Morocco 4x4 overland tour, day 9 we got lost a bit

Lost in Lake Iriki

Ok so remember the previous day was amazing, we camped out in the desert after having a fantastic fun day.

The route we had planned was to go west from where we were (I must get the sat nav coordinates) to an Oasis Source Sacree Abd-Er-Rahmane at and the cross Iriki north and end up in Foum Zguid.

The day started well, there we no or few tracks and I think because of the problems James had earlier with the 90 he got a squeak and decided to check it out, Mike and Jerry took the opportunity to get a Tiffin in.  I drove off for a quick comfort break, this time without camels.

Look a camel!

We drove west to the Oasis and got there well before midday, Rachel and Jerry went and bought camels made from recycled stuff.  Rachel tried out here new car and we then decided to head out North West to Forum Zguid.

The local Camel selling place

Sid admiring camels

James managed to get a puncture.

Puncture no 1

I do not think much of the car Rachel bought.

Nice series 2

Ok, I have to admit probably should not have turned left into a dry river bed and kept heading north towards the mountain tracks.  However I did and we ended up at a crossroad in the river bed and Ken said go right which we did.  About 2 a miles later I was stuck in the dunes, James got a puncture and Adam/Sid were stuck in the P38 about 1/2 mile behind.

The river bed crossing here were quite dull unlike the ones we found a day later.

After some faffing I got out thanks to James and then parked waiting for the others, I walked back to see where the P38 was, James popped along and towed them out as well. At the point I think we realised James 90's ratios had been further lowered making it pull like a hell.

I remember at one point saying something the the CB like "oh gosh sir that was bad luck it seems the sand got to me a little and I'm not at all happy".  With all of us together again I went for a walk to see what was about and try to see if we could get to out to the track.   I saw a grouping if three trees nead some rock, but I didn't think we would make it, I believe we ended up about, 29°52'50.3"N 6°07'14.6"W

Look it up you will see the track we were aiming for just north.

We decided it was best to re-trace our tracks and go back to where we turned the wrong way.  At this point the weather got windy and there was obviously a sand storm coming in.

So we set off, tracing my way back I got stuck again, as did the P38.  I waited to be rescued, I did not know that James was pulling out the P38 and also pulled the bull bars off of it.  If this was not bad enough my car was sinking a little more so I dug it out and waited for Ken to come to the rescue. 

Anyway, after much snatching and pulling we did eventually managed to get out of the sand and end up on some rocky outcrop, which as it turns out was not where we thought we had entered the lake bed.  The tracks we had made were gone and I guess we were lucky to know the rough way we were going, well not really we still had the GPS.  Anyway, on foot we found out where we should go, we re-inflated out tyres and headed all the way back to the Oasis.  OK that was bad, back to where we started hours earlier but this time in a sand storm.

So, what next, a quick team chat and we decided to try to get to back to Mhamid, things must have been bad Mike and Jerry did not have a meal.  So off we set; however, setting off the storm just got worse and worse and worse, you get the picture right.

We have two landies

Err where's Mike?

Grr sand everywhere

With the P38 getting hot and James having lost some tools when his back door came open after we hit one of the now common dips Rachel and I took the lead again after.  I had calmed down and we picked our way around the dune fields past where we had camped the night before back towards the main road and back to town for a hotel, camping would have been nasty with the wind.  Ken also lost a loo roll, I have no idea how but it did cause some merriment in a long and quite frankly stressful at times.

We were in a sand storm, at night, with my buggered headlamps, moving fast trying to get out of the desert.

Eventually we got to the main road, but the visibility was that bad we could not see the tarmac when we were only 20 meters from it.

Just before we got to the road Ken pulled up and said "What a fantastic drive, I have not thought about my house all day", err err.  Ken loved the more extreeme stuff.

It was 10pm by then we needed to sleep so we set out for a hotel.  We found the Sahara Sky hotel who promptly pissed everyone off with some absolutely stupid suggested charges for the rooms, and also trying to cram us all into as few a rooms as possible.  It was only when we walked out that the manager came running out and tried to give us a better rate.  This is considering they could not serve us food.  We probably would have spend £600 in the bar that night is we had stayed, but it was thier loss.  Anyway, well and truly pissed off we went back to a Dar at Tamegroute.

They had rooms.  On entering reception the owner said "good you here after your call earlier", I said "yup" everyone else said "No", I guess I wanted a room and a shower more than eveyone else.  She did accomodate us and we all got rooms and a show, blimey the amount of sand which fell off me was unreal.  There was the usual confusion over who was staying with whom but when this was sorted out we all had a shower and got together for the evening meal.  Sid was not happy at this point and we all agreed to have a sleep after a meal and work out what we would do tomorrow, however we decided the rest of the trip would not involve F'ing SAND!!!!

The next morning the owner of the hotel had arranged a guide for us to look around the town, apparently it had the best ancient Arab library in the world and also a underground village.  I'll cover this in my next post.

Oh and my little camera packed up!