Hi

Last year we went to morocco and indeed we traveled the piste merzouga – taouz – tagounite – zagora . The piste is about 180 km and took us two full days. The piste is very confusing and is mostly rocky terrain or tôle but it has some very fast (60 – 70 Km/h in our series) parts also. We travelled without a guide only with some (very few) GPS coordinates so we got lost a lot... we drove trough dry rivers (oueds? ) and we even found a dry salt lake!! We enjoyed this piste very much and it has some excelent camping spots but be carefull not to cross the algerian border...
If you, by any remote possibility, need some mecanical help, Zagora is the place. Just ask for “mohamed land rover”! Great guy, and you can give away t-shirts (those with advertisement about your local supermarket) to pay for some small intervention.
What are the M5, M1, M4 etc. that you refer to?

I can also recomend the region of Gourama (I think it is about 100 Km north of merzouga, but I am not sure...) great landscape ( american desert kind ) and some genuine berbere contact.

About Portugal you are right... it is a great place for off-roading and especially in a soft-top series you can enjoy our sun blessed contry ( serra da lousã, serra da estrela, all the atlantic coast from lisbon to sagres in Algarve, etc...) .
As for the portuguese LR-club, it is great but... I don´t belong to it because it´s activities are very expensive and I am a student. The average activity cost about 250 Euro, wich is very much, regarding that I have been two weeks in morocco and spent 400 Euro (all included).

Maybe we can meet in senegal in august!
Are you going to drive back all the way or just ship the cars and fly back home?

See you,

Renato