Morocco 4x4 overland tour, geep and fantastic views

Heading towards home

All good trips have to come to and end and and ours was not different, after 9 days on our Morocco tour we had to start heading towards home.  We did some planning and decided to take it easy for a couple of days and take a route north and miss Marakesh on the left (if your looking at a map up the right way).

This was odd though, I could not help but think we had not done all we wanted to do and we did rush some things, so even though we had a tough couple of days some of us were already talking about coming back by now.  Ken was already booked on another trip later in the year, Mike was gagging to come back as soon as possible.

Personally, I already had a couple of trips planned for 2014 and 15 so it was always going to be 2016 for me, this sounds like a long time away, but it will come around fast.  Anyway, enough of the waffle, lets get on with the tour.

So, by now we had done some sand, more sand, corrugated roads, sand, sand, rocky stuff, corrugated roads, some sand then some road works, and tarmac.....  What we had missed was rocks.

Rocks, Mountains and Geep

So after we had breakfast and packed up, recovered our heads from the beer and grabbed a coffee we set off from Foum-Zguid to head towards Tata.  The roads on the whole were paved and we saw some fantastic scenery, the 1st thing we stopped for a photo shoot was the mountains we could see in the distance from the day before and then shortly followed by an excellent dry river bed which looked pretty much like a dry Grand Canyon, but smaller.

Mountain range on the N12 from Foum Zguidd to Tata

Larry on tarmac again

The dry river bed was just as we headed out of Tissinit, you can miss it, its on the right after the town.  I swear everyone though I was going to drive into the bed and get stuck again, but we parked to have a look around.

Dry river near Tissint

All parked up for a group photo

Sid even managed to have a walk about

Larry and the P38, the odd couple on a trip full with Defenders

Either there people are really small or the river bed is big.

We realised at this time that we really did not have many photo's of us on our Landies so we also decided to do some posing on the vehicles.

Rachel on James 90, obviously Larry did not want her on his bonnet.

Jerry and Mike, probably wondering where we were heading next.

Garside Snr, and the 90 again.

We got to Tata ok and James and his dad went to find a cash point to replenish funds after the earlier 90 repair.  Sid and I took different trips to a local butchers to get some meat as we decided we would have a BBQ that evening.  I used my beast French to order 2KG of ground beef.  Sid however, went and pointed at some carcasses hanging down from the wall.  He bought the smaller one.

We still till this day cannot be 100% sure what Sid bought in Tata, we know it was not cat because it was to big.  It could have been Dog that could have made us rough.  So we decided it was either Goat or Sheep.  So it was then called Geep, which seemed like a fair compromise.

After we got the meat in Tata and some fuel we headed off towards Tafraoute via Tisgui-Ldaou-Ballou cutting across country up into the mountains via Bou-Zarif and the Tasserirt gorge , we though we would probably get to where we needed to be by 6pm after a fantastic days sight seeing.

Wrong.

We got lost a bit as soon as we tried to find the mining track because the locals had moved the entrance to the track to Bou-Zarif again.  Or we were just no good at working the route out.  I think it was the former here due to the hastily made up signs.

The scenery was amazing as soon as we hit the mountains it was fantastic.

Fantastic

We spent hours travelling around so lovely mountain trails and then onto some more difficult terrain, we got lost about 3 times but we all absolutely loved the driving, some of which was quite technical.  To me this was by far the best driving experience I've had, it was also for once not too hot.

Mining track

Ken in tow

Onto a plateau

Err we got lost, we should have gone my way :-)

I have no doubt that the river beds we were crossing would be full of water during early spring, we spent a lot of the time at +4,000 feet and we could from time to time see snow on some of the higher peaks dotted about so it probably would not be agreat idea to come up here from November to Early March, April was ok though.

I can't really say how good this was, we had trails, crossing, more trails, the odd little village emerging from nowhere, with the kids chasing us down for sweets.  Us going around in circles and at some points squares (you know your lost when you can do a square) It went on and on and on, lovely.
 

Dry river bed crossing from inside Larry

As if from nowhere we ended up at the bottom of a valley and then crossed to the other side and up a windy mountain road, we believe there was a gold mine in the valley hence the tarmac road.  So we headed over the pass to our original destination, not.

It always amazes me what a Land Rover can do, well a proper old one like ours, although there was some tough stuff about we all went over and through it really easily and the only thing which tool a bashing was my tow hook again.

Another windy road going up looking down on the valley we crossed into.

We pulled over for some more pictures.

Shame some ugly sod got into this one though.

Nice

Anyway, up over and down the other side, the up another, down, up, down, up down, getting it yet.  Guess what we got lost again.  Anyway, to cut a long story short, we got very lost ish, the kind of lost where we kept going through villages and it was on roads by now, so it was nice lost.  We were also getting higher up and it started to rain.

Well, time to find somewhere to stay we all agreed on the CB's, except Mike who was still having issues with his.  So taking point as usual I kept looking for somewhere suitable to camp for the night.  The problem with being in the mountains though is finding somewhere flat for 5 Land Rovers and 5 tents to stay.

Just as the sun was setting I spotted an outcrop with no goats on it, across a dry river (I know it was raining).  We all crossed the 1/2 mile or so from the road, across the river bed and then hid behind some palm trees and bushes for the evening and setup the wild camp for the night.

This was now a military operation and we were all setup with the shelters our and the BBQ on within 10-15 minutes for a night of good cooking Burgers and Geep.

Geep is an interesting meet, if you BBQ it and chew it for hours its actually really nice.  I think however your probably better off cooking it for hours in a source and then eating it quickly when tender.  We now believed it was Goat. But to us, we had invented the Geep smaller than a Jabberwocky and can be used for shoe leather if needed.

Oh and a massive thanks to Mike, Jerry and Ken who donated some of the 100's bottles of beer to the BBQ and some Wine.  We talked and ate well into the night before going to sleep.  It was however bloody cold.

The next morning we worked out we were no further than 1 mile from 3 roads, so we broke up camp and moved on before we were spotted by the local childern and they chased us for sweets.

Packing up the mountain campsite

Ken did it in 30 seconds

Out oasis in the mountains

Mike and Jerry praying before we set off

Oh did I say Jerry had runny poo that morning, I don't think Geep suited him at all.  And, Sid was very cold after giving away his onsie.

So in the Landies, go 1/2 mile to the road, turn left and exactly 2 miles later we were in the destination we had been heading for all the last day.  This is typical of doing this kind of tour.  Sometimes you just don't get there.

Bloody typical.