Traversing the Moroccan Desert
Angus Clarke and Eloi Sáez began and ended their adventure across the Moroccan desert at 3:30 AM Madrid time. In that moment of deepest, coldest night, being awake makes you seem somehow alien, an exception to the rhythms and habits that govern normal society. The first time, they rose at this hour by choice. They had supplies to gather, forms to fill in, and a ferry to catch from Port of Algeciras to Tangiers. The second time, circumstances had taken over, and they had been fighting to make it back against enormous odds.
The mission? To drive across the Moroccan desert, navigating by compass, scaling the Atlas Mountains, and driving off-road in a 20-year-old car that had no business being put to such a test. The official reason? To participate as team ‘Loop Racers’ in the Uniraid Car Rally and transport dental products to local health centers, a venture that TRASKA was happy to support with a donation and the gift of two watches for the journey. Angus chose the Freediver in Carbon Black and Eloi the Arctic White Venturer GMT.
The real reason? Well, that’s a little harder to articulate. “If you don’t say yes to things like this, you don’t have fun stories to tell,” says Angus, reflecting on the journey. A journey that would push them to the edge of their endurance, and prove the defeat of their old but sturdy 1996 Renault Cleo.
After arriving in Morocco and camping down for the night, the journey began. A 400-kilometer drive from Tangiers to Al Hajeb at the foot of the Atlas Mountains was not intimidating on paper. The trouble, as Angus and Eloi would soon learn, the road only runs for 350 kilometers. The final 50 kilometers were driven on desert sands, navigating by compass and a list of landmarks. A house with a red door here. The mountains to your left there. The scenery changed radically, from Mars-rover-like spareness without a tree in sight to snow-capped mountains and ice on the roads. In a car too ancient for working air conditioning, the travelers found themselves donning and shedding coats at least a dozen times throughout the day as the climate seemed to shift every few kilometers.
On the third day, a fellow rally participant broke down after being read-ended. The Loop Racers stopped to offer assistance. Trucks hooned past at 80 kilometers an hour, motorbikes jostled and beeped, and the residents of the local village soon gathered around, hawking scarves and trinkets, grabbing, prodding, and haggling as the stranded travelers tried to figure out what was going on. A taxi pulled up. Out climbed a police officer. He yelled in Arabic and gestured. Money was exchanged. Order was restored. And after some time, the travelers were once again on the move.
As they penetrated deeper into the desert, their pace slowed. Despite being in the remote desert, traffic became a challenge as the 250 rally cars jammed together. The bottlenecks were the many dried riverbeds crossing. Thousands of years ago, these were surging with water from the mountains above. Now they lay dry, parched by the sun, and were treacherous for drivers. Approaching them took courage. Switch to low gear. Choose a sharp angle. And cling on to the wheel like your life depends on it. After the first few crossings, Eloi and Angus’ confidence grew. Yet still, the desert would always find a way to snag you. Spades at the ready, ralliers helped each other out, digging out tire after tire, car after car, until finally, they made it in time to camp at the foot of the 100-meter-high dunes which looked like colossal orange mountains erupting out of the sand.
Amidst the dust kicked up by fellow drivers, visibility is low. And to make matters worse, the car is starting to whine. They find grease spilling from the engine and a strange noise that somehow asserts itself over the normal engine roars. Meals of rehydrated pasta. Camping in the surprising, sudden chill of the desert night. And then, a whole day of driving through sand and around dunes only to find yourself just 10 kilometers as the crow flies away from where you started. And then, finally, the relief as the tires seized onto the firmness of the asphalt, the speed increased, and they were back on paved roads.
The Atlas Mountains once again blocked their path. They rose from sea level to 2500 meters in height, the choking, hot, dusty desert air replaced by the crisp cool of the mountain breeze. In Marrakesh, they checked into a hotel to experience the first shower in days. Dust poured off them, as they readied themselves for a night in the city to celebrate their journey. The hard part was over. Or so they thought.
Their final leg would have Eloi and Angus drive 600 kilometers (mercifully, on paved roads) back to the port to conclude their journey and return to Spain. But the car, the trustworthy, elderly vehicle that had tolerated mountains, sand, and snow, finally had enough. The engine died on the highway a couple of hundred kilometers out of the city, and our travelers spent the next six hours hunched over their cellphones, negotiating with insurance companies, local police, and, at last, a reluctant tow truck company that agreed to tow them the final few hundred kilometers to the waiting ferry.
Things did not go as planned. Abandoned by their tow truck driver on the edge of the port city, Angus and Eloi began a frantic search for anyone who would be able to tow their deceased car onto the ferry. When they had found a willing driver, the next mission was to calm the bemused customs officials watching this strange wagon be towed across their frontier.
At 3:30 AM in Spain (one hour ahead of Morocco time), Angus and Eloili finally stood over the skeleton of their car, stripped of its signs and logos, as the Malaga scrapyard absorbed it. Its journey had ended. Their watches, however, did not even suffer a scratch.
All photos © Angus Clarke and Eloi Sáez
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