So Laayoune ended up being a great city at night Streets were full of people. Food and Coffee were cheap (3 course meal was about dollars? good coffee was 50 cents). Lots of fruit and amazingly colourful dressed people. And people didnt pester you trying to sell things for crazy prices. Sat on the bus today for almost 10 hours. Lots of checkpoints. I think 6, friendly police today, many smiles and hellos. Hopefully I can get some kind of ride to Mauritania tomorrow. Lots of camels here, maybe soon I will get to eat some of their meat and drink [View Full Entry]

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A blistery wind front roars through the town, and the sky is blotted out with clouds of orange and grey. One could call it a dust storm, but any storm in the Sahara is worthy of that title. The wind merely lifts all the particulate that's always present into frenzy. Maybe you just don't see it until the storm. The landmass of Western Sahara is a region sparsely populated but largely contested. This is nothing new, and is evident even by the language spoken here. The dialect is known as Hassaniya Arabic, and only has about 3 million speakers. Its origin [View Full Entry]

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Dakhla doesnt appear in this platform, big sourprise that is... well, so the 24 hours bus was a piece of cake, as expected. I think by now I can sleep in any position, so a bus with air conditioning seemed pretty nice. just took my sheets and towell out and I was ready to roll. in the end it was more like 28 hours I think? although it was partly my fault? cause in every police control they checked me out (only white in the bus...). first three a cop bothere to come in and find me. last three the bus [View Full Entry]

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Ess-Agadir-Laayoune-Dakhla Tom Griffith When is a country not a country? According to Morocco, and 25 other countries, and the Arab League, Western Sahara is not a real nation. It is simply the large, sandy, camel-infested, southern provinces of Morocco. According to the Western Saharan government in exile, 45 other countries, and the African Union, Western Sahara is the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, an independent country under Moroccan military control. And, according to the UN, it is a non self-governing territory, [View Full Entry]

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Om 19:00u vertrekt de bus, ik ben ruim op tijd, drink een colaatje op een terasje pal voor de bus en om 19:30 vertrekken we, de bus zit niet vol gelukkig en ik kan schuin op twee plaatsen zitten, er wordt regelmatig gestopt, voor een pauze of om mensen in en uit te laten stappen, het valt best mee zo het is bijna comfortabel. Als we weer een keertje stoppen rond 6:30 loop ik slaperig naar buiten voor een sigaretje en we zijn al in Tan Tan blijkt, snel mijn spullen uit de bus halen. Het is nog donker en ik [View Full Entry]

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Not only is this a physical journey for me, but also a journey in english semantics. Be indulgent, have patience with my linguistic faults as I try to twitch and wrestle with english expressions that you'll find far from idiomaticly correct. It felt good to leave Chefchaouen at last, next time I'll be back with the hordes of tourists in July or August. Not only did all the hotels get booked by police and security staff prior to the kings arrival, the constant cold and the afternoon drizzle got to me at last. So of to Fes it was. Once again [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Tan Tan was a bit difficult, I was torn, such a scruffy little town but everyone we met had a heart of gold, I really wanted to stay on but was also concerned that 'wasting' time in Morocco would leave less time to see Mauritania! Getting a SATAS bus to Dahkla for 320Dh was a good move. Clean, heated and more spacious I knew this wasn't going to be the same journey from hell as we had had with the other bus from Casablanca! The journey was relatively uneventful apart from the odd police posts where yet again I had [View Full Entry]

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Since I last wrote I went through Marrakesh, Agadir, Laayoune, Dakhla, and then across the border into Mauritania where I have so far been to Noadhibou and Nouakchott. Marrakesh was pretty and interesting but too touristic for me. Laayoune and Dakhla are in Western Sahara, which is disputed, and there seems to be some tension between the Moroccans who are sort of occupying it, and the Saharans. The desert is really beautiful, and unbelievably huge. The main even of this segment of the trip, however, occured between Dakhla and Noadhibou, where I was attempting to cross the border. I left [View Full Entry]

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I'm now in Dahkla, in the Western Sahara. The journey took 22 hours. It might have been quicker if we hadn't been stopped at police check points and asked the same damn fool questions so many times. Governments always put up so many checkpoints when their authority in the area is in question. The other dead give away about the contested nature of this region was all the big White 4 wheel drive cars with the letters UN on the side! The questions that annoy me, include being asked my profession. If I told the truth, NONE! Place of permanent residence, [View Full Entry]

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