Friday 1st February – Dar Bouazza to Oualidia

Dar Bouazza to Oualidia - 102 miles

An overcast morning, we completed all our chores then bid au revoir to the friendly guardian, paying him 190 dirhams for the two nights which we felt was not unreasonable – we'd happily recommend the site, despite it's tired appearance, as it is handy for visiting Casablanca if you so wish – a bit far to cycle but there are local buses and taxis. However the best means of visiting the city is by minibus provided by, no doubt, a relative of the guardian.

Both needing fuel we called in to the first station, Zizi, paying around 75p a litre, before heading to the N1 having eschewed the idea of using the motorway. Of course today TomTom wasn't interested in going that way so we wandered around a bit on minor roads before the old fashioned map sorted us out. As it turned out we later felt we should have taken the motorway.

A much more interesting route, unfortunately the weather turned on us and it started to rain, turning much of the road into a mudbath, even the surfaced bits! Typical of Morocco some roads were quite good, even some recently resurfaced, but others were very poor prompting a remark that we ought to go faster, at least we'll only hit half the bumps...................!

TomTom eventually cooperated and took us around El Jedida, a rather nice city we have visited before, then putting us on the coastal road giving us a good view of the waves pounding the beaches. Eventually we arrived at the pretty town of Oualidia and found our way to the guardian parking, which has now been made official and we estimate could take well over 100 units, although it was actually only half full. We later found out that water was available by request from a hosepipe and the “public toilets” had been opened for disposing of WC waste – all for a measly 30 dirhams (£2.50) a night, excellent indeed!

Unfortunately the weather then turned quite nasty with very heavy rain and strong winds which kept us inside. It was not enough, however, to wash off the disgusting mess that now covered the vans and although Derek made an effort to clean their vehicle Terry settled for the windows, not wanting to damage the paintwork until there was a sufficient water supply to wash off the grit first.

It did dry up later and the forecast showed it clearing overnight and then returning to wall-to-wall sunshine for at least the next week.

*     *     *      *     *

Just a comment about the maps; they are taken from the netbook using the last version of Microsoft Autoroute, which unfortunately doesn't include roads in Morocco. We'll try to highlight places of particular interest along the way.

Up to now we've taken few photographs as we've been to all the places so far before. We'll add anything interesting later.