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Welcome to todays diary entry! 5 days of driving, over 750kms, over 3 mountain passes we finally reached the desert at about 18:00 this afternoon. There have been a couple of really psychologically important points to reaching our destination at Haven Le Chance campsite in Merzouga. The first is the least important and almost irrelevant. For some reason our experiences in Morocco are deemed (by the purists) as null and void because we choose this time to spend so much time at Camping Atlantica Parc. The idea that we have not ever experienced the ‘real’ Morocco because we have never spent 3 nights in the middle of no where up a hill with only a dung beetle for company. Or hand delivered a camel calf in the snow on the top of the Atlas mountains. That is just not our thing, we are sociable people who like to be near people and be near the beach and have a nice campsite to stay on. People seem to forget that we spent 90 days from Feb till May last year as well as From October until now. Those initial 3 months were spent travelling around quite a lot. So the idea that we don’t really know Morocco is one that really annoys me, makes me angry in fact. In fact this is our 2nd time to Merzouga. As we were here exactly 365 days ago.
The second one is by far the most important part is that i will never ever be further away from my Mum and home than i am now. So every single mile we drive now is 1 mile closer to being back in the UK. Having that in the back of my mind is very comforting especially with me being a nervous road tripper with the motorhome but to be fair this little Chausson from 2010 has not put a single foot wrong. In fact it has been a joy to drive and has coped with everything that has been put in front of it. Mile after miles of Moroccan road and never skipped a beat. The Motorhome has never ever put a single foot wrong in all the time we have had it. It has been an immense pleasure to share the trip with it and i have the same feeling towards as the top gear guys do when they do road trips and they just love there cars.
Last update on 2024-10-23 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
We were going to stay at the other campsite for an extra night but for the sake of 3 hours it just meant we could get to the desert and get roots down for 4 nights or how ever long we choose to stay here for. I am so glad we did it was an amazing drive through the gorge and as you start getting closer and all of a sudden the lay bays start to become sandy and then on the horizon you can see the dunes start to rise up. It still was not a patch on the drive from Talioine to Ouarzazate. I don’t think i will ever experience a road like that for a long time. It will be interesting to see how it compares to the Tiz ‘n’ Tchika pass which is what we have to cross to get over into Marrakech. The Tchika was actually built in the late 1930s by the French Foreign legion and the follows follows an old dromedary caravan route and was designed to help connect the north west of Morocco (Marrakech and the likes) with the likes of Ouarzazate in the south east.
The campsite we chose was Haven Le Chance and to be fair there are loads and loads and loads of campsites here we just chose this one as we had heard someone else mention it. We had favourited 3 or 4 but this was the one that we chose. To be fair we nearly couldn’t find it but I’m glad we did it has a restaurant, swimming pool and we have a dune view from our motorhome. I am just looking forward now to having a day without driving involved. My plan is start making a dent in my Corelli pile.
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