We stopped briefly in Layoune to do some food shopping, this is Western Saharas capital, from there we camped out near a beach and had guy with a gun came by to tell us we are camping in land mine area so everyone was a bit careful going to the toilet that night, it was also Di and Tonys 5th Anniversary so we celebrated a bit. Next day we stopped at Boujdour to do some more food shopping, Dave and me finished up our last dirhams by buying bananas and oranges; moving on we found an excellent camp site near the [View Full Entry]

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The Western Sahara has recently been on the news again with the civil war largely forgotten over the last 30 years. My contact with the Saharawi caravan has largely been out of curiousity. The Polisario Front is well known as an African Liberation movement that resisted the Spanish during their colonisation period. Now today it is a NEW master... Morocco. In 1975 seeing a vacuum the Morrocan King ordered by claim of histroical right the invasion of Western Sahara territory. The Polisario Front went back underground and they continued their resistance struggle against their new masters. Although the Moroccan and the [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the length of time between updates. There isn't much for internet cafes when you're bush camping in the desert! We've got a lot to update on so we'll try to split it up into a few entries. The next part of our journey took us through the disputed territory of Western Sahara. We won't go into the historical details of the dispute, but the result is that there are police checks every couple of kilometers (or so it seems) and the ocasional mine field. Surprisingly though, the road is all tarmac and in very good shape the whole way [View Full Entry]

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The train ride (see ) had left me dreary and adrenaline-less. In Nouadhibou I took lodge at a camp for overlanders and after a much needed resting day I begun my quest for a ride north, through Western Sahara and up to Marrakech, where a flight destination London awaited me. I had bought the ticket over a month earlier, still in Mali, but I had obviously underestimated both width and slowness of Africa. Now all I had got were a mere six days to find someone willing to give me a lift up to Dakhla (600 kms of desert), and from [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, whatever that means. Whatever it is, and whoever actually owns it, it is basically just a huge patch of desert, [View Full Entry]

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Western Sahara rarely features on lists of the world's countries anymore. Even on most maps, this large area of northwest Africa generally appears as part of Morocco. However, even in the eyes of the United Nations, Western Sahara is a seperate entity. The country used to be known as Rio de Oro after it was grabbed by Spain during the scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century. They grabbed it as a protectorate mainly because other European countries were claiming new colonies so why shouldn't they. It was soon realised that the land had little economic worth and never [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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