If yesterday’s weather was bad, this was atrocious. The motorway finished 50 miles beyond Casa, so we shared normal roads and torrential rain with battered vehicles and donkey carts, some of which had rigged up covered wagon style weather protection.
By the middle of the afternoon, the road itself is starting to become impassable. In many places rivers of rainwater are washing stones and mud across the road, and deep puddles are forming. The traffic is light and manages to keep going. Conditions start to improve….breathe a sigh of relief…. only 25 miles to this evening’s objective- the campsite at Essaouira. But shortly we hit roadworks. They’re constructing a motorway out of the normal main road and have diverted all vehicles along a rutted, pot-holed track, 10 miles of it @ 5-10 mph. This is worse than anything the weather’s thrown at us so far and is of purely human (some would say sub-human!!) doing.
We do eventually arrive at the campsite, which is full. A man appears and marshals us to an open space in front of his house, adjacent to the campsite. We agree a price (about £5). This is free enterprise at its best: he connects our electric cable through a broken pane above his front door and fills the water barrel from inside. He is totally helpful. Later, he brings us a bowlful each of harira, a delicious Moroccan soup his wife has made. We take back all the day’s chuntering about Moroccan weather and road-builders.
No comments:
Post a Comment