Dakhla

Welcome to the twilight zone. Christ, this is Dakhla? The strangest and, in some ways, eeriest place I’ve been to in Morocco without question - I arrived here at 2pm on a Friday afternoon when you’d expect that the place would certainly betray some signs of life but Dakhla is curiously silent, strikingly so. As I strolled around the streets earlier looking for life, the only noise I heard came from the military air base built on the fringes of the town centre. Dakhla is 23 hours’ drive from Marrakesh and the drive probably wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated helped by the fact that the roads were impeccable all the way. Of course the reason for this is that because Western Sahara - the majority of which I’ve passed through now - is a disputed territory which Morocco is claiming for its own, the government is pouring millions into developing the roads and settlements in the region. There are grants and land available for those who are willing to be coaxed into living here. It’s like Morocco’s very own Gaeltacht.
The drive here almost had a very spectacular beginning as before we had even pulled out of the bus despot, the bus driver and a passenger had to be held apart and screamed obscenities at each other. Well, it was all in Arabic but it’s fair to say they were screaming obscenities at each other given their tone of voice and the fact that it was too early to compliment the driver on his driving. And it all blew out quickly as many of those ‘Hold me back, hold me back’ contretemps seem to do.
There’s nothing to see on the drive here however but sand flats on both sides and it's a 1,500km drive (the equivalent of a drive from Dublin to northern Italy for example). Upon leaving Marrakesh we did drive through the High Atlas mountains for some time but once we leave them behind it’s scrub desert all the way. The Moroccan military are everywhere to be seen along the road and our bus is stopped countless times by officials who clearly can’t be arsed mounting the bus to check on everyone’s passports and so we’re waved through more often that not. There’s a heavy military presence in every town and village throughout Western Sahara, each settlement appearing infrequently like a mirage on the horizon. This is flat country. It is quite beautiful to look at in a Blade Runner/Star Wars landscape way.
I’m not the only western on the bus though as I’m joined by a Dutch guy who’s cycling from north Africa down to the south if he can make it. Poor bastard though - he hadn’t done his research and was 40km out of Dakhla when he met some people who told him that the Mauritanian border officials had long since stopped handing out visas at the border and so he had to abandon his bike here in Dakhla and begin the relentlessly boring trip all the way back up to the Mauritanian embassy in Rabat, collect his visa and then jump on same bus right back down to Dakhla from where he’ll set off tomorrow. He doesn’t seem even slightly discomfited by this, as he put it himself “I have one year so there is no hurry”.
As is always the case whenever I’m sat upright be it on a train, bus or plane, there was no sleep whatsoever but I’ve found myself a cheap room in the Hotel Riad around the corner from the bus stop so it’ll be an early night. As Dakhla is about as interesting and as lively as Enniscrone in the depths of winter - Dakhla is also by the sea, a drab, nuclear looking sea mind you - I’ll be moving on tomorrow having figured out that there is indeed a bus to the border at 9am from where I’ll take a shared taxi to Nouadhibou. If all goes well then I should be in West Africa proper by this time tomorrow evening. I’ve been anticipating the iron-ore train now for some time but it looks unlikely as if it’ll come to pass now alas. Mauritania has, for some time, had a poor reputation where tourist safety is concerned and so any travel to the Adrar region - which is exactly where I would have been headed on board the train - is, at present, strongly discouraged. And so it now seems as if Mauritania will be a transit country only with a stop-off at Nouadhibou tomorrow and the capital Nouakchott a couple of days later before heading on to tangle with border officials at Rosso on the border with Senegal.