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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jos Stratford" data-source="post: 3242909" data-attributes="member: 12449">19 June. Marrakesh, the Long Road South.Into the sultry heat at 9.00 am, touching down at Marrakesh Airport, Pallid Swifts screaming around the arrival gates, a House Bunting in full song inside the terminal. One humongous queue at immigration, then a less than friendly official who struck a line straight through our arrival cards and denied us entry to Morocco! Gee, what a welcome! Rather confused we stumbled back into the mass of other tourists awaiting their turn and sought out another official to find out what the problem was. It turned out that 'hotel' is not a sufficient address for the immigration forms. Hmm, so we borrowed a hotel name from another tourist and tried again. Nope, no still no entry! A rather friendlier official this time said as we had been rejected by one particular immigration guy we needed to return to him again. Oo er, this was not looking good! Anyhow, skipping the queues, we went straight back to his booth and breathed a massive sigh of relief when the thuds of the stamp went on our passports, we were in!After that, all went rather more smoothly. Hertz delivered us a plush new shiny car and moments later we were cruising out onto the streets of Marrakesh. Umpteen more Pallid Swifts overhead, Common Bulbuls in roadside shrubbery, a bunch of camels on a roadside junction. One quick police checkpoint and we were off, it was now near 11.00 a.m. and ahead of us lay a drive of 1400 km to Dakhla in the southern sections of the Western Sahara. Didn't make many stops on this first day, just continued ploughing south till the evening, the roads rather busy and slow all the way to Guelmine. White Storks, European Bee-eaters and Turtle Doves near Marrakesh, Spotless Starlings around Agadir, Woodchat Shrikes and Thekla Larks somewhere further south.Some time after dark, 620 km into our journey, I pulled off the road onto a rocky track leading towards the sea near Oued Choika, a fine site to camp for the first night. Trillions of little fish jumped in the water as we shone the spotlight around, the crashing Atlantic made for a fine backdrop. Having also travelled through the previous night, there was no trouble in sleeping that night!</blockquote>

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