SOURCE BLEUE DE MESKI

It is not that cold at Meski but still not warm especially at night. Nevertheless we enjoi the calm days at this lovely campground.
With Mouloud we visited a Beduin-camp. It was astonishingly warm inside the tent, even when the fire was not burning. After the Kebab-diner they to each other about the Camel and Goats which they are herding and Mouloud were translating a little. Though it was a quiet interesting evening you surely can’t have without knowing someone in the region. It’s always good to make friends all over the world.
The next goal is the Erg Chebbi next to Erfoud.

THE ATLAS

Two places I know from former visits in Morocco, I wanted to see again.
First is Volubilis nice Roman ruins next to Moulay Idris a holy town to Moslems, the buildings are not that impressive, but the way they put the town into ambiente is really spectacular.
The other place is Meknes with one of the four kings-palaces in Morocco, a lot of walls and gates souks (markets) and a huge medina (old city) where you can get easily get lost. The nice thing in this town is, there are not so many tourists, that means the people are still nice and they don’t force you to buy souvenirs. Along the alley between the old and new town Orange-trees are growing.
Meknes is also the centre of the province with a modern part where we could buy a SIM-card for the phone and USB-modem for the computer.
Originally I wanted to sleep one night in the Middle Atlas and the nxt night in the High Atlas, but due to the expected night temperatures we decided to overnight near Azrou and pass the Ceder-forrests and make the passes Col du Zad and Tizzi’n Tairhemt in one. Driving through the beautiful Gorge du Ziz we arrived in the afternoon the Source Bleue de Meski. Here we stayed for a few days visiting Mouloud and other Marocains I know from former journeys. The first evening we were invited at Mouloud for a Tachine-diner.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

We started a day earlier as planed to the first part of our trip. To our pleasure there was no rain or snow all the 1400 km to Southern France, but the nights were lousy cold, especially the second one in the Masiffe Central, the hoses of our watersystems were frozen in the morning. To our luck we have a well working heating system, so it was a comfortable night we awaked at 9 o’clock in the morning.
The fog and the clouds caused a special light in the mountains. That made 300 km through the this region really pleasant.
At the Viaduct of Millau we had our lunch.

In the late afternoon we arrived at my brothers home.

Back Home

In Croatia we heard about about an accident with the ferryboat at the lake Komani. August 29^th a passengerferry sank within four minutes, fortunately nobody lost his life. (One week after we took the car ferry on this route.) But there was nothing in the news, the officials in Albania propably still have a disturbed relationship with bad news and the freedom of the press. The ships are not looking well maintained, very rosty and life-saving-devices are missing or rotten. Looking back we got some different feelings about this cruise, which we really enjoyed…

But anyway Albania is a beautiful country, which we like to visit again.

The Way Home

We went slowly Northwest along the Croatian coast, which is really beautiful, enjoyed swimming in the clean and warm Adria, found us some nice autocamps, so they say to campgrounds in Croatia. I wanted to stay some days at Cres an island in the Kwarner Bay. Though we went to Zadar for the ferryboat, but since this day they changed the schedule into a two-times-a-week service, because the saison is off now. We missed the boat for a couple of hours only…

Plan B was to go to Krk and from there to Cres, a lot more km and more expenses for the tickets, but what could we do?

Some days later we left Cres for Slowenia.

Slowenia would it be worth to spent more there - but not this time.

We used our way through Italy to buy some good food… and went on to Austria on tollfree roads. Fortunately we have a GPS which knows everything about tollroads though we could mostly avoid this pricy ways. It was also much nicer to drive on sideroads.

After a night at the Achensee we came back to Germany, visited some friends of Gisi and arrived Adlitz in the evening.

Croatia

Our next goal was Dubrovnik, which was destroied in 1993 in the Bosnian war. I saw it before and was a little frightened to see how it is now and Gisi haven’t seen it yet.

We went around the city in a huge queue with our “Blue Wonder” and couldn’t find a space to park.

Later we went to Metkovich, where I was stationed in the Bosnian war to lead a convoi with humanitarian help into Bosnia, how I expected: everything changed I couldn’t even find the “grillrestaurant” and the “coffee-bar” I used to go in, I found only the park in the centre with the trees where they posted their loses. Of course I found the storage place and the house where we overnighted.

Though I got some mixed feelings in remembering this times.

Montenegro

Inspite of the informations fromADAC there was no roadtoll in Albania. After the usual game on the border “truck or motorhome” and paying a so called “Ecotax” we went into Montenegro. Other tourists told us about 10km empty sandbeach South of Ulcinj but meanwhile there are almost 10km sunshades…

By chance we got the next ferryboat to cross the bay of Kotor. There is surely more to explore in this small and nice country, but we are heading Northwest…