25 years of travel
Not your classic silver wedding anniversary party
MOROCCO
When we got married in 1999, if you’d asked me what I thought we’d be doing for our silver wedding anniversary I probably would have said something you’d expect. Like a big shiny party. Or maybe a glamorous mini-break involving champagne. But that was before our travelling habits and preferences had fully evolved.
Two and a half decades later (WHAT?!), to mark the occasion we did take a mini-break of sorts – into the desert south of Zagora. The word glamorous might be stretching it. And I probably wouldn’t have envisaged grappling with an overheating tyre, digging a toilet in the sand, or having a little hyper-ventilation episode when I thought the truck was going to tip over.
Our love affair with the African continent started on our honeymoon. We headed to Kenya and Tanzania, travelled around on sketchy buses, and ran the gauntlet of hundreds of touts in Arusha to book a last-minute group safari. Inexplicably, we opted to mostly tent camp, with just one night in a lodge as a treat. One night a hyena (probably, or maybe a lion) stole my t-shirt from outside the tent. We went to the long-drop toilets in pairs as they were too terrifying to face alone in the dark. It was an absolutely brilliant trip.
Looking back, we started out as travel masochists and haven’t changed a huge amount. That’s not to say we don’t ever do fancy or don’t love to treat ourselves. But we’ll happily take the rough with the smooth if it means we can reach the places that interest us. Over the years we travelled to several African countries on short backpacking trips to escape the UK winter. Sometimes it was a bit rustic. On a trip to Mali we slept on the ground most nights. I’m not sure we’d do that now; I like my bed. We loved it there and returned in 2007 for the then renowned Festival in the Desert. “We’ve been to Timbuktu twice,” was our smug little dinner party factoid. How sad that the current security situation means we can’t go there with Ivy and make it a hat-trick.
Famously, the Moroccan town of Zagora is 52 days by camel across the desert from Timbuktu (Tombouctou).
As our silver wedding anniversary approached, here we were at the northern end of that ancient Saharan trading route. What to do? We really did look around for a posh hotel to celebrate the occasion. But the idea was leaving us a bit cold. All the wish-list contained was: a nice dinner with wine; some relaxation with a swimming pool; and a quiet desert wild-camp with a BBQ and fire. As we sort of have two anniversaries (we had a legal wedding one day, followed by a humanist ceremony the next) we could have it all! We found a campsite with a pool, a Belgian manager (guaranteeing booze) and a well-reviewed Moroccan chef (guaranteeing great food) for day one, and stocked up on BBQ stuff and firewood for day two in the desert.
The campsite was near Mhamid, a small town at the end of the road before it turns into desert tracks near the Algerian border. En route there, I spotted an unignorable burning smell. We stopped and sniffed around, and soon identified a tyre and wheel rim so hot that it could barely be touched. Not good. We didn’t have far to go, so we carried on slowly. As we pulled in, we saw there was a mechanic’s workshop directly opposite the campsite – hurray. We put the diagnosis on hold so we could enjoy an afternoon relaxing and swimming.
Dinner in the evening was fantastic. Much as we’ve enjoyed eating out in Morocco, the restaurants have been quite functional, non-lingering kinds of places. It was a lovely treat to have a three-course candlelit meal on the terrace with a glass or two of wine. There was even a surprise bonus of some Belgian frites with the tagines, ha!
We’d already delayed our desert BBQ by a day for weather reasons, so our actual anniversary was spent getting the tyre issue looked at and doing admin! Romance is alive and well, just as long as you don’t have a hot wheel to attend to. An intermittently sticking handbrake was the problem, which was reassuringly simple, even though we couldn’t immediately replace the buggered “cable de merde”, as the mechanic called it. “Just don’t use the handbrake for the time being”, he said, before inexplicably still leaving it connected.
We set off the next day to find a nearby-ish desert wild camp. One reason we didn’t want to go super far was that we’d been planning for months to make it to an informal annual overlanding get-together two days later, which we knew would be roughly in the Zagora area (exact coordinates are only released 24 hours beforehand). As we weren’t going far from Mhamid we’d perhaps been too casual about route planning.
We followed the sandy track but before long we’d taken an unexpected turn down towards a dry riverbed. It still looked fine but it was a lesson in how quickly things can go from ‘fine’ to ‘fuuuuuck’ when all of a sudden the innocuous-looking track dipped sharply and twisted at a gnarly angle. We were tipping to the right at what felt in my head like about 45 degrees. Reverse or keep going? We kept going and made it down thanks to Jeremy’s efforts, and my excellent shrill suggestions, but in the process I’d almost wet myself.
I didn’t know I had a nemesis waiting to be discovered, but I found it that day – the feeling of Ivy tipping over. We drove on a little and the riverbed track ahead looked ‘fine’, albeit bumpy, but we didn’t have it on any of our maps and by this point my head had gone haywire.
I didn’t mind the sand but I couldn’t face potentially miles of ups and downs like the one we’d just done, without knowing where, and how, the track would re-emerge from the riverbed. We looked for other options, but the only certain way out was to go back up the tippy route we’d just come down. We aired down the tyres a bit and dug at the exit point to try to even it out as best you can with the softest sand on the damn planet.
I stayed outside to help direct Jeremy to the best part of the track and he slammed Ivy up out of there brilliantly (surely you mean carefully manoeuvred? – ed). I didn’t take photos of any of this because it turns out that when you think your house is about to flip over, you don’t actually reach for the camera (proof, if any was ever needed, that I’m a million light years from the Insta generation).
As we took off again I was taking some rather gulpy breaths to try to calm down. We tried some alternative tracks. When we paused to consider the way into one possible camp-spot, 4x4s were powering past, totally enveloping us in dust. It was stinking hot with little shade in sight. When I looked ahead all I could see in my mind were undulating, tippy dunes. We were still worrying about the tyre, trying to work out if it was unreasonably hot or just hot-day hot. At that moment a guy came over on a motorbike and was trying to persuade us to go with him to a camp-spot he knew – sorry to say it, but these offers rarely come without strings attached and his incessant badgering just finished me off. I just wasn’t feeling it. We had to get out of there.
We turned, went back through Mhamid and headed to the south side of the riverbed, where the terrain was completely different; harder-packed sand, more trees, and so quiet! A sweaty, stressy three or four hours after initially setting off, we landed on a sweet spot behind a tree and flopped into our chairs with a beer, stinking of sweat and chuckling. It felt like the hardest won wild camp ever. Happy anniversary, Dear!
Unbeknown to us it was a full moon. As we were getting the BBQ ready, it popped over the horizon and lit up the evening. We grilled ridiculous amounts of meat, drank a few tipples and got a fire going. And… relax.
Not your classic silver wedding party, but right for us. As I dug a toilet in the sand the next day I thought, yeah, this probably sums things up. Love is…. letting your partner use the shovel first.
As we left there, we received the coordinates for the overlanding meet-up, called ‘Pizzas on the Piste’, and it was in the boondocks north of Zagora. So it was back through the town for the umpteenth time which, on the plus side, gave us the chance to visit its one alcohol shop and buy more overpriced beer. By the standards of our time in Morocco, this week was turning into quite the booze-fest. Knackered, we pulled into a campsite near the town, ready to shower then collapse. But we were still head-scratching over the tyre. As we did so, the owner sidled over and joined us. “I agree, it’s too hot,” he said. He got straight on the phone and before long a mechanic arrived and again mentioned a brakes issue. The shower was postponed as we spent a few hours at his workshop while they dismantled the rear wheels. It was already Friday evening and we weren’t sure they’d finish the job – after everything we’d managed to coordinate in time for this meet-up date, we couldn’t believe we might actually miss it.
But as has happened so often here, people just seem to get on with it and get things done. They dropped what they were doing and thoroughly examined, cleaned and checked both rear wheels, agreed the handbrake was the culprit and disconnected the pesky cable de merde. Handbrakes are over-rated anyway.
Back in action! Next day, we headed along the piste to the meet-up and pulled in to see a great turnout of about 20 overlanding vehicles.
Organised by Briton Mark White, who has a tour company called Amazigh Overland, it’s a gathering of like-minded people who are doing 4x4 trips in Morocco and beyond. A good number were heading down to southern Africa on a similar route to us, and it was great to swap contact details, info and stories. It really felt like being with the tribe again. Travelling through West Africa can have its challenges – including gnarly tippy nemesis roads – and there’s nothing like meeting others who are doing the same thing and reminding yourself that you haven’t completely lost your mind.
We got stuck in and helped with the food. Unbelievably, Mark and his Belgian colleague Pieter drag this pizza oven – which is like a glorified filing cabinet – out into the sticks and manage to get together delicious pizzas for 40-odd people.
While they were cooking them we saw the comet in the sky (photo stolen from another attendee). It was a fabulous and energising evening that left us with new friends, throats hoarse from talking, and a feeling of being really fired up for the journey ahead.
And here’s one from the archives…
Love this. For some reason the photo of you both travelling in your younger years got me very emotional! I think because my husband and I have entered that age of looking at photos and going "gosh we were so young THEN" and we still haven't grown up! From a Brexiting couple (Greece) hiking, biking and running around the world in no logical order or structure 😆
Happy late anniversary.Looks brilliant 🤩