At last we see the Sahara and wow!

Jamila in our Toyota HD80

Jamila and I made it to M'Hamid in the South East of Morocco, in the Sahara. But what a saga to get there and once there, what an experience!
Those pictures I've sent you of 4x4s going up and down frighteningly steep dunes, it could now be us. Those pictures of gazelles pointing their compass in a direction and looking somewhat confused, us again!
We learned to read latitudes and longitudes, to place 29degrees 16 minutes and 366 seconds latitude and 3degrees 39minutes and 120 seconds longitude on a 1/100 000 map ( meaning, you know, 1km=1cm).
We learned to look at distant points on the horizon and make them our "cap". I was utterly useless at that. There'd be Jamila and our fantastic instructor Benoit saying things like : "you see those 2 trees over there, that's where we're heading" and I'd have no idea where those trees were.

trees? what trees?

That's me here going up the dune, following Benoit. I was more daring than Jamila in the dunes : Jamila had a tendency to stop dead at the top :

sorry, Jamila, couldn't resist

However Jamila was an excellent driver in other terrains so we'll share the driving. We'll probably share the navigation as well. I'll just have to buy a pair of binoculars! Both driving and navigating required intense concentration. You really don't want to make a mistake driving in the dunes as it can end up in your car overturning and the navigator must constantly find the way towards our point of destination and this can involve a fair amount of walking.

Slept in the desert, in a bivouac for 1 night. Dunes at sun set and sun rise are unmissable:

Sunset

7am, ready for breakfast

Jamila chatting with a local: what's that chaine of dunes over there?

The bit protecting the fuel tank has detached itself.

time to put air back in the tyres. 

We did or rather since I was the driver I should take responsibility for this, I did manage to get us stuck in sand at 4.30pm on our third day. Not fun, not fun at all. No picture of this because, frankly, we were not in the mood! I will do anything I can ( that is stop pressing on the bloody accelerator when it's pretty obvious we're stuck but not that stuck yet!) to avoid sinking in.

It all started well : we arrived in Marrakech and went to see our possible car, Alain's car :

in front of Costcutter Marrakech, one of our sponsors 

Then things went wrong : the driving instructor I had booked for 3 days cancelled Wednesday night at 9pm for a start the following day. There we were in Marrakech and no driving instructor to teach us to drive a 4x4 in dunes.
This is where the "telephone arabe" got into full action; by 11pm we had a possible instructor called Benoit. Benoit was extremely busy preparing a rally called the M'Hamid Express and not overly enthusiastic about taking 2 ( not 3) days out of his schedule. However he took pity on us and agreed.

Jamila and I set off from Marrakech for what was to be a 10 hour journey, including a pit stop for a delicious tagine near Teghdouine and another one for tea and chips in Zagora.
We were met at 11pm by Hassan who was just sitting down for dinner with a few friends.

so we joined in and from then on we simply had a fantastic if sometimes scary time.

Thank you Ali, Moaz and Alain in Marrakech, Hassan and Benoit in M'Hamid, the 5 men thanks to whom we women shall hopefully have a great rally.
And a big thank you to a sixth man, my husband Ian for his moral and financial support.
Thanks Heather for welcoming back 2 exhilarated but quite dusty gazelles.