Off Road in Morocco?

It hasn' t been long since my last trip this year (www.saharan-rally.co.uk) and before that drove to Mongolia. But I am already itching to get back on the road again. So I have decided next year I want to nip down to Morocco. Probably go down summer 2010.

Now I don't need advice on what sort of car, tyres, what to take, ferry crossings etc. All I really want, (if you would be so kind of course) is for those that have actually been to Morocco to give me a few pointers of some decent routes away from roads. I know there are guides, lots of information on the net, but from my experience, you can never get the correct impression unless you speak to someone who has actually been there, or do it yourself!

Not afraid to go off-track - quite happy to get lost - more than happy to do hundreds of miles without coming across anything. Certainly won't be going with a guide or tour operator as that is not our style at all. Are there parts of Morocco like this or is it a bit more built up than the romanticised picture that many have in their head?

Any pointers of areas, references to maps, particular tracks or interesting town-to-town routes would be big time appreciated

Cheers,

Alex

griffdowg has been and got loads of photos and that.Send him a pm

Excellent, cheers

Hi Alex,

Plenty to see and do in Moroc. How long are you planning in country? I see you say "summer" not sure if this is a good idea! Sept/Oct would be best, or April/May although there may still be snow in the High Atlas.

Onto Routes. Loads. Depends on the person. Why did you go to Algeria? to sample the culture or to drive as far away from civilisation as possible ? meeting locals or driving offroad all day without seeing anyone? VERY important questions.

All this could be answered so easily by asking if you have a Garmin based GPS unit. There is an awesome free map on the net which you can use that has literally hundreds of routes. We used this mainly with a few of the classics from Chris Scotts book. IF your not using GPS then paper mapping is actually quite hard as you well know, routes in these areas change very often and mapping has not been updated since the 50's. Difficult to access whats the best, the must see's etc without knowing what you want. If you look at my site I have a lengthy trip report that should be detailed enough for you to follow exactly. at the end is a spreadsheet on where we started/ended each day, how much piste/tar and the distance covered. This should also be an indicator of what you can achieve there. We didnt hang about, but we didnt rush either. leaving 10/11am each day and finishing around 5pm (1 hour before dark?) stop in the day for food, but not much else. We thought we could achieve more, but the 1:1m Michelin (742?) map is deceptive (due to scale no doubt!) so you dont go quite as far as you think you would.

Give me more specifics and i will come back with something

G

Hey Griff, thanks for taking time to reply

Summer is fine - been in the Gobi in the summer months, we don't mind the heat - it is more the Land Rover I would worry about hehe!

It is going to be quite a brief visit to Morocco - perhaps a week and a bit or maybe 2 inside Morocco itself. I know this doesn't sound like very long at all, but we do cover quite a lot of miles - usually up at dawn and settle by dusk. A normal day we would expect to do minimum of 300/400 miles, on a partic tough day we would do a minimum of 150/200 miles. Through europe to get down there and back, well, 36 hours driving solid on shifts is quite normal!

Went to Algeria as in my opinion you can't beat being in the middle of nowhere, driving on less travelled routes (or making your own is even better!) I am more than happy to drive days at a time without seeing anyone, being self sufficient is great. We avoid hotels and campsites unless it is law that we have to stay somewhere.

From what we have done in the past, we seem to sample culture accidentally - we always seem to end up at someones house or having an indepth discussion with a group of people we don't know and can't really understand and so on. Experiencing culture is great of course, not denying that, but it certainly wouldn't be high on my agenda as we always seem to stumble on it when least expected. If that makes sense?

We don't have GPS of any description - we prefer guesswork and maps! Some people might think that using a 99p windscreen mounted suckon compass and heading roughly "east" towards a road that probably doesn't exist anymore is a bit daft, but it's the way we like to do things Of course there is a good arguement to say that if we use our normal methods we could quite possibly miss some of the good bits but hmm.

Liking your website, came across it in the past but not looked at it in any detail

Ok, excellent, you should be able to cover a fair amount of ground then. Unfortunately you dont get any of the good stuff until your further south with eats a day or 2 into your schedule either way.

Do you have the Mich 742 map? there is a good piste running west out of Midelt takes you to Imilchil. A road quite often travelled is the Todra gorge, but in my opinion it is worth it. When we were there, there were plenty of washouts which prevented all cars and most 4x4's from going up but we made it through. Imilchil is a good stop, nice campsite on the lake (lac Tislit). coming down we took the Dades gorge, did not see anyone all day, easy enough to navigate, highly recommended. there are a couple of pistes heading south from Dades to Nekob then more stuff to take you to Zagora. from there you can head south to Lac Iriki and some dunes. nice piste runs west out of Zagora to foum Zguid alternatively double back and take the piste from Zagora east toward Erg Chebbi. There is so much to drive, Its almost not worth going off piste. but thats your call. IF you make all this in good time, you could head SW out of Lac Iriki off piste and that is pretty barren down there on the Algerian/Western Sahara border. Damn hot to, even in October!

let me know if you need any particulars

G

Yeah fairly sure I have that map.

Thanks for the info, that is quite a bit for me to be getting on with

plenty more if you need it have you ever seen that DVD "morocco pistes". ITs made by a bloke called Darrin (roaming yak) he is clearing out is flat and selling the last box off cheap so its £6/DVD. Ive ordered one up through paypal, might be worth a look. Its seems pretty well put together and he is a top bloke. covers a few pistes, some of which i mentioned above.

link here: Sale: Morocco: The Desert Pistes DVD - only £6 - The HUBB

G

Cool. Let me know if it is any good and I will get one!

Good thread. I too am looking into morroco for my first exped sometime end of this year/next and wanting to do something similar to what you have described rusty.

infact your sahara rally website is what inspired us to go buy a defender 90. Couldnt wait till next year for the mongol rally.

Just need to get work out how to go about organising something now...

Griff: decided I may as well buy that DVD instead of waiting! What price did you pay for the ferry if you don't mind me asking?

Landyberks: Cool that our site insipred you to buy a 90! Morocco is probably one of the easiest places to get to - ferries are quite cheap and plentiful and no VISA required so we thought it would be an excellent in-between to a longer trip in a few years time. In theory no real planning is needed for Morocco - ferry tickets can even be bought on the day. Passport, car, food, camping stuff - sorted!

Are you doing the Mongol rally next year then? Personally I would not bother with the "official" Mongol Rally - all in my opinion of course but I think it that has become very commercialised now - and quite expensive - and even more restrictions to what car you can take. Many say the last proper Mongol Rally was in 2007 - of course I would agree with them as that's when I went hehe! If you are going to do Mongolia, do it off your own back - check out the topic by Big ad in this section of the forum - he has a blog too. Mongolia and back is possible in about 5 weeks I reckon.

rustyrhinos said:

Now I don't need advice on what sort of car, tyres, what to take, ferry crossings etc.

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Are you SURE you want to know the price? :hysterically_laughi

The DVD is only £6, use your ebay funds to buy it regarding the ferry, do you mean the Algerciras - Ceuta ferry? or Portsmouth - Bilbao?

UK - Spain was £500 return
Spain - Moroc (ok spain again) was 240Euros return.

You may get it cheaper if you hunt around. We got there, bought tickets in 15min and were on the ferry 10min later. We didnt hang about. What till you get to the dock rather than buying out of town. Plenty of sellers at the docks/town.

G

Hehe, well, thought as I was looking into it Id see what you found the price for incase you found something stupidly cheap! Are those prices for one person and a car? Best price I can find Spain-->Moroc return (2 adults, 1 car) is £323. I hadn't even considered Portsmouth -->Bilbao as an option but I don't really see much point in it - its only 800 miles to that point by car and would take about the same time or slightly less by car and fuel will cost less than the ferry.

Already bought the DVD as above...hopefully he has got some left still!

Been wanting to do the mongol rally for a couple of years just never got round to it,

Would happliy do the route in the 90 but not sure if it would be too easy. Also we are limited to about 2.5weeks max return. Clearly we wouldnt want to dump our landy in mongolia, and dont have the funds to fly it back.

I will keep lookin into it all and slowly build up the kit needed. Need to put the 90 through its paces in the UK first to ensure we havnt bought a lemon.

Good luck with your organisation. Plenty of into from those links.

Cheers

2.5 weeks return from Mongolia is not a problem - it can be done in 9 days if you just come back through Russia.

You can make the route as easy or as hard as you like - some of the stuff we did in the Gobi (fair enough, we were lost) was quite challenging. And some of the roads/tracks can be very tough on the car in Kazakhstan (we broke 7 leaf springs in total in our SJ and the general hammering it got cracked the car in several places, both body and chassis). It is not going to be "technical" driving but certainly a challenge for the car and driver if you want it to be.

Just a bit more info for those looking into Morocco, quoted from another forum, thought it was very handy:

good for you, maps are best, down with GPS

www.themapshop.co.uk has many moroccon maps at 1/250k and 1/100k so better than michelin959.

Best offroad bits i enjoyed on 2 bike trips are below: (route nos off my old mich959, some maybe tarmac now

)

Igherm to Tata; 7086

Tata, Akka-Irhen, Foum-Zguid; 6837,6838

Foum-Zguid, Lac Iriki (dry salt lake, proper flat and empty), Oued draa, to Tagounite or Mhamid; 6961

Zagora, Valee du Draa, Zaouia Tafetchna, Nekob, Boumalne Dades; 6957, 6966,6907

Erg Chebbi dunes/Merzougga circumnavigate the dunes

Erfoud, Boudnib; 3465

Tazarine, Alnif; 3454,3458

Boumalne Dades, Gorges du dades,Tilmi,Agoudal, Lac Tislit, Imilchil, Tizi-n-isly; 6901,6905,1903

Bin el Ouidane, Cathedral Rock loop Zaouia-Ahanesal, Azilal; 1803,1807

Follow any tracks leading away from Foum-Zguid, Tagounite, Merzouga/Erg Chebbi will get you away from it all. Apparently tracks southwest of Akka, Assa towards TanTan long, empty and featureless!

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Which is spot on for someone that has no intention of using GPS

thats pretty much a more detailed decription of what i wrote one or two places in there we did not visit though.

Just be aware that any paper maps will not be upto date.

I worked out the price of the spain vs france/spain route and it was only £100 more to take the spain ferry. We decided on this so we had 24hours of none driving before getting back to the UK. Dont think i would do it again though as i was so bored on the ferry! I spent a fortune on Beer, gambling, food etc.

Algerciras - Ceuta was for my 90 and 2 adults. not sure how they break it down, they dont explain much! wait till you get there. try to beat 240 euro, see how you get on. Tangier may be a better option/cheaper worth looking into.

G

240 Euros is damn good, best I have is £290 now. What operator is that with? I think it's probably cheaper to do as you did and turn up on the day and get tickets.

rustyrhinos said:

I think it's probably cheaper to do as you did and turn up on the day and get tickets.

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It will be

I lied, it was 264.60 euros. vehicle was 153, 55.80/adult just found our tickets, we went with FRS.

HTH

G

Thanks for the advice Rusty.

Def want any route we do to be quite hard. Whats the point if there is no challenge eh?

Thanks for the advice chaps. Hope you dont mind if i bug you for more information later on in the year when i get the funds together to start organising a trip.

Cheers
Chris

Cheers Griff

Yup, a challenge is always good It's all good Chris, I certainly don't mind giving out information where I can - helps me re-live the experiences anyway