16 July

SCORCHING HEAT ON THE ROAD OF RETURN

The freshness of the morning air a Sidi Ifni wouldn’t last very long as we set off on our road back up North.  As soon as we turned inland towards Marrakesh at a mere 20 km from the coast in the hilly countryside there, mum & dad informed us from their air-conditioned car that outside temperatures were at 40°. It was only 10h in the morning and I avoided thinking of what was awaiting us around Marrakesh later on that day.

We only progressed slowly on the first part of our itinerary as the road was filled with slow-driving trucks, carts with donkeys and more…

The toll road (highway) came as a great relief (even for our toilet stop!) and we hit the pedal to progress a bit faster.. at least that’s what we thought! Outside temps had risen to 46° by this time and we attacked a mountainous area. Ollie was pushing the Defender a bit too much on the very first slope and for the first time in the poor old car’s life the motor was showing signs of heat distress!

Well.. we had to drop back at our previous speed of 60k’s here…. Joining the trucks again! The air inside of the car was like a huge blow-dryer and wetting your face only helped for a split second as your skin barely had the time to become wet! I told Ollie that we should have organized ourselves differently. Driving in such heat was unbearable. For us .. & for the Def ! He seemed to be fine and wasn’t too bothered by the scorching heat but Kimo & I were boiling in the back of the car! Keone had already deserted and was enjoying the cool air in the Toyota!

Mum was no longer announcing temperatures, most probably for psychological reasons, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Kimo and I quickly fell asleep. After an hour or so, with the hot winds still blowing round our faces I decided to switch cars with Kimo. Ollie was fine with this. He found it a challenge to drive and thus I joined the oldies in their comfortable cooled Toyota. What a relief! Mum pointed at the temperature on the dashboard. 50° by now at 14h. This was madness! Not long after, Olivier reported that his iPhone and the pc he was using as a GPS were shutting down from the heat!

When we pulled over to have lunch, we decided to continue driving to get out of this scorching center of Morocco and join the coastal area of Casablanca… only problem was finding a hotel. We were to find out once arrived around 21h… Our goal was to avoid thecenter of the city and this reduced our chances to zero.

Only one solution left, highway to Rabat and see what we could find around there. I checked the little town of Kenitra. The “Guide de Routard” gave a couple of addresses to stay for the night and I decided to call “Hotel de France” (good choice, no?).  Ollie even found the hotel in his Tomtom and so we ended up in front of its doors at midnight.

The men went to check it out and quickly returned telling us that this was NOT the correct hotel! It turned out that I had called a hotel in Kenifra, NOT Kenitra! But what a coincidence that both places had a hotel with exactly the same name!

Well, our luck wasn’t turned down, we found a hotel quite quickly around the corner. By this time we were happy with anything as long as we could sleep and shower the sticky sweat off our bodies!

Tomorrow we’ll head to Asilah, our last stop before boarding the ferry on Wednesday evening 23h.

 I may not be able to update the blog after this post until on French territory as the hotel in Asilah is the same one we had for our first night (without wifi).  So for now, we are sending you all our Love from this warm country and the warm hearts of its people.