Mini me

Felipe was following his father's footsteps to concentrate on his own transition...


 

Ali Baba reincarnation...

 

Well, at least the locals called me that way!! Mind the color of the turbant!!

Heading to the Todras Gorges...

 
 
 

This pics from Emon illustrated very well the rest of the journey towards the gorges.

We found a place situated in the middle of two valleys for camping and stopped just before the sunset, after granting permission with a man that lived not far. The views were amazing and shortly we were having a nice chat around a campfire. As the men searched for wood fire further up in the mountain, a car stopped by the campsite. They were from the Forestry Police and asked if we were hunting...Later on few kids from the area set a fire next to us to try to get some attention but soon were gone.

Next day we were back on the road with magnificent views of the Atlas mountains and stopped by a green lake name Tsilik for a picnic. Part of the slip road was submersed into the lake water...Adrian and I couldn't resist and went for a bit of dip...very nice!!

Off again into the scenic route we reached Todras Gorges later in the afternoon and Wow!! What a view!! Amazing scenery and great shots of the G4 convoy!! We stopped for a bit of shopping at the stalls on the road side next to our day's destiny in Tinerhir.

Crossing the Atlas...

 
 
 

Back to the camping, we slept early to rest for the next day's drive towards Todras Gorges, with a plan to camp on the road side as soon as we were out of the main road. We spotted some monkeys and stopped for a quick look, but they quickly disappeared into the woods. Outstanding scenary, few water crossings with the snowed peaks of the Atlas in the background...what else you want?

Shopping...

 

Shopping in Morocco is a fine art and if you don't like to negotiate you will for sure pay very high prices here...As a guidance you should aim for final price around 30 to 45% of the ask price and start bidding around 25% without shame. The signs from the global recession could be seen here, with less visitors and traders more keen to cut a deal. The best advice is to set a budget and the key items you want (carpets, lanterns, jewelry, leather goods, gifts) and stick to it. Not that we did that though...At the end, the more you bargain, the more traders you bring a smile!

More pics

 
 
 


As I refine my abilities with this blog, I will for sure improve posting, but meanwhile here it goes few more pics...

The kids loved the Moroccan carpets!!

Deeper in the medina...

 
 
 
 


We visited a number of places, such as a tapestry cooperative (financed by Unesco), the souks (workshop for the craftsmen), a ceramic cooperative, the tanneries (where animal hides turn into soft rot-proof leather) and of course...the shops.

This is a completely alien world to us with people wearing different clothes, talking different languages and following different religions - a cultural shock right on our faces...Amazing!

Into Morocco - Let the adventure begin...

 

The border crossing was a mess as anticipated by Emon..Despite being well prepared we waited over 2 hours to cross as there were many cars ahead of us in the queue...

The trip now really started as we headed to our camping site in Fes, the oldest of Morocco's Imperial cities and the country's religious and spiritual capital. After a good sleep in our first camping stop in the trip we went to visit the old town (or medina), where Arabs, Berbers (desert nomads) and Jews live together in harmony.

Our local guide took us for a tour, starting at the royal palace, the residence of king Mohamed VI (pic) , who reigns the country since the death of his father in 1999.

Introducing the troop...

 


Introducing the families: Hartley (Adrian, Stephanie, Alex and Melissa), Khan (Emon, Sally, Holly and Maya) Roberts (Dave, Mark and Gareth) - all in G4 Defenders and us (Augusto, Ana, Felipe and Julia) on the undoubtedly best G4 D3 in the world. The Tangier orange convoy attracted attention all over the route.

Finally some news...

 

Well, I think our assumptions for internet connection were a bit too optimistic for Moroccos, so apologies for no live feed into the blog...

As we head back home through Europe I will take the opportunity to write briefly about the incredible trip we are having...

The 4 families gathered at our house on Friday 3 April and we departed early to pick the Eurotunnel at 5:20, but a 15 mins delay in departure time resulted in a 2h delay on the train and with a hotel booked at the border of France and Spain we had a long distance to cover...Spain was also driven in a day and we arrived at a nice hotel near Granada where we had a great Tapas dinner before doing the last stretch the following day to catch the ferry in Algeciras towards Ceuta. The fast pace had a toll on the Robert's Defender, with some oil leakeage. After some inspection and top up we slowed a bit the pace and everything went perfectly fine again.