From the Ocean to the Sahara desert

[Fb73]

Hello my fellow gas guzzlers, I'm back from my trip to Marokko, so it's time for a report !

You can see the overall route in the map attached, and a picture I made of the dashboard at the end of the trip !

First I want to thanks FRF and its members, this forum is a gold mine, from the needed trail gear, spare parts, to the right way to use my Raptor when offroading, you can find nearly everything here, and you people are always of good help !

So the plan was to start from my home in France, take the ferry from Barcelona to Tanger, then it was a long road to the south of Marokko to reach the desert lands and meet or guide who did an amazing job so we could enjoy or trip without worrying about food, water and refueling...

But let's speak of the truck after nearly 3600 miles for the overall trip, with around 2000 miles of trails and sands...Well that's simple, I did'nt have a single problem during the whole trip, didn't break anything, not even a flat tire, and I can tell you the trails over there were tough, we did a lot a rocky trails, with sneaky rocks everywhere awaiting to tear your tires off...I'm impressed how the BFG AT KO held up, doesn't seem they suffered the trip...

I was a bit worried about the IWE's and small things like the speed sensors that you I could easily break and would ruin the trip, but well these trucks are really built tough !!

 

[Fb73]

Day 1 : We met our guide near the city of Agadir, our plan was to drive along the Atlantic coast and explore the famous "White beaches" and those ernomous sand arches carved by the ocean waves...

The trails were sandy and soft, we stayed on top of the cliffs, the high waters didn't allow us to drive on the beaches safely...I could make it easily in 2WD with a good speed, only needed to switch of 4Hi to cross some sections of low speed sand dunes...

At the end of day we set up our bivouac close to an ancient fort of the foreign legion, a nice Oasis where we could chill up

 

[mike.s]

Looks like a lot of fun!

 

[BearClaw]

Amazing trip!!!

Congrats on a succesful adventure and I am glad all went so well. I am also curious if there was any other vehicle along on the journey?

 

[Fb73]

Amazing trip!!!

Congrats on a succesful adventure and I am glad all went so well. I am also curious if there was any other vehicle along on the journey?

Well on the trails we met nobody. With the uprising of the Islamist threat in Africa, tourism has taken a very serious hit and our guide told us that the number of tourists dropped by 75% in the last two years...

To be honest I was a bit afraid too at the beginnning, wondering if I should make this trip or not, but Marokko actually stays as the safest country in North Africa, government is holding the country and the borders with a very strong cop & military presence, but I wouldn't take the risk to go in the nearby countries like Algeria, Mauritania as it's clearly known now that Daesh and Isis have infiltrated these countries...

 

[Yukon Joe]

Glad we could help and thanks for the trip report. The Raptor is a lot of fun off-road.
Keep the pictures coming!

Yukon Joe

 

[Fb73]

Day 2 : After our night in the Oasis, we got back the to the shore and the famous White beaches ; at the time of lunch we arrived to a big "Oued", a word that means "River Bed". Most of the rivers in Marokko are dry, I was told that the last big rains in the region were...6 years ago !!!

So it's very to common to use these Oued as trails, and this one took us to the ocean with some huge dunes and beaches to play around...Lot of deep sand where I had to deflate, but there were still some areas where even the 400hp of the Raptor would struggle to get through in 4Hi...We spent some time playing in the sand and our last challenge was to climb the huge dune you will see in the pictures attached, that one got me scared at first, and the power of the mighty V8 was put to good use, you can trust me on that lol !!

The afternoon lead us the end of the beaches, so it was time to get deeper in the desert close to the south border of Marokko, less sand and more rocks on some difficult trails where I couldn't gain enough speed to take advantage of the Fox shocks, was maybe on of the worst trail of the trip, with the truck shaking like it's gonna fall in pieces !! Our trucks are definitely made for high speeds !

 

[Fb73]

More pics !

 

[Tom]

That is so cool. Looked like an awesome adventure. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

 

[BearClaw]

Awesome photo's! Glad everything went well and safe