My Morroccan Story by Tim Pullen

 

I would like to start this blog by saying a huge thank you to Bob Friendship for getting me started in this new medium for me. Cheers, Bob, and thanks for your patience.

My Safari Overland experience or ‘An Innocent Abroad’

It was the era when young people were taking the overland 'hippie-trail' from Western Europe to the Middle-East and beyond. They were going to places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Nepal and other 'groovy’ destinations. They were in search of - well, just 'something’. 'Hey, whatever. It's out there, man!' Whatever 'it' is.

My name is Tim Pullen. I was, and still am, a home lover. I’ve lived in the same house in Welling, Kent, since I was 2 months old, and I’m now 73. I’ve covered a huge amount of mileage in the intervening years – always coming back to base - but in the summer of 1970 I was a shy, bespectacled 19-year-old, about as green as it’s possible to be, whose travel to date, apart from a couple of school trips, had largely involved parents, deck chairs and sandcastles. Now, here was exotic Morocco, an extension of the hippie trail but comfortably nearer home than those further-flung destinations.

I’d left school in August 1967 and was working for a big international shipping & forwarding company in the City of London as a lowly accounts clerk at a starting wage of £8 per week less tax (paid in cash). This rose to the equivalent of £9.25 per week that first Christmas, along with a generous Christmas bonus of £4. By 1970 I suppose I was on about £14 per week.

So what has all this got to do with Safari Overland? Patience, please, I’m getting to it. In late 1969 or early 1970, my older sister and her then boyfriend were planning an open-ended road-trip across North Africa. They’d bought a long wheelbase hard-top Land Rover and were converting the interior for the trip. They’d collected a lot of brochures, maps, city plans etc. in which I took a great interest. Around the same time, I spotted one of the now classic Safari Overland ads in a daily newspaper. I still have that cutting today. It reads: “Safari North Africa – Morocco, Greece and Turkey from 39 guineas” (nearly £41), so roughly three times my then weekly salary.

In any event, and for whatever reason, I was overwhelmed with the need to depart my sheltered lifestyle, head off to Morocco and throw myself deliberately into a crowd of complete strangers.

Hang on, you might say - if you’ve got this far - we’re talking about a couple of weeks, not a lifetime, or even a few months. But it wasn’t only me to have been taken aback by my decision. My family and friends were even more surprised: “What on earth’s got into Tim? What’s wrong with Dorset?”

I’ve often wondered over the years what exactly made me so fixated on this idea. It was no doubt a combination of factors, culminating in this late developer bursting belatedly out of his shell.

I took a trip down to the Safari office in Brighton, where I met the monkey sitting on the counter and the rest of the staff, very knowledgeable if marginally less cute, and came away more certain than ever that I’d be on my way to the Sahara that summer. I took away their latest ‘News about Safari’ newsletter, which I also still have.

This was becoming an obsession. I even created a chart on a piece of cardboard showing the days remaining before the trip, and excitedly crossed out each day as it came and went.

Eventually, June of 1970 came round and I found myself with a group of fellow punters on a de Havilland Comet airliner bound for Tangier on the Northwestern tip of Morocco, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. The big adventure was under way. The aim of the exercise was to journey down from the Asilah ‘base-camp’, south of Tangier, to Tan-Tan in the southwestern part of the country. Whilst we never actually made it, the trip became an incredible adventure, and on that very green and naive 19-year-old, it made a huge impression which changed my life forever, at least travel-wise.

A few memories of the trip.

Being more than half a century ago, a lot of the details are hazy, but recently I did manage to find the photo album of the trip which indicated certain place names as well as those of a few of my fellow travellers, so hopefully I can weave these into my story. The adventure was crammed with ‘firsts’ for me. It would be wonderful if anyone reading this was on that actual trip.

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Before starting the road-trip, we went to the Mamounia Palace Restaurant in Tangier, for food, drink and entertainment. I thought the wine glasses were some kind of magic trick because they were always full in spite of how much we drank. I was getting increasingly glassy-eyed as the evening wore on, as demonstrated in the only picture of me taken on the trip. (See photo). It was dark by the time we left in the truck to return to the Asilah base-camp, and my head was swimming, but encouragingly I survived this new experience without any evil effects.

The Safari team had very kindly put up the tents ahead of our arrival.Prior to this adventure, my only experience of being under canvas was a visit to Billy Smart’s Circus.

Following our return to Asilah we headed to the Safari Bar to see out the evening. In the circumstances I imagine I must have stayed on soft drinks. When it came to return to our tents we were stunned by the sight of The Milky Way stretching overhead from horizon to horizon. It was incredible, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with such clarity, even to this day with a lot of travelling behind me. We were struck too by the endless cacti and unfamiliar spiky plants growing around the camp site. I don’t know how we managed to find our tents. It must have been a combination of starlight and good luck. I think some of the more experienced travellers had thought to bring pocket-torches with them.

Next morning we were given brief instructions on how to take down the tents, and eventually we’d packed up our gear in the two-wheel trailers and were ready to hit the road. We set off in a convoy of four of the now famous yellow-painted ex-army Bedford RL 4-ton trucks. Old bus seats had been bolted in the back for our ‘comfort.’

Using my trusty photo-album as my guide, I note that we headed to the spectacular archaeological site of Volubilis, a partly-excavated Berber-Roman city situated near Meknes. At this location the truck had the first of many breakdowns, but it was near the site cafe so we had some refreshments.

Once we were under way again, we visited Fes and stayed at the ‘International Camping’ site, where we were shown how to assemble the tents. It would have made a great comedy sketch because there were tent poles, uprights and cross pieces all over the place, and I’ve never seen so many heads being scratched in puzzlement at the same time, mine included. In the end most of us just gave up for the rest of the trip and slept under that incredible canopy of sky and stars. Another one of those firsts! It never occurred to anybody what would happen if it rained.

My photo album tells me we camped on a volcanic outcrop near Rabat, the nation’s capital, then drove through Casablanca. I seem to remember that it was in Casablanca where we found a ‘western’ toilet as opposed to the usual ‘two footprints’. Later we had a stop in El Jadida for a stretch of legs.

En route to Agadir, the truck broke down again on a country road so we camped that night at the roadside. If memory serves, someone suggested that if we put a length of string around us on the ground, the bugs wouldn’t get to us. Most people dismissed this concept whilst others elected to sleep on the canvas roof of the truck so as to avoid the little critters. As it turned out, the string ‘barrier’ had been messed up during the night, and those on the top of the truck were covered in bugs!

One memory of Agadir is that the beach toilet ‘facilities’ were absolutely dire! Not a great situation in the hot summer sun!

Later we headed up into the Atlas Mountains, where we made camp, without the tents of course. The views of the surrounding terrain from that location were simply amazing. During the journey we had to stop to tie down the tarpaulin on the trailer.

Some of the roads were actually tarmacked but many others were just dirt. The dust cloud would follow us, until we stopped, but then it would continue, completely enveloping us and, for those sitting at the rear, caking our backs in fine sand so eventually we blended in with the landscape! During that part of the journey, we ran over a rock and punter Ray in the cab passenger seat put his foot through the floor. We had to stop there for repairs.

Further breakdowns occurred that day culminating near the small town of Taliouine. Hats off to our driver here! I wish I could remember his name. He took all these situations on board and somehow dealt with them, a huge responsibility, though possibly one he was used to having to deal with. We had to camp where the truck had stopped, by a ploughed but stony field. That was a rough place to stay for the night, again without tents, of course. I remember waking up in the morning with a runny nose. Unfortunately it was blood, and I suffered from nosebleeds for the next year which always reminded me of my bed in that stony field.

By this time, the convoy had already split up and it had become clear that our ultimate destination of Tan-Tan was going to be out of reach.

I don’t know how our driver managed it, but he got us on a local bus over the mountains to Marrakesh, a journey of some 9 hours, partly at night. The road on one side of the mountains was tarmac but the other side was just dirt. That really was an adventure on its own, with the locals’ crates of chickens and tethered goats inside and on top of the bus. I think Ray and a few others stayed with the driver and the truck in Taliouine. Somehow they were able to get the truck moving and joined us some time later in Marrakesh. Hats off to all once more!

We checked in to a hotel in Marrakesh which I believe we were later due to stay in anyway. That first night, some of us slept on the roof, from where we watched a party of Berber tribesmen enter the town, sadly on foot and not on camels. It must have been the second night when we used some of the rooms in the hotel to sleep. I can’t remember how it came about but there were probably up to four of us in our room with the lucky ones using the beds and the others (including myself) sleeping on the floor.

I can’t remember how many days we were in Marrakesh but my photo-album reminds me we saw a snake charmer in the bustling and noisy town square.

Eventually we left Marrakesh and headed back to Asilah via Rabat. There were a few more issues with the truck during the journey, and on our return to Asilah it transpired that only one of the four trucks actually made it to Tan-Tan.

During the trip I’d acquired some plastic beaded bracelets, a savage-looking necklace and a black kaftan all of which I wore for the journey home. My parents and sister had observed this creature coming down the road, and when I appeared at the front door I found them staring open-mouthed at the scruffily exotic individual before them!

Summing up, I have no regrets whatever in taking this amazing adventure. It set me on the road to discovering new places around the world. I did four more camping holidays in the ‘70s, to Turkey, Iceland, Iran and Kenya. Following a ‘conventional’ road-trip down the east-coast of the U.S. in 1977, I opted not to carry on camping but to indulge my passion for travel, total solar eclipses et al in a more comfortable fashion. But that’s another story.

PS - For anyone reaching the end of this blog I congratulate you!

Now for a few photos.

The only picture of me in Morocco.

I’m the drunk one 2^nd from left. Mick is 3^rd from left.

Group and friends on beach at Asilah.

Asilah base-camp from the Sahara Bar

Group at Volubilis

Our camp-site south of Rabat

Breakdown and road-side camp

John (left) and Mick at Agadir camp-site

Breaking camp in the Atlas Mountains

A stop in the mountains to tie down the tarpaulin

Punter Ray in cab’s passenger seat put his foot
through the floor when truck went over a rock

Breakdown near Taliouine and 
our camp-site in the foreground

Our local bus over the mountains 
from Taliouine to Marrakesh

Snake charmer in main square, Marrakesh

Original Safari newspaper ad.