i-marbella has just returned from a 7 day trip into the Sahara and Atlas mountains with the charity group ONG Accion Solidaria, delivering medicine, clothes and food to the poorest villages in the region

Day one started with a very early ferry crossing from Tarifa to Tangiers via FRS ferry company who kindly donated our tickets and who also supplied us with t-shirts and baseball caps for the trip.

The Suitemobile prepares to board the FRS ferry from Tarifa

Dear old customs then decided to empty all nine 4x4's to check we were carrying what our manifest said we were, so this delayed us several hours...I decided this was a good time for a sleep and left them to their reams of paperwork. God bless them, they do make things long winded.

The Moroccan Port of Tangiers

The plan was then to drive all the way down from Tangiers to Ouzoud in the Atlas Mountains. This part of our journey would be a 14 hour dash down the Autopista to Marrakech then left into the Atlas finaly arriving in the small village of Ouzoud in the province of Azilal, 150 km north-east of Marrakech, in Morocco.

On the Road...Little did I know how far

The Ouzoud Waterfalls would be the backdrop of our first night in Morocco.The bottom of the falls is accessible through a shaded path of olive trees. At the summit of the falls, there exist a dozen old small mills that are still in use. In the twilight, you can observe whole troops of monkeys. Also for the more energetic (whichI was not) you can follow a narrow and difficult track leading from the road of Beni Mellal while descending the gorges from the "wadi el-Abid" The falls are over 600m deep.

Some of the drivers relax by the falls before dinner.
, Ouzoud Waterfalls

Ouzoud is the Berber word for "olive", referring to the nearby olive trees.

The "Caravana" was made up from cars from Cordoba, Cadiz, Malaga, Sevilla and of course Marbella making this a truly Andalucian adventure.

A motley crew of Andalucians, one English and one Moroccan

www.4x4accionsolidaria.org