Story & photos by Aaron Rich

While living and working in the UK keen Kiwi overlander Aaron Rich, wife Sylvia and their two children did some serious off-roading in their Mitsubishi Shogun (Pajero). Here Aaron starts a two-part feature on one such trip, through Morocco to the edge of the Sahara Desert.

This article tells a tale from the first of two family 4WD adventures we had in Morocco and picks up after we travelled to the south of the country, having successfully navigated off-road crossings over the High Atlas and Jebel Sahro mountain ranges. 

Those were incredible routes worthy of their own articles, but here I want to focus on our dream to voyage out along the edge of the Sahara Desert.  Our travels are solo family 4WD trips and we aren’t afraid to get well off the beaten path in foreign countries. 

We couldn’t have known what the weather would throw at us on our first visit to Morocco.  We descended south from the mountains towards Morocco’s southern deserts anticipating the typically bone-dry desert climate known to prevail there. 

We got the temperatures we expected, pleasant winter time mid 20s - this is North Africa after all - but we were in for a surprise with how wet it would get and just how much havoc this would cause.  This because we could not have known that our visit would coincide with the country being struck by a once in ten years rainy period. 

Morocco has some major ‘oueds’ (defined as stream-beds that are dry except in a rainy season) that reach from the mountains far out into the desert and some can be as wide as five kilometres across!  Whilst these are usually dry and very dusty affairs, when it rains heavily in mountains to the north these oueds have potential to spring to life, sometimes violently. 

Risk & reward

There are risks and eventualities to prepare for on any 4WD expedition, especially a solo one to a foreign country with vast remote stretches, but I had not expected that excess water would pose such an obstacle to our plans to access the Sahara Desert. 

My intended route was to commence south from the village of Merzouga, which with its close proximity to one of the biggest sand seas in Morocco, complete with dunes the size of small mountains, is a popular destination for 4WD tourists to Morocco.  Getting as far as Merzouga wasn’t too difficult.  We had to contend with some seriously flooded roads and in one place a bridge had been completely washed out, though we managed to safely 4WD across because the water level in the oued had by then dropped. 

We would later learn that during the worst of this freakish weather more than a few 4WDs were washed away attempting to cross oueds (rivers) where better judgement should have prevailed. In some cases these were local 4WD operators who over-sold their ability to get stranded tourists out, with unfortunate consequences. 

We waited out the worst of the wet weather in Merzouga, which coincided nicely with our plans to explore the Erg Chebbi sand sea. We discovered an abandoned village falling into ruin out in desert beyond the sand sea; surprisingly at the centre of the village remained one still inhabited house in good condition.  This seemed unusual at the time, but we would later come to learn that often in Morocco it is the case that someone still lives there, no matter how isolated or unusual it seems. 

Out of nowhere

Shortly after passing through that village, the skies briefly opened with heavy rains.  It lasted only minutes but was nevertheless enough to produce a miniature flash flood.  Not enough to threaten us, but enough to indicate how quickly they can come out of nowhere. 

It was nothing like the devastating metre high flash flood that we would have to abruptly turn our 4WD around and outrun to high ground on another trip to Morocco the following year….but that’s a story for another day.

Unfortunately, there isn’t space to give details concerning the build of our 4WD vehicle with this article, though I envisage addressing this in a dedicated future piece.  However, there’s one point I think relevant to cover here because I anticipate some readers may wonder how we’d get on if we broke down or got stuck in the desert. 

Our 4WD has a water tank built down in the chassis, plus the ability to pump (and filter) water through hoses up out of desert wells (or rivers).  We carried known GPS coordinates of desert wells with us.  We also carry a device that automatically transmits the GPS location of our vehicle via satellite to friends/family every 10 minutes.  This device can also transceive text messages via satellite.  We have never needed to rely on the device for emergency use, but it is a comfort to know that no matter how remote we go we are never out of communication.

In next instalment in this series I will tell another tale from our off-road adventures in Morocco; where the Sahara Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean. 

About the author

Aaron Rich is a Kiwi 4WD overland adventurer who returned ‘home’ in 2016 after living and working in the UK for ten years. With partner Sylvia he has a son and two daughters; the eldest is 10.  Whilst in the UK Aaron bought a Mitsubishi Pajero (Shogun) and converted it into an off-road tourer suited to the type of (well) off the beaten track overlanding he prefers.  To date Aaron and family have used their modified Pajero to tour 26 countries spanning North Africa, Europe, the Balkans and ultimately reaching as far as Turkey.  After checking out what his own country has to offer 4WD adventurers since his return, Aaron and family are preparing to set off on a new international 4WD adventure.  Commencing early May they will drive their Pajero from Vladivostok, in the Russian far east, to the UK via Central Asia.  Their route will entail significant off-road stretches and will be their biggest undertaking yet.

To read the full story in the April 2019 issue of NZ4WD go to Zinio.com (March 15) or purchase your own hard copy at the Adrenalin store.