Utsikten: The Desert - First Impressions

Saturday 24.04.10

After a day at the oasis near Merzouga to rest, wash clothes and generally just re-organize ourselves, we were ready for the next challenge. We had looked at many maps and talked to several people about the off-piste Paris-Dakar route through the desert. We finally got some GPS coordinates in the morning, but had also made our own on my iphone on a neat GPS app called "Motion-X", which shows a lat & long grid on top of downloadable google earth type satellite images. The route runs through the desert and some mountain-ranges parallell to a dried out river named oued Zîs.

We filled up with extra fuel and water, thanked Mustafa and the friendly people at the oasis for the stay and started heading South towards a settlement called Taouz from where we planned to go off-road and onto the route.

As we drove through Taouz a man ran up to Jim in front and waved his finger "NO!". Jim hesitated and slowed down as I said: "no no, keep going, go!" on the intercom. To Jim's defence, the man had a red cap and and a black shirt on with logo's of a Moroccan desert 4x4 jeep touring company, so he looked semi-serious, he wasn't.

He just wanted to appear important and sell us serious advice and directions, and after looking at Jim's map and routes he concluded that they were no good and that he would show us instead. He wanted to see my map as well since I had a different one, but I declined his "help".

Jim, way more diplomatic and patient than me continued talking to him, hoping to at least extract some useful info from him, but he too, quickly tired of him and in the end explaining: "No. You really really DO NOT have to come along to show us."

We drove off the road towards one of our first waypoints and quickly got into difficult terrain, our bikes weigh somewhere between 230 and 280 kg's and whenever we got sand deeper than 20-35 cm the bikes pretty much went where they wanted to go, with us as passengers. After a short hour we got to the first real obstacle, the first crossing of the dry river bed Zîs. I went first since my bike is more off-road friendly. I got stuck in the sand on my way up and out of the river bed.

The man who had stopped us earlier had followed us on his tiny pedal-moped and was eager to help me out and probably say: "Told you."

I again declined his help, not so much as wanting to be an asshole, but because of the principle of it. We did not ask him to come along, but yet he chose to do so by himself.

After a bit of a struggle I managed to ride the bike up and over the edge, spinning sand many meters up in the air with my rear wheel.

Jim was hesitant about crossing, and doubting if this Paris Dakar route really was possible for bikes like ours. I was eager to push on so I drove another kilometer or so to see what conditions were like. It was for the most part hard dried out dirt-ground with only some portions of loose sand and a smaller easier river bed crossing up ahead.

Jim crossed with Ida like it was nothing. Confident, we drove on and slowly but surely made progress. We got better and better at driving through sand, and stopped only to let our engines cool in the close to 40 C temperatures.

Annoyingly, "moped-man" was still hovering around us, stopping whenever we stopped and always staying within sight. He was a strange one, and we really did not know what to make of it. We could do nothing though except laugh at the situation of us driving our big tough bikes through the difficult terrain, patting our backs, while he was staying with us on his little 25cc moped. Although to our defense, he could pick his moped up and walk if he wanted.. Not so with our big ladies Klara and Ida.

We spent 3-4 hours before we finally got to a point where a huge sand dune had completely blocked the trail. One the left side of the dune was a steep mountain side, on the other river Zîs which had deepened considerably since our first crossing. We came to the conclusion that if we drove down into the steep river bed we would be able to carry on West but without the option of returning from where we came. A point of no return as it were.

Having only gotten through a mere 1/3 of the route, we did not like that option and decided to backtrack to see if we could find a more shallow river bed crossing.

We did not find one after many hours of searching, so we hesitantly realized that it would not be possible for us to drive this route.

We headed back East towards Taouz but broke off to the North before getting near any settlements. It was getting dark and we needed to find a secluded spot for our tents. Moped-man was hot on our trail, but with more flat and open terrain we were able to open our throttles and finally loose him in the horizon.

We pitched our tents while heating our rations of chili-con-carne in the twilight. After we got everything set-up, and before going to bed, Jim invited me over for tea and an old episode of "Friends" on his mini-laptop. Good times.