We reach El Aaiún (Laâyoune, El Ayun) in the afternoon. Its streets wind over a few hills; it’s one of those towns that would take a lifetime to understand and navigate. We find some kind of a centre anyway, and call Sanae. She is the daughter of a family that we met in Akhfenir, Morocco, who invited us to stay with them here. Sanae comes and fetches us outside the call center at Rue Mekka, and we walk together to her family’s house. We end up staying twelve days in the beautiful town together with Sanae, her family and her friends. Once we leave, it feels as if leaving home.

Memories of El Aaiún

The clear, warm blue sky as the sun has just set. The sand colored houses, like edgy dunes. The few but bright shining lights – the streetlights, and the naked light bulbs from inside the houses. The wind, and the sand that it whirls up from the streets and alleys. The dead empty streets as the sun has just set, and the people have gathered inside to celebrate the fasting. For dinner harira – a traditional soup that is eaten during Ramadan – or just a piece of bread dipped in olive oil. The many green-suits walking the streets. The UN’s huge, bright white shining 4×4 vehicles that fill the parking lots outside the city’s most expensive hotels; their well-fed staff that occupies the tables at the few cafés that serve burgers and fries; where the prices are on menus. Uncle Hassan, whom every afternoon comes home with something from the ocean, kept in a black plastic bag: a dozen of sardines, a couple of big fishes no one can name, or a gigantic old crab.

Going rounds of cafés with Sanae and her friend Taha. Or take a ride in some friends’ black Mercedes to the sea. There, the straight, empty street along the beach is lined by tall streetlights, which light is dimmed by the damp air. We have a coffee at the only open café there by the ocean – as empty as the street and the beach outside. As empty as the ocean.

The Christmas lights that decorate the nearby mosque. The men as they walk there for the evening prayers. Their decided steps, filled with faith, underneath peacefully swaying djellabas.

We cross the more or less invisible border to Western Sahara. A country that for long has been, and still is, illegally occupied by Morocco. We had quite some political discussions on our way through the country, and a few sahrawis – especially those politically active – had the courage to tell us how badly the Moroccan authorities treat them. Because of the risk of reprisals, I cannot mention this criticism in the same sentence that I use to describe the people that expressed it. Instead, I write about one such meeting in the summary for Western Sahara.

First a shut down petrol station, then the road down to village Dawra and then a few residential houses lining the road. When passing the latter, some men come running out to greet us. After chatting for a little while, they invite us to tea at their house.

We leave our shoes by the entrance, and get to sit in a seat of honour in the livingroom sofa, whilst the family stands up or sits on the wall-to-wall carpet. 17-year-old Hmad, the youngest of the men, pulls out a small notebook from his jeans. The small book is bended and torn, as if one with the jeans pocket. Inside, Hmad has drawn pictures of a boat. A small wooden boat, shaped like a banana, that will take him to the Spanish Canary Islands, he imagines. He says he will get there soon. The worn notebook is a book of hard dreams. Dreams that fit into the back pocket of a pair of jeans.

Hmad invites us to stay the night at his house. He has just moved in, so the four rooms are still empty. He fetches some thick blankets and a TV from his parents, and a charcoal grill on which to make tea for us. The TV doesn’t work (no antenna), so it’s more like a piece furniture. Some cockroaches also lively up the else clean walls; they observe us at distance. While Lina waits at home, Hmad and I walk through the night to the village’s small centre. He makes a phone call to some relatives in El Aaiún. I buy some bread for dinner, to eat with olive oil.

We continue and reach Tarfaya after just over 100 kilometers. Before being allowed to enter town, a couple of police officers at a roadblock scrutinize our passports. They even call another checkpoint to verify that we answered their questions (occupation, address, etc.) the same way now as then. They let us go anyway, and we can continue to the center of town.

Apart from the two tarred main roads that go through town, all other streets and alleys are covered with sand. Out on the streets, almost solely men move about. Both I and Lina experience a really eerie atmosphere. We check in at the only hotel there is, paying thirty dirhams for the night. By the way, hotels here are not really ‘hotels’, but rather ‘a place to sleep’. Nothing more, nothing less.

Summary Morocco
Morocco is like no other place. The food, the cultures, the mix of different people and the nature – all of it is truly unique. The cuisine is probably amongst the best on the continent – although the competition isn’t much. The Moroccans take their religion relatively easy. Yet it feels as if it is Islam combined with a generally welcoming culture that makes these people the most hospitable I’ve met this far. At times, people eve wave at us from the roadside, urging us to stop, eat with them and spend the night with them. It seems like being an honour for a Moroccan to host a traveller that passes by; to invite them to eat and assist them with a good place to sleep at. We rarely ever pitched our tents in Morocco.

The one downside, not as much experienced by me as by Lina, was men’s notoriously persistent stalking on foreign women. Many times, men seemed to have an excessive self-confidence in their attraction and charm. If they invited a woman, they seemed to assume she would accept it – they didn’t express it as a question. In other words, they had difficulties to accept a no. After a while, we learnt the lesson and asked mostly women when looking for a place to stay. We were also more cautious when receiving invitations from men – especially if they were single. We never had any problems when staying with men that were married and had family.

In Morocco, we met our first Sahrawi friends – the proud natives of Western Sahara. The country is currently occupied by Morocco, despite United Nations decision that the Sahrawis are entitled to vote for independence. Morocco has for a long time deliberately retarded the process towards an election by claiming that they’ve yet to determine who should be entitled to vote. As long as the international community puts democracy second to their economic interests, the pressure on Morocco will probably never be strong enough for the election to take place.

Besides not allowing a vote for independence, the oppression of Sahrawis by Morocco seems strong. When I mentioned Polisario (the Sahrawi liberation movement) to a Sahrawi that we visited, he put his forefinger before his pursed lips to hush me. “Quiet – there are Moroccans working here,” he explained. We listened to Radio Notional della Sahrawi, with it’s jingle, “Sahara Sahrawi,” echoing in-between the music. The pride was as unmistakable as was the fear for the Moroccan authorities. To read more about this conflict, search the Internet. There is tons to read.

In Akhfenir, we get to sleep for free in a permanent, furnished tent outside hotel Centre de Peche d’Akhfenir (www.peche.sudmaroc.free.fr). Thanks to French owner Yves!

While having lunch in Tan-Tan Plage, we are invited to stay the night with the owner of the restaurant.

We reach Tan-Tan at noon – intending to just stop over for lunch before continuing to Tan-Tan Plage. I stop by the outskirts of town to await Lina who is coming behind. As I wait there by an intersection, a few young boys approach me and we start to chat. Most questions – like usual – is about Barça and Real Madrid. And after they’ve found out that I’m Swedish, they proudly mention Larsson, Ibrahimović and Ljungberg. More interesting though is how one of the boys repeats “Viva Polisario” and “Sahrawi” over and over, with an ardent pride in his voice that is difficult to describe. When I second his words, “Viva Polisario,” he goes ecstatic. A future president of Western Sahara, one might hope?

Sahrawi is what the citizens of Western Sahara call themselves, even though most of them are of Berber or Arab descendant. Polisario (Front Populaire de Libération de Saguia El Hamra et Rio de Oro) is a rebel movement that works for the independence of Western Sahara. The country is, despite the UN’s decision that there should be a referendum about independence, occupied by Morocco. The process towards a referendum is constantly delayed by those in power in Rabat.

After a while, Lina arrives. We ask our newfound friends for a cheap eatery, but are instead invited to eat couscous at one of the boys’ home. Thirteen-year-old Aladouli runs off to ask his father if it is ok that he brings guests. Really running, it doesn’t take more than a minute before he comes back smiling broadly and happy to invite us – it was no problem. His family’s house is only a few blocks away – we walk there accompanied by Aladouli and a dozen other kids; like a swarm buzzing around us.

Once there, we have to offload the bags from our bikes for the latter to fit as we carry them up the narrow staircase. In the living room, Aladouli’s father lies on his back watching satellite TV with the volume turned up loud, whilst his mother prepares the food in the adjacent kitchen. After a great meal – couscous with chicken – the father invites us to stay overnight. “Stay a day or a week – it is as you wish,” he says. Aladouli continues, “Stay a week or a month – no less!” We end up staying for two nights, enjoying good company and great food. And not the least exciting evening walks through town together with our 13-year-old friend.

On our second day, we visit a hammām – a steam bath – in the evening. By the entrance, facing the street, is a cashier sitting behind a counter. We pay, and then part as women enter through the door to the left, and men through the to the right. Women and men bath in completely separate departments. Inside are three rooms – warm, hot and very hot – all fully tiled. They are unfurnished except for two taps – one for hot and one for cold water. We are given two buckets to fill with water that we mix ourselves from the two taps to a temperature of choice. I came without neither soap nor shampoo, but some fellow local visitors shared theirs with me. The entrance fee was eight dirham for men, and ten for women. Unfair it might seem, but Aladouli and I had to wait outside a long time for Lina to finish, so I guess women use more water.

We stay another day and night at Mohammad’s peaceful oasis. He himself seems happy to have us around – I guess with his nearest neighbor 14 km away, it can get a bit quiet sometimes. Today though, three men have surprisingly put up a stall each across the road. We go there to buy some of the cactus figs they sell, and Mohammad seems to know them. Another man passes by on his fully loaded bicycle. It turns out that he travels around the country, from town to town, selling the Koran. As a printed book, but also in a digital version that he proudly shows us. It reads the Koran automatically, while showing the text on a b/w screen.

Mohammad invites us to share a delicious lentils soup for lunch. Here in the dry semi-desert, water is scarce, so Mohammad collects his from the rain. What falls onto the roof of the café is led down into a concrete tank. The latter is as big as the house itself, but buried under ground. The water inside is clear and tastes good, but he adds a bit of chloride just to be on the safe side. He uses solar panels to get electricity. It gives enough power for lighting during the evening as well as some radio and TV-watching.

In the late afternoon, Mohammed takes us with for a walk in a valley nearby. He shows us how to pick the cactus figs that grow wild in great numbers, so one can eat as many as one likes. The important thing is to – using some grass – brush away the tiny spines that cover the fruit, before one picks and eats it. Later, we climb to the top of a small hill just above the café. There, Mohammad and his friends prepare tea for us on a small fire of sprigs and sticks. It’s beautiful as the sun sets above the scenery before us.

We sleep together – I, Lina, Mohammad and two of his friends – in a small room behind the kitchen and the cafeteria, on a layer of blankets and carpets that cover the floor.

Before we head off in the morning, Mohammed offers us some bread with olive oil for breakfast – and some sweet Moroccan tea of course. The road is monotonously straight and flat. The wind is on our side; blowing from behind. We reach speeds of up to 30-35 km/h without much effort – great! Every now and then, small whirlwinds of sand and dust run across the naked land and the road.

After 40 km, we’ve climbed a small mountain range. At its very top – just before the road winds down again to the land below – there is a small café where we halt to pause. The house is painted completely in pale pink – a splash of color in an else colorless scenery. Inside, we ask for something to buy for lunch. But owner Mohammad tells us that he hasn’t got anything to offer really, but that we instead can stay and share the stew of potatoes, onions, tomatoes and goat meat that he is cooking for himself and his friends.

And when the friends arrive – one has been to the nearest village 14 kilometers away to buy bread – we’ve decided to accept the offer. We gather around one of the white plastic tables inside. We were lucky I guess, as we didn’t have any food with us, and it would have taken another 40 km before reaching the next town. After the meal, we enjoy the comfortable breeze on the porch outside, shadowed by a thatched roof. We end up staying the rest of the day and – after Mohammed invited us to rest – for the night too.

We leave Guelmim and our kind hosts in the morning after the usual breakfast: tea with bread, of which pieces are broken and dipped in a saucer with olive oil. As simple as delicious!

We continue along Route National No 1 – now through a landscape that slowly changes from the mountainous and somewhat vegetated Atlas, to the sandy, dry, flat and windy southern Morocco, with the Sahara desert further inland.

We halt in Labyar (Lebiar) only to eat lunch, but end up staying the night after owner Mohammed invited us. The small village actually only consists of two restaurants/cafés and them in-between a since long shut down and deserted petrol station. All houses are lined along the west side of the road.

Mohammed spends most of the day behind the counter, where he sits on a white plastic chair reading the newspaper, or by the tables outside listening to radio; watching the cars pass by. Slow and simple life. He shows me his animals in one of two inner yards: two donkeys, a dog and ten or so sheep. I get to ride one of the donkeys, but it proves far from easy, and after having been chased around by a male donkey (mine was a female), we ended up taking it back inside the yard. Riding a donkey just wasn’t my piece of cake.

During the evening, a few more people pass by. A man riding his car towards Guelmim has picked up a young boy, and explains, “I found him walking by the roadside, so I offered him a ride. And he was hungry too!” They share a pot of tea, and the boy eats an omelet with bread that the man has given to him. The boy is silent, looking down at the plate as if he hasn’t seen food in days.

Later in the evening, a police patrol arranges a checkpoint right outside the café. It’s dark; Mohammed has lit a gaslight outside on the porch. We watch as the cars, trucks and buses get stopped by the police on the road outside; follow the policemen’s work. We’ve gotten to put our bicycles inside the kitchen, and in yet another room behind we sleep comfortably on a layer of thick blankets. Mohammed goes to sleep with us whilst his brother works through the night.

I meet Horma at the local post office. He helps me to move forward in the confusing waiting system – there is only one person working behind an old grayish desktop computer. After having helped me to get my package sent, Horma invites me to his home. There, I’m invited to a wonderful tajine for lunch, and before that a lesson in how to make Moroccan tea.

First round: half a glass of tea leafs into the pot, add water, boil, add one glass of sugar, pour from glass to glass several times, drink. Second round: new water added to the pot with the tea from round one, sugar, some mint leafs, resin from a tree in Sahara, pour, boil, pour, drink. Most of the time is spent pouring the tea back and forth between the pot and the glass, and between the glasses. It tastes great anyway, although very sweet.

Horma, like most young Moroccan men, also carries stories on success or defeat in trying to reach Spain. He has tried three times. It took two days and two nights with the boat from El Aaiún, the capital of Western Sahara. But contrary to Faraji that I spoke with yesterday, Horma was sent home by Guardia Civil instantly upon reaching the Spanish Canary Islands. Quite literally as the boat glided up onto the shore. Despite these past failures, he hasn’t lost faiths but instead seems confident that he will succeed one day. Myself, I’ve learnt that the most well-known Spanish word in Morocco is not “hola” or “hasta la vista,” but “Guardia Civil.”

For the past two weeks, the road has crossed the Atlas Mountains and been at a constant up or down. Now – as the mountains slowly fade out – the road winds down a serpentine valley. We pass between the mountains’ very last ridges that fade away further afield and eventually disappear into a flat, dry ground that spreads out ahead of us. Right there, at that breach between mountain and plain, there is a small village. Its only road – the one we travel – cuts straight through it.

In Casablanca, at the Mauritanian embassy, we met Ali who invited us to stay with him in Guelmim. So by now, we stop at the small village that is sliced in two by the main road. We find a phone booth and dial the number that Ali gave us. Unfortunately, he is not at home himself, but we are welcomed to stay with his sister Soumaya. We arrange a meeting in the outskirts of Guelmim, and from there she guides us in a taxi to their house. We stay for three days.

Soumaya, her mother and her father, are great hosts, and Guelmim is – despite (or thanks to) being just an average town – beautiful and worth to discover. The three days also give us time to rest up, wash up, dish up and recharge. I have covers for two of my bags done at a local tailor. He sews together two car sunshades that I found some weeks before by the roadside in southern Spain. My hope is that the covers will be able to keep the midday heat away from my bags that carry camera, food and water.

In town, we meet more locals that all have their own stories of success and defeat in their trials to reach Europe and its rumored wealth in work and paychecks. Faraji hangs around with his friends outside a kiosk nearby where we stay. On three separate occasions, he has taken the small six-meter boat from nearby Plage Blanche (the White Beach) to Tenerife (Spain). It’s a thirty hour ride that begins in darkness and – with a bit of luck – ends in darkness, too. If not, it will be near impossible to escape being seen by the police. He has been able to stay and work in Europe – mostly in Barcelona – for two years, one month and one year respectively for each journey. That’s also the amount of time it has taken the Guardia Civil (Spanish police) to catch him, and afterwards deport him back to Morocco.

We leave Abahdrar and his family after having breakfast in their home. The road continues along the beautiful coast to Sidi Ifni. From there, the road winds inland, through deep valleys. A choking heat rests there – trapped in-between the mountains. Every breath is an exert. The air is heavy as lead.

Just an hour or so before sunset, we reach Misti. After dinner – bread with canned sardines; some oranges for dessert – we meet Hassan. He finds us as we idle about at one of a few cafés in town, and invites us to stay at his place for the night.

Hassan runs a small amusement hall across the street, with foosball and pool tables. At ten o’clock, he takes a break from work and guides us to his small apartment. We carry our bikes and bags up the narrow, steep stairs to the second floor, and Hassan makes us comfortable in his living room. He then returns to his play hall – he will stay open for a few more hours. By the time he comes back home, we are already fast asleep.

We leave the national road for a beautiful, small one along the coast, with picturesque villages every ten or so km. In one of those small towns – Sidi Boulfdaïl (Sidi Bon Al Fday) – we meet shop owner Abahdrar who invites us to stay with him. While he finishes the last couple of hours’ work in the shop – selling the usual food and some other essentials – we go for a walk to the beach.

Lina walks ahead, and I end up meeting Abdullah, 19 years old. He works in building houses in the village, earning fifty dirhams (about five euro) a day. He comes riding on a mule to fetch sand by the beach, which he uses in making concrete. When we reach the shore, we watch some fishermen work; the sun setting. Abdullah fills up his two buckets, hanging on each side of the donkey’s back, with sand. We turn back home; walk the stony slope towards the village. We talk about the bedrocks of life – work, salary, Sweden/Morocco, traveling. It’s already pitch dark. “That’s my house,” Abdullah says suddenly and points towards one of the many same-looking houses – all with a dark opening for entrance. We greet each other goodbye; I and Lina continue back to Abahdrar’s shop. Only the bray of donkeys break the evening silence.

Our host drives us from his shop to his home, where we enjoy a wonderful dinner together with his family. Later, he drives us to a small fishing harbor nearby – built by the Japanese as an aid project. We watch as the fishermen set off at midnight. Ahead of them they have three hours in full speed across the waves, before they reach the place where they lay their nets. Then three hours back. They’ll reach back here early next morning.

Shortly after passing Shedeabo, we halt by a checkpoint. Two gendarmes first give us permission to camp next to their post. They give us soft drinks and bottled water (which they had probably been given as ‘gifts’ by the truck drivers they’d stopped), and in return we share a melon that Lina had bought earlier in the day. We sit there and watch them work in their perfect, white suits.

But after an hour or so of us just hanging around, they change their mind. Instead of letting us camp their, they advice us to use a permanent gendarmerie tent by the roadside in Shedeabo. So we go back there (just a km or so), enjoy a nice tajine at a café and then go sleep in the large, military green tent. The long side that faces the road is completely open, and inside are some four or five beds.

Today we pass yet one of those exceptionally beautiful parts of our journey. After a few more hours of winding up and down across the hilly landscape, we reach a steep and abrupt escarpment. The road makes a straight turn left to follow the hillside down to the land below. We stay up there for a while, admiring the majestic view. By the coastline, maybe five or so kilometers further away, the wind blows up huge rolling clouds of sand and dust. Away from the shore, low, light clouds cover the ocean. The mystique picture is difficult to describe, but it keeps us gazing for a long time before we continue.

The road down is a great reward after a couple of days’ uphill. We are led back down to the coast and its more pleasant, cool climate. Further on, the road leads us through the small town of Tamri, situated in a valley where bananas are cultivated in numbers and thus sold cheaply.

In Taghazout, we meet Simoh who has lived in Sweden for many years, and still speaks Swedish fluently. We are invited to stay with him in his apartment, and together we make a grand tajine for dinner, using chicken, tomatoes, onions, pickled lemon and various spices. Listen to Alpha Blondy and Café del Mar.