Way to Western Sahara

In the morning we went for a walk again as the beach from Lagzira to Sidi Ifni is just amazing.

In the afternoon we started our trip to Western Sahara. It is regarded by Morocco as an integral part of its territory, by most of the outside world it is a disputed territory and remains under UN supervision. Travelling overland gives a remarkable insight into how different this land really is from Morocco - it's nothing alike with its arid landscapes, desert highways and unprecedented military presence for a country at peace. The whole landscape started to change. Firstly we were driving through field of cactuses. After the cactus fields there were some last views on Anti Atlas, however once we passed small city Tan – Tan all mountains or hills just disappeared and as far as human eye could see there was only sand and stones in all directions. That was typical view of sandy nothing and that was just amazing and so beautiful.

Soon we caught up with the Atlantic we had our typical Western-Saharn balance of cliffs and Atlantic on the right hand side with just Sahara desert on the left. We were driving for miles towards our destination, Dakhla, covering ever greater distances between populated areas, the landscape was becoming more and more arid, less and less bends meant it was easy to speed if you didn’t watch the speedo closely enough – a few moments were enough to get from the legal 60mph to 90mph without even noticing. The evident danger of that started becoming more apparent with the numerous collision marks littering the road. At least Charlie was kept happy – smiling each time when he saw price of diesel @ around £0.3 per litre... .

We passed Tarfaya with its Casa del Mar – house in the sea built by Scottish trader Donald Mackenzie and accident-crippled Armas ferry which is still is stuck in the sea having run aground just off the coast, Laayounne, the capitol city of Western Sahara; and Boujdour. Between those cities where most population lives we noticed many living in homes made from scraps of everything an anything (wood, papers, and scarves). It seems that this is a large portion of the original inhabitants of this region – Saharawis. We had some surprises on our way as well. We stopped were many times by the police/military at checkpoints that were situated on every major road into any city. They were always very thorough asking questions of the destination and cause of visit, writing all the details down. Sometimes the control was short, sometimes long. Sometimes policemen were nice, asking politely about cadoaux (fr. gifts such as whisky, vodka...and porn), sometimes there were annoyed. We met nice people from Gambia, who were very helpful and translated some stuff from French to English to one policeman. Many time wild camels slowly passed through main road...And we saw also some spectacular sunsets.