It has been raining a lot here, many areas in northern Morocco are flooded, roads and river crossings are impassable.
The 650km stage planned for Tuesday has grown to more than 1000 kilometers because of the many detours and instead of the planned 13 hours we needed 23 to finish it. No sleep last night, we arrived just in time 2 minutes before the start of the next stage.
One of the 23 hours we spent at a police checkpoint in Ben Guerir: in lack of alternatives available at 3:30am we asked at the checkpoint for directions to Hammam, the door of which we had to photograph. The guy at the checkpoint was extremely helpful, he even insisted on having a police car escorting us to the Hammam. Unfortunately the police chief of the town, whom he called to show us the way, considered our intentions as highly suspicious. He took us to the police station, and made a few phone calls to check that everything is OK with us. Judging from the time it took, he made a lot of calls….

Finally (with the help of a pack of cigarettes) everything worked out well.

We arrived at the finish line around 6:30am, only to find out that the camp, and hence the start of the next stage, was on the other side of the city. Luckily there were not too many policemen at that time of the day, we managed to arrive at the start just in time at 7am. Dead tired, we grabbed our race sheets, and left for the next stage immediately.

Many of the teams spent the afternoon with car repairs, we are lucky this time, the 3400km until now went smoothly. We went to Tanger to change money, to spend most of it right after on Diesel, to buy a local SIM card, and to have breakfast, lunch and dinner in one. Tomorrow’s 650km stage will start at 7am, the finish is close to Marrakech.

Managed to get through customs in 20 minutes (the only question was if we carry firearms, the only suspicious box the one with Janos’ vegan food) and to get to our hotel.

Its extremely windy outside and around 10°C cold, I think we will spend the afternoon in the shower instead of walking around Tanger.

The few (in previous years always dry) riverbeds we saw on  the way from the port were all full of water, better suited for rafting than for crossing by cars. Let’s see how many of those we have to cross in the next days.