We arrive in Tanger in the new Port Med. The port is tidy and perfectly organized, custom and police is so fast, that I'm still laughing at the police officer, when I pass the gate. He said: " Ah, KTM, what a noise!" and rolls his eyes smiling. But with increasing speed I stop laughing. Only thanks to my earplugs I'm able to enjoy the picturesque coastal road to Tetouan. The azure sea is sparkling, slight waves are curling along the beach but although all signs inidcate springtime, it's still quite cold. The mountains around Chefchauen are still caped with snow, but the first flowers are already opening their floral.

The medina of Fez is charming as always. I barely can drag myself away from the tanner's quarter, the fascinating spectacle of all those red pools, where the kins are processed in mid-age manner, keeps hold of me. The tanners wearing shorts are stamping in the brine until the leather picks the color up as required. Then the wet skins are loaded onto donkeys and transported to sunny sports for drying.

Over the plateau de Rekkem we head south. But here it's still winter and in the morning we find a heavy layer of frost on our tent. The small track is splitting up all the time, but I dnn't care as long as long as it leads to the South.

A warm wind passes me, pigeons are curring somewhere and I'm lying lazy in the sun. This has been a perfect day! Today I was riding through Erg Chebbi, I climb Merzouga's highest dune with my KTM Rally and now I'm having a cold coke. Of course I season the ride in the erg to Claudia - riding together is much more fun after all.

We stay a few more days in Merzouga and enjoy Francoise's great meals. She has moved in from France and has now been living in Morocco's south for almost 20 years. Not only David has some fun in the dunes and after crossing erg Chebbi several times, we proceed to Taouz where we turn west. The pist winds through wide and scenic valleys along the Algerian border. Oeud Ouzina leaves kind of a creaky impression in Claudias mouth: It's long time ago, we were riding in such amounts of fech fech (bulldust for the Aussie readers).

In Mhamid we meet some Czechs, who invite us for some Slivovitsch. We thank but decline, explaing we could not ride afterwards. They just laugh and Pavel lets us know: "I'm scared to ride without schnaps!" Well, I would be scared too, off the beaten track in the saddle of his heavy BMW 1150GS. In the evening we party together without any reason and the yteach us our first Russian words for our next trip. The second sentence we learn, seems to be the most important: "We need to drink", nada babitsch. Cheers!

We proceed to the west where we find a claypan close to Lac Iriki. This would be a great place to get excited and pull the gas to the limit. But the area is quite lonesome and we are absolutely on our own. There would be no help for dozens of kilometers, so we try to stay cool. Speaking of cool: The nights are nice and warm now, so we sleep in our sleeping bags without our tent. The next day the Moroccan army throws a monkey wrench in our plans and forces us to veer to the North south of Tata. It seems we have been a bit too close to the fuzzy border. Leaving Icht we ride through a narrow gorge, which is the last offroad section before we hit the tarmac again to turn back to the port.