Up and Down The Atlas Mountains

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From Spain to Morocco

We did our fast drive through Europe and took the overnight ferry to Morocco where the rally really started.  The ferry came from Spain and into Spain on the Moroccan side. So right away we had to navigate out of Europe and into Morocco whose border wasn’t exactly well signed. I guess this was where the GPS exercise really started.  The roadbook gave a brief outline of the procedure at the Moroccan border but frankly, it was just a cluster with vehicles and people everywhere all trying to get the attention of an official to stamp you in.

 

Besides that, there were people dressed in street clothes who would ask for your passport and then take it away ostensibly to get it to the right officials. This is where a few Euros was really handy as these men were ‘fixers’…But it still was really hard to trust their officialdom.  Then, once you had your passport stamped you had to get the vehicle paperwork done. Then go through ‘customs’ which was a seemingly random affair which we were selected to participate in.  Fortunately they ‘found’ nothing and we were allowed to go.

 

Tha Atlas Mountains

Our first section in Morocco was in the Atlas mountains where there was still snow. It was estimated that one of the days run was 34,000 meters of up and down.  It was very interesting terrain, rocky and muddy with narrow mountain passes which sometimes required a 2 pt turn for us not to fall off the side.  As this was still in my non GPS working phase we ended up taking a very circuitous route and traveling through a really traditional mountain market town. It had really narrow streets with goats, sheep donkey carts, people, vehicles, trucks all competing for the same space.  We were one of the bigger vehicles but we never had trouble negotiating the narrow streets, coming under overhangs and generally not having any navigational issues (outside of our own).

 

Atlas Mountains

Atlas Mountains

Atlas Mountains

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