,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: which I don't really know what that.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Is, no bit.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I haven't read the article in full yet I thought
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: it was of interest to the group, so I shared it,
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: and sometimes I do that so I know where to
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: find things to read later. My totally and obviously for
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: off road enthusiasts. One of the things which put Morocco
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: and the desert areas of Morocco the map was the
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: early days of a Pari Dakar rally which used to
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: come down through Morocco on a regular basis great and
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of that route runs from the east side
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: from from the Zoga urg Cherby across towards the Atlantic
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: and then down towards Mauritania, and so that's that's a
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: highlight for a lot of people coming to Morocco. We
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: want to drive the Pari Dakar tracks.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and as you come.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Come west from a Chevy and Maszooga very popular area
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: for all sorts of off road activities. So you get
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: the rally, the big rally, raid teams coming down to
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: do winter testing, off season testing. You get a lot
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: of independent travelers, you get a lot of tour groups.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: There's all sorts of charity events running with unsuitable cars
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: out in the desert. It can I'm making it sound
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: like a very busy area and it is probably one
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: of the busiest areas for over but you can still
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: spend days out there and not see another person. Maybe
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: the odd local nomad or the herd of goats, so
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: it's not that congested.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Eventually you get across to where we're sat tonight.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Zagora very well known again going back to the days
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: of the Pari Dakar Rally. Really a lot of good
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: four by four specialist garages in town, all of whom
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: will claim they worked on the Pari Dakar. Even the
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: guys who are too young to have been able to
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: use a spanner when the Pari Dakar last came through.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: But it's a bit of history. They're very keen to
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: hang on to and keep alive here. It was also
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: a key stopping point on the camel caravans coming up
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: from Timbuck to up towards Europe.
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: Great camp sites here too, Oh yeah, my god, this
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: is one.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: This one is just one of the best camp sites
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: in Morocco. It's got such a nice, come relaxing atmosphere,
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: and we're two hundred meters from a main road and all.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: We can hear is some motor bake.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: A motor bike over the wall, and the odd voice
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: from somebody walking past outside. It's such a relaxing place
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: to spend time.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And the palms provide you because it's pretty warm the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: last a little while. And there's another spot down the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: road that we really enjoyed as well that smell like jasmine,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: just so much perfuming jasmine in the best possible way.
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: So nice. So yeah, lots of great places to camp.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Not expensive, no, no, no, I forget what we're paying here,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: but it's it's five six euros.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: An ities, it's not.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: There's a pool, Yeah, they do great food, and when
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: it's not Ramadan, there's there's more wine and beer on
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: off of them. We will admit we drank all the
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: last stocks of beer in the campsites, So don't come
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: here now if you want to get a cold beer
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: with your meal, because they've run out until after Ramadan unfortunately.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: But south of here, south of here, so that the
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: main roads, an hour and a half drive on the
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: main road running south will will take you to the
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: end of the Ashvelt heading south and a little village
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: called Mohammad, which is it's an odd little place, wild west.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got a.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Bit of a wild West feel to it, and it's
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: it's the end of the Ashvelt had heading south. For
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: the next thing, if you keep carrying on south from
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: there is the Algerian border and headaches with the military
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: if you get too close. But as you turn west
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: from Mohammad, you head out towards RB Chicago, which is
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: another one of Morocco's big sand june areas, and that's
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: the largest geographical area of sand dune. So the juons
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: aren't quite as tall as Chevy, not quite as dramatic,
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: but much bigger area and much less tourist development Mazouga
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: and a Chevy. Over the years has become saturated with
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: tourism to the point where it's got a real Disney
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: landfield to it. There's hundreds of people coached in there
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: every day to do this camel ride or the quad
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: BikeE ride into the Junes, watch the sunset, camping and
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Nomad's tent, come back the next morning and it it's ruined.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: What makes spending time in the June's special, which is
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: that piece and the and the sunset and the opportunity
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: to reflect without any exterior similar stimulus going on. And
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: so Chicago I much prefer because it's it's an hour
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: and a half off road from the end of a
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: tarmac to get there, so it's not so accessible to
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: your average tourist. There are more and more camps springing
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: up along the north edge of the Erg for tourist use,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: which is a bit of a shame, but it brings
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: in good money for the local community, so it's a
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: difficult one to balance. West out of Chicago, another almost
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: legendary area for overlanding and off roading is Lacaricki and
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: almost everybody who comes to Morocco and the first time
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: has done a bit of research about the country and
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: off road drubbing. That's one of the highlights of the trip.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: It's a huge dry lake bed. It can be a
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: fast drive. If the weather's been bad and it's been raining,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: it can be a muddy bog of horrible sticky mud,
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: and there's lots of tails on the Internet of people
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: getting stuck down there for days when weather conditions turn.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Further west.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: From there, you can run along the Algerian border for
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: another sixty seventy kilometers again on the old Pari Dakar piece,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: and it's signposted the Rally piece, but you get very
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: very close to the Algerian border there. So there's a
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: lot of military present, a number of military checkpoints.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: You need to go.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Through, present your passport, explain where you're going, what you're doing.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Some of that works as a good safety net if
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: something happens to you. They've got a record on Monday
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: the nineteenth of whenever, two Europeans, two Overlanders went through,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: two land cruisers.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Whatever.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: They know roughly where you are in the country. Further
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: west there's a military zone where access is restricted, so
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: you have to kick back up again onto the Ashfeldt
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: Roads onto the main road and then there's a bit
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: of a zig zag fare as you head out towards
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: the Atlantic coast and Tantan. My personal opinion is the
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: southwest corner of Morocco before you get into the Western
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: Sahara area is the best bit of a Moroccan desert,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: and that's a top top secret tip. I don't really
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: want everybody going down there and discovering it. But it's
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: not as well known as the southeast corner and as
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Agora to Mazooga bit. It's a little bit more basic Dama.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: There's slightly less camp sites, although there is another one
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: of my top ten camp sites in Morocco down there,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: who do a fantastic gin and tonic at a reasonable
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: price and have a swimming pool and a good restaurant,
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: so it's okay as well. But the landscape down there
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: is spectacularly. You've got some nice interesting mountain ranges. You've
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: got areas which are some very savannah like with a
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: lot of grasses and trees, and then you've got the
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: flat start to see the flat expanse of the Western
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Sahara as you start to head south then south from
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: the Tantan area. We get into we start getting into
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: what most of the world call refer to as the
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: Western Sahara. In Morocco, it's the Southern Promise Provinces or
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: the Moroccan Sahara. This is a disputed part of the country.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: So after the French Protectorate pulled out of Morocco and
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: the Spanish pulled out of the Spanish Sahara, there is
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: a bit of a scramble for land, and Morocco walked
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: into the Western Sahara and claimed it therese and there
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: was a period of wore down there with the locals.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: Eventually United Nations ceasefires agreed and the area is still
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: internationally disputed. Morocco are very keen to retain it. The
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: local tribes, the Saharawi tribes are a little bit keener
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: to have their own area back again. But it's it's
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: quite a political issue in the even.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: As far as maps, so we didn't get this map
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: in Morocco. We got it out in the UK actually,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and it says Westerns are here in the map on
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the map, and.
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: I've heard that.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't like, like it's your maps can be confiscated.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, officially, the police and customs.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: So officially in Morocco it's illegal to show the Western
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Sahara as separate to the rest of the country. So
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: for a lot of a lot of people coming from Rocco,
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: like you, you've brought your map in preparation to do
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: your route planning and find your way around. It's been
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: purchased in Europe outside of Morocco, and there's a line
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: on the map which shows a difference between Morocco and
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: the Western Sahara. And people do get caught with maps
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: coming into the country at customs and get the maps confiscated.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And there's also been been instances where Overlanders have got
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: a World Map on the side of the vehicle showing
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: the route they're going to do, and again that there's
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: that separation, and they've been stopped at customs and had
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: to remove for graphics from the vehicles or adjust them
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: so it's not shown as separate.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Is that a flag?
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Thing?
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: Is like, how would.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: You well that gets so.
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: They got flags on the stick yeah.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the flagstickers, which I don't have any flagstickers, but
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: then I've only been to Morocco.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: And flag.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now that the flag, so there is we're kind
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: of going more into politics than overlanding, so hopefully nobody's
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: getting bored. So you've got the bulk of the Western
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Sahara region is under Moroccan control, and then it's sandwiched
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: in between the Moroccan bits and Mauritania is a Finn
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: sliver of land which is officially called the Sahara we
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: Arab Democratic Republic, which is a nice snappy title, easy
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: to remember. That's the independent part of the Western Sahara.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: So when you see a Western Sahara flag, that's the
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: flag for that finn sliver of land sandwiched in between
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: the two. The Moroccan bit standard red Moroccan flag gold star,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: very good. But the a lot of people traveling further
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: south into Africa or down to Dakla to go kite
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: surfing or just to have an extend their adventures in
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Morocco just stick to the coast road and the Western
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: Sahara is very vastly populated. There's four or five big towns,
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: one big city, Layoun there with very few roads. There's
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: a road which runs from Tantaan to smarav and Smara
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: across to Layoun and all the way down the coast
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: to Mauritania, so there's there's not a lot of opportunity
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: to explore the area if you're sticking to the Ashveldt
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: for towns down there. A lot of the towns in
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: southern Morocco don't have a lot going for them in
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: terms of tourist attraction. They're functional, they're places to go
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: and do your shopping and find a camp site, do
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: your laundry, buy food, but a lot of them don't
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: have much in the way of sites to go and
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: explore more things. And the Western Sahara probably more so.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: Layoun is a big modern city. Morocco has poured a
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: lot of money into developing the city. They pay lower
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: taxes in Western Sahara, which is an incentive by the
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Moroccan government to get more people to move further south.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: And some of the other towns are not not very
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: exciting to fail. In the northwest corner of the Western Saharava,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: that's got some interesting history to it. It used to
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: be a base for the French aeropostile service and Antoine,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: I'm probably going to save this wrong. Antoine Saint Expery
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: who wrote The Little Prince. He was based there and
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: if you go to the town and you spend a
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: bit of time wandering around. You can still see the
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: old aero Postel buildings. They're still there. You need to
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: look a little bit beyond the initial facade, but the
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: buildings are still there. And there's a little tiny museum
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: to the Aero Postile Service there, which if you can
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: find the Guardian and he's prepared to open it for you,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: is worth a visit. You probably get more out of
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: it if you could read French than I did, because
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: by French as appalling, and most of the exhibits are
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: in French. But reading about what those guys were doing
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: in trying to deliver mail around the world is just
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: it's incredible. It's I mean again, it's it's a generation
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: which has has passed us all by now. But these
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: guys were trying to do transatlantic flights with planes which
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: would barely get halfway, and then trying to coordinate landing
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: next to a ship to refuel with the fingers crossed.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: The weather was good enough to be able to land
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: the plane and they could find it. And some of
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: some of the exhibits in the museum about what some
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: of the transatlantic crossings these guys were doing. Are just
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: astonishing stories of people we built a different way than
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: we are now. An another historical feature just off the
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: coast of to Faya is oh Casa del Mar or
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: Mackenzie's thought. So this was a fortification which was built
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: just off of the beach of to Fea by Scotsman
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: McKenzie who set up the Northwest Africa Company or the
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: North Africa Company, and one of his ideas was he
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: wanted to cash in on the caravan trade routes and
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: try and trying to pick up stuff off the caravan
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: trade routes further south and then ship that stuff up
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: into Europe and make his money that way. One of
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: the ideas he had was digging a canal from the
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: Atlantic inland and flooding the Sahara oh Boy because he
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: had some information which the altitude was lower further inland
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: than it wasn't the coast, so if he just dug
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: a channel for sea would naturally flood in and then
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: he could run ships down to Timbuctoo. Unfortunately, his information
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: was a bit inaccurate and he never managed to get
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: the funding for any investors to go ahead with the project.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: So that's that's just off the coast in inter fair
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: Heading south along the coast, the coastline is is just stunning.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: It's okay, if you have to drive down that road
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: from from Tan Tan down to Dakla, it's you can
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: do it in a long day, but most people take
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: two days. If you're coming turning around and coming back north,
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: it's two days on the same road.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: See.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: But the coastline, it's deserted, beaches, dramatic cliffs, shipwrecks, it's
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: just wild and exposed and desolate and hostile.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: And that's I love that jet.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: It can be very, very windy, which if they say
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: if your consumption heading north will be double heading south
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: of the wind.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: But tell me about I think when people look up
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: crossing the Western Sahara, the thing that seems to be
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: coming up a lot are mind.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So the Western Sahara is home still now
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: to this stay to the world's largest minefield. During the
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, both sides laid
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: huge quantities of mines in the Western Sahara, not all
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: of them have been cleared. The United Nations have had
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: a long term presence in the Western Sahara to the
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: modit of a ceasefire, and they've also done a lot
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: of mind clearance operations. According to them, they have cleared
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: ninety to ninety five percent of the known land mines.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Of course, the known ones are one issue. It's the
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: unknown ones which can be just as important to anybody
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: traveling in the region, and with overlanders and tour companies.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: There's a slight difference of opinion between some of us
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: about how serious the risks. So I know some people
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: who there's no risk down at all, no problem, go
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: anywhere you want, it's fine. There are other people who
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: just won't go in off road down there at all
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: because they think the risk is the opposite end of
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: the level. And then there's a few of us sat
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: in the middle ground who think, hang on a minute,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: it's not quite as bad as everybody makes out, but
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: it's not one hundred percent safe, right.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: So I do.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I run two routes on a regular basis for people
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: in the western Sahara. We do one route which goes
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: all the way down to the tropic of Cancer and
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Dakla before coming back up the Atlantic coast, and I
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: do another one which goes about halfway down through the
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: western Sahara, and we do. We spend a lot of
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: time off road out in the desert. We found bullet casings,
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: rocket casings, water shells, all sorts of stuff you don't
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: necessarily want to be playing around without in the desert.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: There are areas in the desert where their tire tracks
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: going off in every direction you can see, normally a
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: good indication that that area's fallish. And then there's other
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: areas where all the tire tracks.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Are in the same place.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: That's normally an indication of an area where the locals
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: feel there's a risk, and a thing which has a
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: strategic military value is a risk area. So water sources
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: passes through hills mountains for some reason, they put a
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: lot of mines on the beaches, so there's still a
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: there's still a risk out there. There haven't been I
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: haven't heard about any mind strikes for a couple of
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: years now, but people do hit land mines out there
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: on a reasonably regular bas It's often the locals who
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: will be way off the tracks traveling cross country looking
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: for their camels or something, rather than any any overlanders
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: off roaders.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: But if you want it, of course, there's always a
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: risk but the Atlantic route, I don't know if that's
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the most commonly either the driven. If you just want
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to shoot straight down.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you just want to go and experience some
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: of the western Sahara, drive down to Dakla, spend a
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: bit of time, do some kite surfing, eat some oysters,
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: come back up again.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: It's a completely safe way of doing it.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: It's a big two lane road all the way down
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: to the Mauritanian borders. A lot of trade goes down
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: that way between West Africa and Europe.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Very safe way of doing it.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: It's when you start wandering around inland where your risk
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: level changes.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: And even if you're on the track, which if there
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: are a whole bunch of tire tracks, you should be fine,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: it's you know, as Overlanders, we're going off of the.
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: Tracks to camp yeah, and that's where the risk goes
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: up a bit.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: It does a bit. I mean, I think with a
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: degree of local knowledge, some common sense and just being
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: a little bit cautious. So if you find anything which
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: looks like a mortar shell or a bullet or a
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: metal object you're not quite sure it is, keep well
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: away from it and leave it alone. Throwing rocks at
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: it or jumping up and down on it because you
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: never know, So I look at the risk down there.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: For what I do is being similar to crossing a
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: busy main road. You know, you know there's a danger,
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: but you're doing things yourself to try and manage that risk.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: You look both ways, make sure nothing's coming, and.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Off you go.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: And if you're taking other people there, so you're calculating
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the risk for yourself but also for others.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it's twenty twenty seventeen. So traditionally the
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: belief was there were only land mines in the Western Sahara,
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: so everybody assumed where that straight line is on the
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: map which shows the difference between the disputed territory in
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Morocco south of that line was where you got land mines.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: But in the days the war was going on, the
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: front line between Morocco and the Western Sahara was very
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: fluid and it went all the way as far north
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: as Tantan, which is quite a significant difference back into
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: Morocco and just off the road between Tantan and Smaav
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: there's a load of old buildings and remains old buildings
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: which look really really interesting. Their bee high shaped buildings
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: and the sort of figure which you just want to
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: go and have a look at. They've been listed on
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: Ioverlander and some of the other travel apps as a
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: good place to wild camp. Twenty seventeen, an English overlander
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: and his wife went in there. They parked up, walking
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: around and they found anti tank mines in the access
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: track to it, and that changed a lot of people's
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: view of where the risk was in the western Sahara
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: and the southern edge of Morocco.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Gotcha, who knows. Calculate your risk just like any other It's.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: What as overland as we're constantly doing, is we're always
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: assessing risk and trying to manage it. It's a fundamental
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: part of traveling this way. And yeah, some risks are
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: not for everybody, and they don't go overlanding. They go
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: and sit next to swimming pool and drink cocktails.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: For the holidays.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: We go out and do crazy things in countries most
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: people wouldn't visit and spend weeks off road in the
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: middle of nowhere.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: So let's switch gears, go back up north and talk
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: a little bit more about getting here. Oh so, because
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: there are multiple ferry roots that are coming in from Europe. Yeah,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: paperwork involved logistics.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: So for most for most people visiting Morocco, they're coming
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: in via Europe. It is possible to shift directly into Morocco,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: but it's not a very popular route. I do know
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: you Caving Air Canada will fly motorbikes in freight into Casablanca, really,
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: which has been used quite a lot, but very few
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: people ship vehicles directly into Rocco. Most people will ship
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: into Europe and then drive down through Europe from wherever,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: whichever port they've shipped into, and then use one of
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: the regular ferry services from Europe into Morocco. You've got
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: three different options for getting into Morocco from Europe. You've
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: got ferries from Italy, France or Spain. The Spanish ferries
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: of the shortest than the quickest, and you can do
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: there's multiple different routes from Spain, but the bulk of
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: people go down to the southern tip of Spain and
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: either cross from Tarifa to Tangier City or Algacras to
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Tanga med which is the newport on the north coast.
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we did that one our hour.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: And thirty minutes on a ferry and you're in Morocco.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: It's a very short, efficient route. You could also get
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: a ferry from Marseille and set in the south of
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: France or from Genoa in Italy, and those ferries are
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: forty eight to fifty six hours and a bit stronger
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: bit slower. But if you if you're coming from the
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: eastern side of Europe or you're coming from mainland Europe
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: for a lot of people, that's then acceptable time.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Sure it's down your driving time around the vehicle, etcetera, etcetera.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mostly used the Algecras Tangent med route.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: It works well for me. It's efficient. Tail end of COVID.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: When the lockdown was lifted here that our only way
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: of getting back to Europe was using the ferry service
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: to Marseille, and it wasn't a very good experience, but
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: some of that was possibly COVID and all the rest
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: of it. So that it's a ferries run virtually every hour,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: there's five six different ferry companies running, so you can
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: just turn up at the port and drive onto the
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: next ferry available and being Morocco ninety minutes later. Very
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: very nice and easy. Most people get granted a visa
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: on arrival for Morocco.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so would you do passport control on the book.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: Passport control is just wander around till you find it.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: That on the ferry, So.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: Don't leave your passport in the car, take it with you,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: look for the queue of people. They'll stamp your passport
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: on the ferry and they won't let you off the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: ferry if it hasn't been stamped. So yeah, VISs stamp
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: is done on the passport and the ferry. As a tourist,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: you get ninety days on entry. You are limited to
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty days a calendar year. Officially, there
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: are people who've been living and working in Morocco for
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: years and using tourist visas and just every thirty days
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: flying out of Morocco and coming back in. But officially
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: it's one hundred and eighty days a year.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: But you can if you do your ninety you can
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: go to the police or the local.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can go to the local police station and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: extend it up to one hundred and eighty days. It's
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: a bit of a hit and miss process. Some police
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: stations will no, no, no, you can't do that. It's
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: not possible anymore. The rules have changed others will quite
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: happily do it. Never really managed to get to the
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: bottom of why you've got those differences. I suspect some
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: police stations just don't want the they don't want the
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: paperwork to deal with.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: And some of the camp.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: Sites will help you with that process. Some of them
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: do require you to book them to the campsite and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: pay for a few weeks accommodation before they will help.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: So we'll just do it and they'll say you one
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: hundred rams for doing your visa extension for you, so
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: that is a possibility. Vehicles carnade of passage is not
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: recognized by Morocco, so you don't need one of those,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: which makes it nice and easy. You get a temporary import.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: On arrival, you get a little white credit card sized
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: slip of paper which you mustn't lose because you need
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: that on exit. That's your temporary import.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: You go through when you get off the boats.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: Off the boat, when you go through customs at the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: ferry terminal, nice straightforward process. Customs will pull you to
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: one side, they'll take your vehicle registration documents, passport, they
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: will go and do the processing on that. They will
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: have a look at the vehicle. It's a bit of
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: a cursory search. You'll get asked if you've got any weapons,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: any drones because drones are prohibited in Morocco or restricted
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: heavily in Morocco. You need permits, several permits to bring
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: atrone into Morocco, and you might get a casual search
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: with a sniffer dog random. Since COVID they now do
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: a random X ray on some vehicles coming into the country,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: so they do all that customs. Eventually a nice customs
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: officer will return with your completed import card and then
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: you're free to leave for ferry terminal and go and
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: enjoy Morocco.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: So I would say if we didn't have a search
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: done for some reason, but they took our insurance paperwork,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: so your vehicle insurance paperwork, and I think had a
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: little a few issues with our Alberta registration and licensing.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: They were like, this isn't the right document, we need
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: your card. So I think from being from Canada versus Europe,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: it was a bit confusing, which is totally fair, and
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: we probably should have prepared a translation or something to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: hand along with it. So if you're coming from the
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: US or Canada or abroad that's not from Europe like
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: somewhere where they probably don't see as many of.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: The Yeah, suspect the.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: Big numbers of vehicle based tourists coming to Rocco French, Spanish, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Italians,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: so they're used to seeing the vehicle paperwork and registration
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: details from those countries. When something a bit more unusual
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: comes in, they're probably going to start asking a few
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: more questions because they're not used to it.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely so.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in retrospect, they probably would have prepared like a
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: feast or a document that had the translation in French. Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: The other thing was we came in really late because
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: that very I believe doesn't really run time like for
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: us it was two hours.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: No, the between the Spanish and the Moroccans getting get
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: a thing running to a timetable seems to be an
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: impossible task. So the timetable is at best a guide.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: I think I'm twelve thirteen years now of getting the
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: ferry on the regular. I don't think I remember one
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: running on time.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: Doing in early morning would be better. We got caught
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: in the or not. We got caught in the darker though,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: And then.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: I mean if you if you're coming into Morocco for
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: the first time, arrived with enough time to drive to
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: your first stop, your first night's accommodation, don't come in
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: after dark and don't be guesse.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: I think our fairy was supposed to be like two pm,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: and then it was four four thirty, and then by
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: the time we got through customs it was dark, and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: then we had a crazy windstorm.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: So we camped at the port. Anyways, but there aren't
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: a lot of good camping options, no.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: It really from if you're coming into tangent mad which
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: is one of the busier ferry terminals, your first stops
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: as a vehicle based travelers on a formal camp site,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: there's a nice campsite in Tangier City. But if you've
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: come into Tangi Med, why if you want to go
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: to Tangier, you'd probably get the fery straight into Tangi City.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: You've got a camp site in chefsho End, which is
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: a beautiful town to spend time in. Two and a
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: half hour drive from the port. The other popular first
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: night stop is Acilla on the Atlantic coast, ninety minutes
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: drive straight down the motorway. That's nice and easy for
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: two camp sites in town. Nothing particularly special, but they
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: do for your first night right. But you can you
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: can stay in the car park at the ferry terminal.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: That is always an option, but it's it's busy, it's noisy,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: not the best place to get your first night's experience.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: So I mean my general advice is, yeah, don't come
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: in afternoon, where a delay might mean you end up
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: arriving in a strange new world after dark, slightly confused.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: You might not have got a local SIM card sorted out,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: so access to the internet has suddenly vanished, and that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: support network everybody's so used to using now is gone,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: and you're going to have to find your own way around.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: Coming a bit earlier, getting in daylight, give yourself enough
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: time to get to your first night stop and it
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: makes life a little bit more relaxing on your first
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: first day half a day in Morocco.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: What about time of year? Time of year, it was
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: really interesting. Family and friends.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: We were like bundled up with chuks and sweaters in
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: some areas are still quite cold or even dropping below
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: zero degree celsius here, and I think that surprised them
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: because they're like, you're going to Morocco, though.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think a lot of people sat back at
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: home wherever that is, you talk about Morocco and they
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: think they mentally they picture of the Sahara desert. They
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: think it's going to be scorching hot all year round,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: clear blue skies, are nothing but sand, and it's a
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: much more varied country that traditionally they've always said. Morocco
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: is a cold country with a hot sun, and over
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: winter you really feel that as soon as you walk
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: into the shade for temperature plumishes, but in direct sunlight
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: it's nice and warm and you can feel the power
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: of the sun. So people come all year round to Morocco,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: generally June through to the end of August. For the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: majority of people, the temperatures are too high, so you
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: can be looking at temperatures forty to fifty degrees overnight,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: temperatures not dropping down below thirty, particularly in the desert areas.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: Even up at altitude or along the coast, you can
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: be looking at mid thirties center grade a bit more
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: reasonable overnight. So the summer months is very quiet for
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: foreign toss Some still come a lot of people from
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: southern Europe who may be used to summers in the
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: mid thirties anyway, it's not such a big but for
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: those of us from northern Europe or more cooler climbs,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: the summer months are just it stops being fun when
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: you're dealing with that level of temperature.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: Over you're dealing with overheating, and you're.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, I mean it's so hot and this day
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: and age, it's so easy to be in your air
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: conditioned cocoon in a vehicle and not realize how hostile
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: environment is until something goes wrong. And if you're trying
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: to dig a vehicle out of sand in fifty degrees,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: it's a quick way to put yourself at serious risk.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: Winter a lot of people come to Morocco over winter,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: a lot of campavans come to Rock over winter. Thus,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: temperatures fifteen to twenty twenty five degrees on average, clear
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: blue sky, is not much rain, but as soon as
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: the sunsets the temperature can Plummet's great if you've got
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: indoor living space, cheap of cheap winter sunshine, you living
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: in Morocco. If you basis, even on a formal campsite,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: you can be living for ten or fifteen euros a
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: day quite happily.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: For me.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: The best times from Rocco spring and autumn, or my
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: annual season is I do March through to May in
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: the spring, and then September through to December.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: And I've already mentioned.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: I think spring is the best time of year to
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: explore Morocco, particularly the Atlas Mountains of the Middle Atlas.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Spring is just a fantastic if you're doing a longer trip,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: if you're not just coming for a couple of weeks,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: if you're coming for a month or two months. Coming
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: out early March and being here through spring. As the
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: temperatures increase, you acclimatize to the temperatures quite quickly, so
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: it's not such a sudden shock when you're dealing with
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: thirty forty five degree temperatures the autumn again in reverse.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: You get out, you come out sort of September still
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: a bit quiet, but the temperatures can be good, but
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: calling off towards late November December, but still great time
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: to come out and be more in the do more
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: living outside of a vehicle or accommodation. The temperatures in
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: terms of tourist numbers, April and October for two peak
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: months so we're just now ten days away from start
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: of peak season. East of Fortnite is very very busy
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: for Morocco for all types of tourism. Next month we've
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: got a lot of a big rally start in Morocco.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: There's been a few running already, but mostly there October
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: April months as well for some of the big rally
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: y events, so that they're the best months, I think
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: in my opinion, I don't know, maybe it's me, but
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: if I'm if I'm off road out of the desert,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: I want it to be hot and sunny.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: I don't want it to be a cool, easy now.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: I want to be reminded that I'm in a hostile
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: environment and if things go wrong, it's a serious issue.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: It's not just a question of waiting for the next
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: passer by to give me some help.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Right, right, let's get back into it, yep. Okay, So
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: people know how to get here now, and they know
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: what time of year to come. I think the next
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: thing that really blew my mind when I came to Morocco.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: We're all the languages that are spoken here, so I
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: knew there was a little bit of French, but I
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: wasn't really sure who would be speaking what or if
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: there was going to be a lot of English or
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: just a little bit. But there's also local dialects and
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: Moroccan Arabic, and yeah, tell us a little bit more.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: About the diversity of Morocco. Morocco has always had very
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: close ties with Europe. It's I don't know when the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: Arabs invaded several hundred years ago, thousand years ago, the
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: indigenous people of Morocco, of the Berbers or the Amazeir people,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: and then you've got the Arabic Moroccans, who a lot
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: of the Berbers, even though they've been here for hundreds
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: of years, still see as the invading Infidel. But it's
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: a long, long, dark history, long time ago. And then
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: Morocco had its time under the previous century and the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: early days of the last century where it was under
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: European control. So the bulk of Morocco was a French
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: protectorate and the north of Morocco went under Spanish control.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: Spain also had a town on the Atlantic coast, city Ifny,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: and then they had for Spanish Sahara, which is now
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: the Western Sahara. Officially, the two official languages for Morocco
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: are Derisia, which is Moroccan Arabic, so slightly different to
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: classical Arabics spoken elsewhere in the Islamic world, but a
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: lot of similarities.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: But if you're using Google Translate, it doesn't necessarily but unbumped, No, no, it's.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: So Google Translate I believe is classical Arabic. So there
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: is some differences.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Could I compose some issues if you're trying to connect, Yeah,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Google Translate can cause some great last trying to have
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a conversation.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: It is a brilliant tool for travelers now, but it's
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: it's still not quite perfect. I've had some interesting conversations
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: with mechanics using Google Translate and it it just makes
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: no sense. So Derisian Morocan Arabic is their primary language,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: and officially their second language is French.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: That's across the country.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: There are then five Berber dialects on different regions, and
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: I forget what all of them are. There's Tashla Hate,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: which is the High Atlas dialect. There's Kalua, there's Riffian,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: which is from the Riff mountains, and then there's.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Two others I can't remember off the top of my head.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: So it's a country which certainly traditionally has seven different
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: languages in one population. And in the early days we
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: started coming, we learnt a little bit of Moroccan Arabic
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: and a little bit of Tashla hate the High Atlas language,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: and talking to Moroccan friends, depending from where they were,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: we could have conversations which another Moroccan guy can't understand
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: because they didn't speak that dialect or that language. The
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: north of Morocco you find a lot of people speak
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: Spanish because of the days of that was under Spanish control.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: There's a big move in Morocco now to drop French
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: as their official second language and switch to English, which
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: will change things completely. Historically, I'm jumping around a little
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: bit on the process here, but historically per certainly, under
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: the old King of Morocco, the Berber dialects were heavily suppressed,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: so you weren't allowed to write them, you weren't allowed
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: to teach them in schools. But under the current king,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: he's a lot more forward thinking, a lot more midderer.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: Maybe he is now allowing teaching of Berber in schools.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: You'll see a lot of the road signs now in
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: Arabic and the Tamazit language, which is a modern Berber language.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: Across North Africa, there was a lot of different regional variations,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: and I think in the nineteen sixties the Berber community
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: decided that it would be good to have a universal language.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: So there's this modern, interesting Bourber, a term that like
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: we should be using.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: So it's.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: On one hand, yes, it's Berber. Comes from the Roman
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: word for barbarians. So in a lot of ways it's
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: a derogatory term for the local people, the indigenous people.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: But they use it themselves.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: I'm a Berber, but what they really call themselves is
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: the Amazeir, which translates as for free people. And that's
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: where I got my company named from. I wanted something
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: which kind of summed up overlanding and the freedom that
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: brings you and also tied me into the region I'm
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: operating tours.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: In the downside is I have to as a traveler.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: We would say amaz.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're better to use the word amazev
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: than Berber. But they won't take offense if you use Berber. Yeah,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: it's not something to get get hung up on or
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: worry about them.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: It's not I said.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: It was seen as a derogatory term. They don't take
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: big offense at being called a Berber.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the interactions I've had, yeah, they have.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Referred to themselves as Berber to me or or they
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: have said like, oh this is these are the words
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: to use in Berber. Or Yeah, they've said to my
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: friend Ernesta, who's Venezuelan, Oh, like, you look like you're Berber,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't know.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's more people.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: It's it's something which if you if you're somebody who's
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: interested in learning more about the country you're traveling in
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: and the history and the culture and the people. It's
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: something I think you should know. But it's not something
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: to worry about if you come to Morocco. So I
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: can't say that because they might get offended by it.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: Just be aware, Yeah, certainly something to be aware of.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And then police, I've been finding mostly converse in French.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: Yes, so the police Morocco. Morocco has quite a wide
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: range of security services. There's three different types of police.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: There's the auxiliary forces, there's the military. But the majority
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: of the police. Being in the police force is a
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: good job for a Moroccan. It's well paid, so a
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: lot of the people in the police force are well educated,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: They've got good jobs, and they speak French, and I
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: think French is used for a lot of legal processes
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: in Morocco rather than Arabic. Then during the days of
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: the Protector, a lot of the Moroccan legal system is
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: virtually a carbon copy of the French legal system, so
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: well known for having loads of paperwork and unnecessary bureaucracy.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: And having spent a day in the courts in Mechnez,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: not because I'd done anything wrong, yeah, interesting day, but
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: offices which were piled floor to ceiling with paper filing systems,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: very few computers, ledgers, big books.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: Fascinating experience.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Most of the time people will be interacting with the
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: police at checkpoint, and so far our experience has been
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: it's pretty casual.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 4: You just slow down when you'll sign.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: As you start to travel around Morocco, you will notice
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: there's there's a significant police presence in the country and
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: on the way into most towns there will be a
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: police checkpoint. And there tends to be two different types
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: of checkpoint. They look identical as you approach them. One
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: checkpoint has a stop sign with the word stop on
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: it in French halt and the other alternative is one
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: which has relent here, which means slow down for ones
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: which say pult come to a complete stop and wait
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: to be told to move through. For ones which say
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: slow down, you just need to slow down and drive through.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: If you're ever uncertain about it, just stop and wait
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: for the policeman to wave you through, because.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: You can get a ticket, right yeah, if you have
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: given tickets, I think for.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: That, thisc I said. Morocco has a big, big police force.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: They also have a lot of radar guns and they're
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: very keen on using them.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: So it's coming here. As a vehicle based traveler.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: The chances of you getting a ticket for something are
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: pretty high, to be honest, but it's on the spot fines.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: The fine levels one hundred and fifty deram, so that's
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: fifteen euros, three hundred deram thirty euros or four hundred
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: ARAM forty years. It's a payable on the spot fine.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: It doesn't following you back home, you don't get points
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: on your license, you don't have to declare it to
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: your insurance company. You get stopped, you're quite embarrassed. The
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: police are always my interactions with them have. They've always
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: been very, very polite and very apologetic. It's like, I'm
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: terribly sorry, but you were driving to fuss. It's not
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: your fault, it's my fault. I've been stupid.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of discussion about police corruption in some
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: of the groups and forums, and historically there has been
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: a lot of corruption in Morocco. They've been a big,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: big process to clean things up. I've been driving here
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: for twenty five years. I've had in all that time,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: and I've been stopped for speeding more times than I
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: care to admit. It's often you drive around the corner
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: You're like, wow, look at that view. You look back
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: at the road of as a policeman with a radar gun,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: and it's too late by that point. But in all
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: those years I've been driving, I've had two occasions where
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: I've been stopped and it hasn't been a legitimate offense
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: with evidence produced and a receipt for the paperwork, and
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: both of them were When you realize it wasn't legitimate,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: You're angry with yourself, You're irritated. You want to go
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: and make a formal complaint, but it's not a big deal.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: All the times.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: Speeding is the common one, easy to do. You're in
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: an unusual country, there's not always a speed limit sign.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you thought you knew what the speed limit was,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: but it changed and you hadn't noticed the sign. So
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: that's the common one to get to get.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: Patting someone on a solid line.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, overtaking on a solid white line and not stopping
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: at a stop sign, they're three big hits. There are
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: other offenses. Driving without insurance is very serious offense here.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: Something which does come up a lot in overlanding forums
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: and groups is conversations about insurance.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: For Morocco. We didn't mention it when we were talking about.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: Visas and things. Yes, it's a legal requirement to have insurance.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: End of story, and we see people in the groups again,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: but I spent a month in Morocco, nobody ever asked
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: to see my insurance. I've spent years driving around the
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: UK never been asked to show my insurance.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: Is still a.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: Legal requirement, but in Morocco they treat it very very seriously.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: And if you're involved in an accident and it's your
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: fault and you don't have insurance, you go straight to
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: prison until you pay up. And they take your vehicle
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: and it's one of these things where your embassy is
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: not going to help in that situation. They're going to
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: say you didn't have insurance. It's your fault. We can't
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: do anything about it.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: So if you can get.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: Insurance from your home country a green card, brilliant. If
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: you can't get insurance, you can buy assurance slow Frontiers
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: at the port of arrival.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: It's a fixed rate price. It's only gone up four
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: euros in the last ten years.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: Current prices ninety six euros for thirty days cover and
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: if you buy a month or three months policy you
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: get a bigger discount, so it's about two hundred euros
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: at the moment for three months.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: I think, gotcha for it. So, yeah, I don't.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: There are drink driving limits, to be honest, we're Overlanders
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: most of the time on the sunsets. We're parked up
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: somewhere getting ready for a a camp or a chat
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: with somebody else. We're not We're not driving around after
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: a party or anything. No, we tend to do that
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: after we've stopped driving.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Sea of which, okay, we should talk about that because
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: right now it's Ramadan here. Yeah, and also finding alcohol
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: in this country is a little bit more challenging that
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: it would be in Spain, Yes, Canada, the US or
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: the UK.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so where we going Ramadan or drink.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: I would always start to sound an alcoholic when we
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: start talking about alcohol. I talk to people say, you
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: go there, there's a bar over there that that that
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: cafe will sell you a beer or two. You can
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: buy alcohol this shop, and it's it's it's the same.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: With like non dairy milk, though yeah, maybe not the
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: exact same.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: When you've come from from Europe or from from North America,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: where you used to being able to walk down to
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: any almost any shop and buy alcohol in any town
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 3: and things, all of a sudden you're in the Islamic
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: cume tree, where things aren't quite as easy. So it
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: does become quite a popular topic of conversation with travelers
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: is where can I get a nice.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: Wine or a beer?
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: It's not illegal, it's not illegal. And Morocco, Morocco has
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: quite a good alcohol industry. There's the main two local beers,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: our Flag and Casablanca. Both of them are okay after
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: a hot day of a desert if they're cold, but
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: he probably wouldn't buy them outside of Morocco. So you know,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: if you've got a wider range of selections, there are
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: better things out there. But there the big supermarket chains
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: in Morocco, so Car four, they have quite a range
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: of beers available. Now most of them will have an
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: alcohol section available. Morocco produces quite a lot of its
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: own wine. Some of it is okay, some of it
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: best left alone, but they produce some good wine. So
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: there's an alcohol industry here. There's a big tourist industry,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: so there's a demand from the tourists.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: And some of those locations, like Care for the alcohol
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: will be in a separate room or basement.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: Yes, so it's not like what you're used to in
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: your supermarket at home, where you just go to the
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: alcohol aisle and you pick what you want and you
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: go to the main till and you pay and off
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: you go. A lot of the supermarkets the alcohol section
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: is separate. It's often slightly hidden away, maybe around the
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: back of the store and you have to walk around
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: the outside through an.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: Unmarked door or down into the basement.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: So it's not quite as obvious as you used to.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: Very er it is a bit.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: But there's plenty of places to find it. South of
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: the country, it gets a little bit more challenging. You
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: just IF's somebody who likes to have a drink on
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: a regular basis, you need to plan a little bit
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: further ahead, or you need to bring enough supplies with
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: you to get through.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: How much is the limit?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: So officially the limit is elita per person of alcohol
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: coming into Morocco, but you come in through Tanjamed Tanjaville.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: They know most people coming in on holiday are bringing
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: way more than that, and they're really not that bothered
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: by it. Okay, if you come in and we haven't
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: touched on this. So Spain has two cities in Morocco,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: that's right. So Sayuta and Malia are two Spanish cities
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: on mainland Morocco. Again, Sauta is a very popular point
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: of entry. So you can catch a ferry from Spain
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: across the Straits of Gibraltar and you can arrive in Spain,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: except it's in Africa, and then you need to drive
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: through Sauta and cross into Morocco at the border.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: A lot of people like doing that route.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: I haven't done it myself, but I have They do
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: have a lot of problems with illegal immigrants trying to
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: get into those enclaves, because once they get through the
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: border fence, they're in. They're technically in Europe, so they
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: come under EU legal protection. They have human rights issues
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 3: which are better legislated than the Moroccan side of things.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 3: So every now and again they try and storm the
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: fence at Sauta and the border shut, so it can
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: be a little bit disruptive. And I have also been
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: told by several people they can be a little bit
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: tighter on alcohol limits coming in from Sauta into Morocco.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: I see.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's there's stuff to be found if you
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: start looking for it. Sure, and it's it's not a
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: big problem. You just need to plan a little bit
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: further ahead.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: And then if it's Ramadan, So for this year, it's
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: essentially from I can't remember which day it started, so
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: The the Wealth of March and it's yeah, it's a
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: full month where the locals don't eat, drink or smoke
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: during the day.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 4: Is it from sun up town.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: From sunrise to sunset? And it's.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 3: It changes the way things operate in the country. A
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: lot of people, we get a lot of questions you
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 3: know we're coming to Rocco, but it's going to be Ramadan.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: Will everything be closed?
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: No, the big tourist destinations Marrakesh, fez Aga, deer Esawira,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: things are still open to deal with the tourist trade.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: This year.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: Ramadan twelfth of March through till mid April's peak tourist season.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: Morocco is not going to miss out on that income
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: just because it's Ramadan. Some places hardly anything open during
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: the day. Going back to the alcohol question, a lot
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: of alcohol sales stop five days before Ramadan and don't
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: resume until five days after Ramadan, so things get a
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: little bit harder than they were outside to find out again,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: not completely impossible. Car four in Marrakesh is currently selling alcohol,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: but you have to take the passport to prove you gotcha.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: You're'slim or a Moroccan and you should be fasting. I've
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: been in Morocco for Ramadan since twenty seventeen, and the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: big advice would be you just need to plan ahead
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: a little bit further.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: So if you if you're looking.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: At grocery shopping, food shopping, don't expect all the shops.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: In the next town to be open.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: Where you are, the shops are open, stock up, have
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: a couple of days worth of supplies with you.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: Then they open up in the evening again, right, and
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: then the locals will shop in the evening for the
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: next day.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, is that right? Yeah?
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: So I traditionally with Morocco, whereas in most Western societies
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: we're going to a weekly food shop, we go to
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: all the supermarket once a week.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: We do a big shop. That's it.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: We don't need to worry about it. Again, a lot
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 3: of Moroccans live, I'll try to put this in the
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: right words. But meal to meal, day to day, so
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: they will shop. They'll go out mid afternoon and shop
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: for the evening meal. They will do the same next
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: morning for breakfast and for lunch. They don't for their heads.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: And't that culture of doing a big weekly shop. It
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: tends to be either day by day or meal by meal.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: Bread is so much better that way.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well, the Moroccan bread is fantastic and it's
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: so cheap one and a half two d am for
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: a loaf of bread. Fantastic stuff. But it only lasts
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: to twenty four hours. The day after you buy it
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: goes rock solid and you could probably build a house
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: out of dead so yeah, but it's it's fantastic stuff.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: So as a tourist slash overlander in Morocco during Ramadan,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: I think the thing that that's important to remember is that,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: of course we can still eat and dry.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so discreet, that's yeah.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: That's another regular question about being here in Ramadan is
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: do I have to fast as well? Ramadan doesn't apply
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: to non Muslims travelers for very young there.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: Very old or the sick.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: So as Overlanders, we're travelers and we're not Muslims, especially
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: not all of us are. Some Overlanders are, but we're travelers,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: so we fall under that and as Nonmlislims, so it's
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: I think in more rural areas it's worth thinking about
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: eating and drinking publicly during the day in Ramadan. But
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: it's not going to cause a problem if you do.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: A lot of the busier tourist areas they really don't
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: mind saying restaurants are opening Zagora during the day full
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: of tourists eating. It's not a big problem. Something which
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: will surprise some people during Ramadan in Morocco, and it
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: surprised me the first time I came across it. Is
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: in some towns, what sounds like an air raid siren
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: goes off to signal it's time to eat the end
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: of the day's fasting. If you don't know that and
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: you're close to the Algerian border or a big military
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: base and suddenly a very loud siren goes off, it
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: does make you start to wonder, what's happened.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 4: I've heard that and I was wondering.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's that's what it is.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: The Other thing for travelers during Ramadan is the clock's
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: change for Ramadan.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 4: So yes, at the beginning, Rocco.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: Didn't used to do daylight savings time. Then they did
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: a period where they did daylight savings time, and then
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: they changed the clocks just for Ramadan. Confused everybody like
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: crazy because the clocks would changed for daylight saving and
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: then a few weeks later they would change for Ramadan,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: and everybody's going, I don't know what the time is.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: You'd go to a shop of the blokes I don't
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: open till nine o'clock saying that it's ten o'clock now.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: And then Morocco decided to stop doing daylight savings time,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: but the clocks go back an hour for Ramadam.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: And then they do, they go, then they go forwards again.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so there's this month month period where the
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: time changes in Morocco this day and age, with smartphones
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: and things, most of your stuff changes automatically, so you
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: don't really notice.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: Too much, correct, Yeah, exactly. And it was kind of
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: nice actually that the sun came up earlier, which was nice,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: especially when it's warm out.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: I suppose it depends whether you're a morning person or
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: an evening person. I'm missing the hour of daylight in
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: the evenings. I like the evenings being light rather than
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: an early morning start. But when I'm running with the groups,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 3: we have to make the most of the daylight hours.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: So currently, if sunrises just before seven am, so we're
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: up and getting ready to break camp for seven to
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: eight and we need to be set up in camp
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: again by six o'clock at the moment afternoon.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about camping on like wild camping, what
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: types of campsites there are and where you can't camp
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: or shouldn't camp? Right?
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, hot topic and one of a lot of debate
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: and controversy online, I guess is the right way of
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: doing it. So yeah, a lot of us we like
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: to wild camp and we want a wild camp as
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: often as possible, and Morocco is a fantastic country for
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: doing it.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, Oh my gosh, campsites.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: Let's start with campsites. Forget all expectations about European standard campsites.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: When you cross into Morocco, you're in Africa. Now things
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: are different. Campsites very hugely. There are some absolutely stunning campsites,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: this one we're in tonight, brilliant campsites, good toilets and showers,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: there's a swimming pool. They do some fantastic food. It's
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: not expensive. They've got a laundry, so it ticks all
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: the boxes you want. There are other campsites where somebody's
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: just built a wall round a piece of desert and
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: charging you for the privilege of staying inside it. Prices
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: range from four euros up to about fifteen euros a night.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 4: And some of the caravan parks are was it twenty.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a few now which are hitting the twenty
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: euros twenty five euros mark.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: They're not ones I tend to use.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: I prefer camp sites which have got a little bit
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: of character.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: To yeah, which they're so atmospheric here like to bring
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: you a rug sometimes everybody you.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: Get a tea when you arrive, you get fresh bread
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: on request. Beautiful, beautiful things.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 3: There are the caravan sites along the Atlantic coast, which
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: are European standard wall to wall white camper vans. You
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: could be anywhere in the south of Europe along the
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: Mediterranean coast. Of those, you're you're you're not really experiencing
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: what Morocco's got to offer in my opinion, and price
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: is no guarantee of a good camp site. Now, so
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: I've one of my top camp sites borge Bier remain Is.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: I think that's four euros a nights and it's one
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: of the best camp sites in Morocco. They've also got
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: great hotel rooms and things.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 4: Oh the other thing is you most of the time
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 4: will have to hand over your passport.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so if you're if you're checking into a
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: camp site or a hotel, you have to fill in
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: a form with a set of standard information which is
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: required by the government. Actually your name, your occupation, date
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: of birth, address, where have you come from, where you're
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: going to, date of arrival, date of archer, passport number
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: and police number from when you entered the country and
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: sometimes you're VIC or registration number and a signature, which
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: it is unusual. It's not something you do in Europe,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: not something you do in most countries.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: I think South Africa or that's one of Namibia, they
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: do that a little bit.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, for a lot of people coming to Brocots,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: that's a big change and unusual, and it is a
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: legal requirement. And I've been told off by a policeman
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 3: for not filling in my passport number properly on the
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: fore when he came to check.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: It's a silly mistake. But that's campsites.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: There are camp sites here which there are camp sites
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: which are I would say the facilities low quality, but
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 3: the people who run them are stunning and the location
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 3: is stunning. And one of those which which I'm thinking
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: about now is OBErs is lit at the top of
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 3: the High Atlas Mountains, just outside in Mitchell there's a
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: there's a campsite there. You drive up to it, it
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: looks derelict and run down and miserable and depressing, and
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: you think, why would anybody want to pay to camp
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: in when I can drive a kilometer around the side
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: of a lake and I can camp for free, but
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: you're not experiencing it until you go in a Malika,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 3: who's the berber Amazir managers for the campsite, is just
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 3: one of the nicest people in the world. And it's
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: a community owned campsite. They don't generate a lot of income.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 3: They've let the maintenance go, so it's a bit rough
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 3: and ready around the edges. But Malika will treat you
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: like her own children, and she will tell you off
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: if you've not eaten enough, and she'll fuss over you
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: and make sure you're warm enough and all this and
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: it's just brilliant. And unfortunately she's she's getting older now,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 3: she's got a lot of health issues and there has
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: been times when the campsite has been closed while she's
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: been away for medical treatment, and people have left comments
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: on Ioverlander and other apps saying the campsite has now
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 3: gone out of business.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: It hasn't. It's still open.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 3: Go and spend your money with Malika, have a bit
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 3: of fun and engaged with with with a lovely lady.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: And if the quampsite is quiet, you park on the
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 3: edge of the lake still water two thousand meters above
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: sea level in the.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: High Atlas Mountains. It's a beauty, beautiful place.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: Beautiful and when I'm in Morocco, I like to do
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 3: a mix of wild camping and campsites. I like to
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 3: put some money back into local businesses. I've a number
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: of camp sites. I've got good friends who run the campsites,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 3: so I like to come and see them. Top camp
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: sites of Morocco from me top recommendations Oberge Tizlet in
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: Immatill chaff ran Soire Camping recommend best campsite in all
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: of Morocco. Go and support Khdiza who's running the camp sites.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately Francois, her husband who established a campsite, passed away
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 3: last year, so it's been a difficult twelve months for
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: coming up to a year for of them.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: But go.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: Brilliant campsite, very popular with Overlanders. Great food, they've got.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: A bar there twice. Yeah on my recommendation.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, so appreciative of that.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: Just goes.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: Another top one is Oberge Atlas in the Todra Gorge.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: There's this one PARMERI do and mez Ruins Agora borgeby
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: remaining it And I'm running out of my top ten
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: and I haven't got to top that's perfect top ten.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: That's given you all a bit off my favorite camp sites.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 4: You have to let them do their own research a lot.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, go and try the camp sites. What I like
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: might but not be what you like. And there's lots
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: of them out there, so tell me. Wild camping.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so across the country wild camping is prohibited in
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: national parks and on beaches. So a lot of elements
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: of Morocco's legal system is copied from France and Europe,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: and that's fairly standard.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: In Europe.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 3: Is not allowed in national parks, not allowed on beaches.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: Now we're in Morocco. Things don't always follow the letter
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: of the law. There are national parks where you can
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: quite happily wild camp because they are so remote nobody's
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: ever going to know you're there. There are other places.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 3: Erceby is a national park. Technically you're not allowed to
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: wild camp in the June's there, but there are established
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 3: camp sites.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: People do do it every now and again.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 3: Morocco starts to clamp down on the rules round there,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: but it's all a little bit half hearted. Where there's
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of sensitivity in Morocco is along the Atlantic
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: coast and there. As well as the country wide limitations
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: on wild camping, there are also regions who which have
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: local rules about wild camping, and most of those are
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: along the coast between Essewira and cidy Ifne. And when
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: we first started traveling around Morocco, you drive from Esawira
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: down the coasts, beautiful drive along the coast, but the
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 3: last twenty twenty five kilometers before you got to Agadeer,
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: every piece of land between the beach and the road
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 3: was bumper to bumper vans overwintering for six months. There
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 3: were no facilities and it's people never believe me when
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: I say there were thousands of vans, but there were
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 3: genuinely thousands of vans parked up six months of the year.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: They left the rubbish behind, they dumped the toilets. Eventually
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: the authorities had enough and they banned camping and they
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 3: built a load of new European standard expensive camp sites
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: which are very popular.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: But that area is quite sensitive.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: Certain areas it will have a sign.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: That's yeah yeah, so there will be signs up. Some
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: of them don't always look official, but again it's it's Africa.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: Things aren't always on a standard uniform sign and if
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 3: you're reading a review on Ioverland or Park full Night,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: and the comments have got something like where a police
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 3: kept coming and telling us we couldn't stay there.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: That's normally a clue that you're not going to really
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: be allowed.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: To stay there, and I would rather stay somewhere I
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: know for sure isn't an issue than walking up with.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 4: A knock on the door in the middle and they
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 4: will do that.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: They will. They will turn up at two o'clock in
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: the morning and tell you you have to move. And
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: you know that's the worst time.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: You've been asleep for a couple of hours, You've set
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: up camp, you're already to stay the night and then
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: there's a knock on the door and you're told to move.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: I just think you we are seeing post COVID this year.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: There's walk back Hampa vans and Morocco than I've ever
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: seen before. There's been a huge increase in vehicle based
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: travelers coming to Morocco over the last eighteen months and
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 3: after COVID. I don't know yet whether that is just
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 3: a backlog of people who were going to come and
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 3: were delayed with COVID restrictions, or whether it's going to
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: be like this every year now moving forward, with more
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: numbers of people comes more pressure on facilities, and also
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: there's more people who are maybe bending the rules or
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: they didn't understand the rules so they're doing things which
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 3: they did, and if we're not careful as a community,
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 3: inappropriate behavior will eventually result in more and more regulation
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: and more and more restrictions coming in, like we've seen
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 3: across Europe and other places where things become unsustainable. So
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: absolutely try and use a bit of common sense when
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: it comes to world kind of it's private property, you
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: need the owner's permission to camp. That's common sense. You're
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: and somebody else's property. That's got to apply everywhere on
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: the planet surely. The other thing we often get feedback
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: from people is the police turning up and telling them
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: they have to move because the area is not safe.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: And that's something we didn't touch on tonight is.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: Safety and security.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: We're talking about Africa and Islamic countries and a lot
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: of people will be unsure about that, but the police
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: have on a regular basis used safety and security as
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 3: a reason to move people on. Morocco is a very
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 3: safe country to travel in. I believe a lot of
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: the time they are just using that because it's if
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 3: you're trying to get somebody to move on at two
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 3: am and you just say to something you can't camp here,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 3: there's a bit of a language barrier.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: They may end up in a bit of a standoff.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 3: But a lot of people if the police say to
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: somebody it's not safe coming, you're less likely to argue
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: with that. So I think there's a little bit of
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: creative use of language by the police with that. I
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 3: don't think there's big security issues. There are places along
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 3: the coast where drug smuggling is going on between Africa
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 3: and Europe. There's people smuggling going on. There are probably
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 3: people around in those areas you don't want to encounter with.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just using that common sense as a traveler, listening
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: to your gut, you know, yeah, locals, other travelers.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: And again with with with wild camping, those standard rules
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 3: we all know about wild camping is get away from
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: a road, away from villages, tuck away out of site,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: clear the site, take your litter with you if there's
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 3: other litter there, pick a bit extra up, do something
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: good for the country you're traveling in. Arrive late, leave early,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 3: don't leave a trace. It's all that the standard common
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 3: sense stuff, which I would hope everybody does when they're
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: wild camping.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: Absolutely well, thank you, Mark. I want to wrap this
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: up before you lose your voice.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: I'm getting a bit criky, but that was I think
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 3: some of that was last night when we first met
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 3: up and chatted.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think the thing is, thank you for
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: sticking with us, if you're still listening. I think the
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: thing is, though, Morocco is so complex, so interesting, so
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: multi layered, that it deserves you know, it deserves this
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: time we've.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 4: Been talking about it because there are so many.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: Details and interesting things, and I'm sure anybody that's listening
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: has like one hundred percent of a better idea of
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: what it is like to travel here, and maybe, you know,
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: all that information is really empowering for people to make
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: the decision to compose people.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, thank you so much.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: Though for about is my pleasure and with what I'm
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 3: trying to achieve with the business side of things which
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 3: I do, and also helping run the Facebook groups and
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 3: helping travelers. I came here twenty five years ago. I
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: fell in love with the country. I haven't been anywhere
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 3: else since, and for some people that's a bit narrow minded,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: but I want travelers to come to Morocco and fall
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: in love with the country and come back, whether that's
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 3: one of my customers on a tour or people traveling independently.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 3: I'm always happy to help people out.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 4: So where can we find you? Online?
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 3: So you can find me pretty much anywhere connected to
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 3: Morocco online. I'm probably in there somewhere. But my overland
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 3: tour company is Amazeir Overland. Our website is Amazeeroverland dot com.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 3: We're on Facebook, We're on Instagram, and you can also
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 3: find me as a member or admin of the Morocco
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 3: overland groups Overlanding, West Africa, Overland, North Africa and all the.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: Rest of it, and probably a dozen or say well,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: as I said.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm in most Morocco based fan life and overland groups,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: but the ones I run an Overland Morocco, West Africa
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: Overland and there My big.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: Admin duties will include the links in the show notes below. Yeah,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: I wish you all the best for this year's tour season.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah for the fingers crossed and hopefully we'll run into
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: you at some time.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, I'm sure we will do.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: And pizza's on the piece nineteenth of October, open to
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 3: all perfect anybody can come.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: Your challenges to find us, and that is the only challenge.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: It's it's a great fun event and it's it's always
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: good fun to meet the different people who come along
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: and make the events of success.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, we'll link that to the show notes below. You
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: have so many links in links, so yeah, thank you
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: guys so much again for coming and chatting all about Morocco.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: And thank you so much for the to the Overland
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: Journal podcast listeners for tuning into this very long, in depth,
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: awesome episode about Morocco. Thank you so much for joining
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: and we will see you next