1'st Diary from Manuela and Davide

At the 8th of December we left Switzerland with our Land Rover 109 for our big adventure: from north to south trough the black continent. In few days we arrived in Ceuta and we took the ferry to Ceuta. Crossing the Gibraltar strait was quite evocative because it has marked the beginning of our long journey. We filled our tanks in Ceuta and after two hours of bureaucratic practical we entered Morocco. Right after the border the sensation of being in another continent was very strong: carts pulled by donkeys, old Mercedes overloaded of people and some rubbish at the border of the street. Along the way to Rabat the landscape was very pleasant: the pine forests left place to the Rif mountain and to small pastures and cultivated fields separated by lines of prickly pears. The capitol is a clean and modern city, but a walk through the Casbah white and blue and through the market remembered us of being in Africa. Afterwards we moved to Casablanca where, waiting for our visa to Mauritania, we had a look to the Mosque Hassan II which is second only to the one of Mecca and which seemed us like a demonstration of richness and power too exaggerated. Then we left for Meknès where we walked through the streets of the Medina which is agreeable and coloured: in the small streets the stalls sell bunches of mint, meet, ram and goat heads, Arabic bread, pulses, fruits and so on. The following day we had a visit to the roman ruins of Volubilis which are well preserved and with nice mosaics. The city of Fès, on the contrary, didn’t welcomed us very well: we’ve been literally attacked by guides (or so they say) who don’t take a no as an answer, so we picked the one who seemed the nicest to us to visit the Medina. In the evening at the camping we had a nice time with two guys directed to Burkina Faso, sharing food and travel stories. Left Fès we passed through the cedar forest and the snowy mountains of the High Atlas to arrived to the dunes of Merzouga where we ate the great Moroccoan specialities: couscous and tajine. e tajine. After having admired the very impressive gorges of Todra and Dadès we went through the region rich of palmeraie and Casbah (old fortified towns). We bought la soft camel carpet and we headed to Marrakech, city we really liked, with beautiful gardens, palaces, museums, souks and Medersa (Koranic schools). Anyway the most beautiful experience of the red city was to walk through the swarm place of Djmnaa el-Fna among stalls of great food, storytellers, future tellers, water sellers, musicians, singers, snakes, monkeys, and much more! Afterwards we left Marrakech and we arrived on the Atlantic coast in the nice city of Essaouira, maritime and touristic centre, where we celebrated the first day of the year and we had a couple of days for the laundry and organize our stuff in the vehicle. Going further south we passed through the region where the Argan grow and it was nice to see some goats eating its fruits right on the plant. In Agadir it was like in Europe: a modern city, very rich and efficient where we buyed some food and had a great Italian ice cream. We entered Western Sahara and in Laayoune we met a couple from our same city and had a nice evening with them. We passed the military controls and in Dakhla we met some English guys with funny and old vehicles running an alternative rally to Dakar. We continued southward and passed the cancer tropic and arrived at the border with Mauritania. The military asked us some cadeaux and they even wanted to choose among the artiche like in a boutique! We made just some meters in Mauritania and soon many guides came toward us to pass through the mine field, so we decided to follow the one who seemed the most experienced and had even a camping in Nouadhibou. From this city we left with a German couple to pass through the desert up to the capitol Nouakchott. It’s been some hundreds kilometres of quite easy piste and we even spotted a fennec and many locusts. Moreover, getting stucked in the sand one time, we could use successfully our sandtracks. We are now in a quiet camping in Nouakchott where we met a French couple and a Spanish couple who are going to Mali to sell their old cars. In the following days we have to do some shopping and pack our winter cloths, then we will be ready for the Afrique noire.