(* - untranslatable pun, sorry English posts are normally translated from Hungarian)

After long preparation and unpreparation, finally on 18 November we left Hungary. One word to describe our vicissitudes: rain. It was raining in Croatia, Slovenia, drizzling in Venice, pouring on the serpentines to Genoa, more rain in Rabat, Marrakech, and now here in Imlil, Atlas mountain. (In addition, it is so cold we can see our breath in the auberge without heating.)

Saddest lions of Genoa

All in all, we don’t feel having arrived to Africa yet. Rather we are finishing our test trip, which we could not have done before. After a week, we have started finding the places for the millions of stuff and we are developing a daily routine. Can’t wait to see all our different ways of packing to deliver some results so that we can manage to get the time between waking up and starting the car under 3 hours.

We are saying goodbye to Europe, before boarding our ferry from Genoa to Tangier.

Tanger, before rain 

We have already been to Maroc, just two years ago. That time we saw a lot, but did not really travel with cars, let alone drive it! We are getting used to the decoration which is called lanes in other countries. We started to fake confidence and try to get the big car in small spaces to get ahead. Hardly any traffic on the Tanger-Rabat highway, but plenty of hitch-hiker and seller in the emergency lane, some pedestrians cross as well.

In Marrakech we found a wonderful French camping, finally we could cook, do the laundry while peacocks roamed around us. We managed to surprise the seasoned sellers of Djema-el-Fna when instead of souvenirs we tried to buy battery for our ING card reader, plastic buckle for the rooftent, eggs, carrots and fennel.

It was when we were driving towards the Atlas mountains when we were first shocked with amazement, seeing a wonderful snowy mountain in between the cliffs on the two sides of the road.

We were surprised to see that the GPS shows 3 kms extra after having reached the end of tarmac, but we managed to get our auberge: downpour, gear one, hairpin bends, a little burning clutch. Of course the coming traffic of old Mercedes vans had no difficulties. Seven years in Tibet was filmed here, a calm atmosphere in off-season, the air is filled with the smell of apples.

Road to Imlil

In the morning we set off to see the snow line. The rising sun found us on the mountain at 2000m. After so many rainy days we were sunbathing and enjoying the sight of Northern Africa’s tallest mountain.

Aroumd (previously called Imlil in this post)