Up early the following morning we crossed the enormous dam holding back the lake Bin el Oudane and we set our bearings for the Cascades d'Ouzzoud; a series of small waterfalls, fed by natural springs that channelled the water into an even larger fall way below the mist of the first falls, all draining into small brown pools around a hundred metres below us. Back in the van and another few dirham lighter we set off in the direction of a road that had been built over a bridge carved out of natural rock, with a twenty odd metre arch.

Some tea and a few smokes later we had to establish a general direction for the rest of the journey. Two options were debated, the Trance festival in the desert near Taroudant a few hundred kilometres to the south, or Essaouira and the legendary Jimi Hendrix coastline (well, he did spend a few days there, and it had been a 60s haunt until the police cleared it out in the seventies following the murder of a couple of hippies). After much deliberation we agreed on the Trance festival and a New Year's Eve surrounded by anarcho-techno-hippies breathing fire and just generally acting like the record got stuck 30 years ago. So with a newfound sense of direction after a few days wandering we pulled back onto the road ready to tackle Marrakech around 30 kilometres away.

The author, plus flauta player, plus snake

Marrakech would have to wait a few hours yet though as the afternoon was to turn into a long one, a very long one. A couple of hundred metres down the road I felt the van slide out at the back and the scrunching of metal on tarmac. A blow out, I thought, until I realised that it was a bit more than that. Managing to get it onto the hard shoulder and to a stop we surveyed the situation. The van was listing to my side and we could only count three wheels in sight. We fanned out on the other side of the road and surveyed the fields and bushes for our errant wheel. It had come to a stop in a thick acacia bush ahead of the van. Deciding that putting on the spare wouldn't really solve the problem seeing as the whole disc had come off too we got on the phone to RACE, the Spanish automobile breakdown recovery Karen had taken out the week before. A tow truck would be there in three hours. Not before two days of diarrhoea, vomiting, no food and copious smoking took its toll on Jose though. Feeling faint and trying to sit himself in the van he blacked out, falling onto his face in the mud and rocks beside the van. Karen in a state of shock on seeing him there unconscious went into mild hysteria. I brought Jose round with water and made sure he could focus and hear properly and tried to assess the situation. Moroccans were gathering by the scooter load around us at the sight of a van with three wheels and whitey lying on the hard shoulder with blood on his face. Judging the situation as getting a little out of hand and fearing the police arriving at any moment and finding our little stash I thought I'd better get things under control. We managed to get Jose back in the van and clean his face up, lose most of the crowd of onlookers and generally look more like tourists travelling round Morocco than the contents of a bad dream.

3 wheels on my wagon

Marcel and I got to see Marrakech backwards from the top of a tow truck that evening. The locals, as amused as we were, waved back with vigour. That night required a three star hotel and so that's what we did, getting dirty looks from all in the hotel. Traipsing mud through the corridors and being asked to pay up front we crawled behind the protection of a TV screen and fell asleep. The next day began the first of our three-day wait in Marrakech in order to find out whether parts for the van could be obtained in Morocco.

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