11-15 Oct

From Midelt we had a long drive west to Essaouira to catch up with some old friends and take stock before hitting the pistes. Fairly uneventful drive apart from getting stopped by the police for overtaking on a solid white line, stern talking to any we were on our way. We spent a day in Essaouira catching up on news from the last year. Big news was the Game of Thrones film crew being in town filming Season 3, can’t wait to see the end result.

P1020883 by Trackasylum, on Flickr
We then took some back roads down to Tafroute, got fined for speeding on the main road, 72 in a 60kph, stupid really as we’ve driven the road hundreds of times and knew there were police where we got stopped. Our route from here was new to us up over to Imouzzer Des Ida Ou Taanae the across the Sous Valley to Tafroute. Last time we visited was 2003 so we took the opportunity to revisit the Blue Rocks. Since our last visit there a graded paste all the way down and the rocks had received a fresh coat of paint.
That night we stayed in the popular cheapie Hotel Tafroute. Word of advice – don’t bother it has gone hugely downhill. The bathroom and toilet facilities were appalling and there are much better options for a stop in town and campsites a little further out.

P1020973 by Trackasylum, on Flickr
Now on we were aiming for as much piste as possible. Our first, and one of several, was from Chris Scott’s fantastic Morocco Overland Book. MA3 was our chosen route and despite the rain of late September didn’t seem to have suffered. A large part is along river beds but this wasn’t a problem, the big river rocks occasionally meant the route was a little indistinct but route finding was easy. All in it took us about 9 hours from Tafroute to Tata. That night’s stop was Camping Municipal in Tata. Chock full of French camper vans as many popular sites are overwinter.

P1030044 by Trackasylum, on Flickr
Our next choice was a hybrid of MA9 and MA6, we took the section of MA9 from Tata to Akka Iherne, where we joined a fairly new asphalt road up to about KM87 on MA6. Probably worth noting if you wanted to make the route a little faster.

P1040014 by Trackasylum, on Flickr
Here on it was MA6 and one of the highlights of the trip. Chris suggests doing this route from North to South but, dare I suggest it, I think it’s better in reverse. If you’ve done this route you probably know why! We had a long low ratio climb up through the Anti Atlas heading north taking about 2 hours end to end. About half way we spotted some 4x4’s heading towards us on a single track ledge. Rather than push on we stopped on one of the hair pins to let them pass where there’s space.

As we’d been working the truck hard for a few hours whilst we waited I popped the bonnet to let things cool down a tad. I’ve said before we’re complete overland novices but through this site I’ve picked up a little basic understanding of how to go about things. One of the things I picked up along the way was if you meet others on the trail to say hello or wave and establish if everything’s ok. Logic being you would want someone to stop and help if you were in trouble and you may find out valuable route advice. Simple basic courtesy and good manners imho.

So picture this if you will, an organised Raid heading down a steep mountain piste finds another foreign 4x4 pulled over with the bonnet up and two English guys stood around. You’d think the tour leader would
1. Wave or say hello
2. Ask if everything’s ok?
3. Thanks us for waiting to let them through and
4. Tell us how many sodding vehicles were in the group

Did they? Hell no, we had to flag down the 5th vehicle and ask how many were in the group, 10 apparently! Maybe I got it wrong with the above but when we worked out the origins of the group I wasn’t surprised :evil:

Given there were more to come we waited for a while and nothing arrived so on we went. Eventually we arrived at the top of the ascent to breath taking views of the Issil Plain. Now this was my plan and reason for reversing the route. If you don’t know what’s coming the view is stunning and the reason why I think Mr Scott’s route is the wrong way round.

P1040031 Panorama 1 by Trackasylum, on Flickr
As we descended down onto the plains, we found the rest of the tour group, blocking the piste with a flat tyre, however this lot seemed more pleasant and after a few minutes we squeezed past and headed up to the road from Tazenakht. My plan here was to then head north onto MH9, the track picked got us within 1/2km before turning into a goat track Light was fading so rather than try find a way through we went back to the road and onto Taliouine for a night at Camping Toubkal, although we had a room rather than camping.