Wednesday 22 February 2017

Merzouga to Agdz - 186 miles

Normal start to another bright sunny day although we did manage to get the chores done a little quicker today, useful as we've a way to go, and were off at 10.20. Just up the road we caught up with the Renault 4 Rallye again, this time there were at least a hundred and it looked like we caught them at a staging point. Almost immediately we stopped for fuel as we were down to half a tank again (remarkably good consumption since the last refill, but we've been mostly gently cruising on the level) before retracing our steps as far as Rissoni where we turned off west – only to meet another Rallye, this time Spanish Fiat Pandas, but at least it was going the other way.

More Renault 4's

A double-decker taxi-bus!

The N12 turned out to be a reasonably good road by Moroccan standards with very little traffic and we made excellent time along a route that crosses a flat plain of hamada between two ranges of mountains so pretty scenic once again. Stopped at Alnif, a reasonable size town, for bread and milk and a little later by the roadside for lunch, eyeing a large bank of clouds that we had been approaching for some time and looked rather wet.

Lunch stop

The Sphinx has moved - or we've gone wrong somewhere!

Sure enough within a few miles we ran into a shower which turned into quite a heavy rainfall but didn't really slow us down – at least it gave Bertie a bit of a wash and cooled the tyres! It quickly dried up although the rest of the day remained cloudy with sunny intervals all the way to our planned nightstop at Agdz, Le Kasbah de les Palmeries where we stopped for a few days last week.

Found a nice spot, settled in and a cuppa – we're only staying overnight so only got out the basics. Just as well because half an hour later the rain caught up with us again although it doesn't look as if it will last long, but again a bit of a wash down for Bertie.

There's another Brit on the site and the registration looks vaguely familiar – might go and introduce ourselves later if/when the rain stops. Only the second we've seen in two weeks!