Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds MKIII
Lens: Canon EF 16-35 mm. f/4.0L IS

"A mind that is stretched to a new dimension can never go back to its old dimension" (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.).

This is my second visit to the Western Sahara and Morocco, my first was three years ago back in 2012. This first visit was truly a great adventure for me and I loved being in the Sahara and the Anti Atlas mountains so much. At that time I was greatly affected by the mess and all the noise in the villages and cities, and in a negative way. Being an introvert person these noisy busy Arabic cities takes a tool on me, it just becomes a bit too much for me, - I´m way more comfortably in the desolated desert. The amount of pollution in the cities and in the countryside close to them also had a bad impact on my appreciation of the country.

On this visit most of this changed a bit, maybe because I was prepared on this occasion. But I have come to love Morocco a lot, mostly I´m still found of the Anti Atlas and the desert plains in the Western Sahara. But my mind is more broadened on this visit. I´m able to appreciate the difference compared to Europe and the diversity here way better. I´m still not totally in my comfort-zone in the busy city-centers, but I´m able to cope with it in a more relaxed manner.

All in all this adventure with all the different experiences we have had have forever changed me. My mindset will never be the same. We have seen all the faces that Morocco and the Western Sahara can have I think. And I like it.

When I look at my photographs in library view in Adobe Lightroom it´s easily to make out that I normally on a day like this shoots at least a hundred photographs, and on the great days up to five-hundred. Today my score is as low as forty-one. Maybe today have been less adventurous than the previous.

And it might just be a fact. We had no mechanical failures, no-one got stuck in the mud, no military interference and the weather have been kind-off normal with blue skies, sunshine and a comfortably ambient temperature; it kind-off feels just like a holiday. We made it out of the part of the Western Sahara that had the rain-storm somewhat easily, the sand had dried out over night and progress was good. Here further south everything seemed normal, surely this region had not seen any rain recently.

So without any real drama we made it as far south as to latitude 23. At 22°59'57.2"N, 14°54'10.5"W we found a very lonesome tiny tree and made a stopover. I have never been so far south before in a vehicle that I have been driving myself all the way from my home-town. Having archived that we then headed west to reach the North Atlantic Ocean and a filling station. Steve's fuel-supply suddenly were lower than estimated due to a higher consumption than anticipated, and so we had to head towards tarmac in order to make it out to the coastline and the filling stations there.
Going west was a new experience having been heading south for so long. For my part it had been way more than 5.500 km since I left home so many weeks ago. And so we now cruised west towards the seaside on tarmac roads and then north to Dakhla where we could fill our nearly empty fuel-tanks again.