January 21, 2024 – Boujdour, Morocco
Jan 29th, 2024 by rallyadmin
Were up early for coffee, tea and rat pack breakfast. The rat packs are quite tasty but the choices are weird. The label on the package seems to be gibberish (it’s actually written in English but by a random word generator) so choice of meal almost doesn’t matter.
The RV camp isn’t full but everyone else here is in either a caravan, a standard RV or a desert truck. There’s a Swiss couple next to us that is part of a two truck team. The truck they are driving is a proper desert truck, 4 wheel drive with high ground clearance. It’s emblazoned with KTM logos and looks like it is a relic of the old days of the Lisbon-Dakar rallyraid, complete with a couple of moto airplane boxes on the roof rack. It the polar opposite of the Land Raver.
We pack and leave. The road south is getting more desert like, more barren and empty. The tiny villages are very few and far between. The fuel stops are as much as 200 or more kms apart. We drive along at a modest speed with Clemo in draft.
We stop for a brunch snack to let the Land Raver cool and to get diesel. When we leave, Clemo leads and Pinky pulls out behind in hot pursuit straight into a radar trap and gets his speeding ticket. It’s only 150 dirhan and he tries to get out of the ticket by showing his police ID but they aren’t having it. Back on the road with a slightly embarrassed Pinky.
We plod along the two lane road which occasionally expands to 4 lanes only revert to 2 lanes not far along and then to road construction. It’s a boring drive and the boredom is broken only by camel herds, some quite large, on both sides of the road. The camels often amble into the road when crossing from one side to the other side, stopping in the middle of the road to stare at us. There is definitely no urgency in the camel way of life.
We arrive at our hotel after dark. The hotel looks like a big improvement over the one we stayed in last year when booking it on booking.com but, in person, it’s the same as the usual fare (though with en suite toilet). There’s no restaurant here a few in Boujdour but there is a fish restaurant just up the street.
The food is quite good (fried calamari for me). Back to the hotel for the night. Tomorrow we go to Dakhla for a rest day with 2 nights camping on the beach.
Obi-wan