Western Sahara lies just south and west of Spain’s Canary Islands on the northwest coast of Africa. It has been one of the world’s trouble spots for half a century. A disputed region, Western Sahara is either an integral part of Morocco to the north, or the world’s largest non-self-governing… Continue reading
Something that worried me in the past was whether it’s okay to travel during Ramadan to Muslim countries. I needn’t have worried, but there are certain things to keep in mind if you plan to do the same yourself. What exactly is Ramadan? Ramadan is the ninth month in the… Continue reading
Antoine de Saint-Exupery landed on the sands of Cape Juby in 1926, having leapfrogged his biplane along the North-west African coast from Toulouse in the south of France. I reached the same sands, a rubbish-strewn beach of occasional low dunes, 85 years later. Cape Juby had become Tarfaya, and I… Continue reading
I passed the tropic of cancer on Friday without much fanfare, having travelled back up the Dakhla peninsula onto mainland Africa proper. The border formalities, both Moroccan and Mauritanian, were free of excitement and I was processed by both systems reasonably quickly. Travelling through Western Sahara/Southern Morocco and Mauritania has… Continue reading
I find a shared taxi to Laayoune in about 3 seconds. Having to wait for it to fill, being the first, allows me to accept the offer of tea from the driver. The large UN presence in disputed Western Sahara is immediately obvious from the blue flags, large white SUVs and… Continue reading
