There’s a Moroccan saying that translates to: “Those who do not travel do not know the good of men”.

The phrase has been on my mind for a couple of months so it is fitting that its meaning has become real for me here in the land of its origin.

We began our second effort to enter Morocco over a smuggled bottle of Cameroonian whiskey shared between a group of Irish, South Africans and Germans (the Irish blogged more about it here).

The history of internal conflict which our three nations share was an appropriate starting-point for our entry into the Western Sahara – territory administered by Morocco but contested by the indigenous Sahwari and their revolutionary front, the Polisario.

Stone has already blogged about our first impressions of Morocco and we’ve detailed the failed first attempt to enter the country, so all you need to know is that we ended up in the city of Dakhla 24 hours after we crossed the border.

Camel Kefta: Lurks and Tim enjoying a cosmic culinary link with the Sahara

Because much of it has been recently built by massive investment from the Moroccan government, Dakhla feels a bit like a recently constructed movie set.

This impression is heightened right now because the Moroccans are organising a weeklong music festival and have draped the city in patriotic flags for the benefit of the international journalists.

We’re staying at the infamous Extreme Peche camp situated on Dakhla’s best right point break which, unfortunately, has not really come to the party while we’ve been here.

Stone makes the most of what we got – super stylishly… 

On our first day Colin the fishing operator took us on a tour of the town that saw us try our first Camel meat – tasty and rich, almost spiritual… (actually, a Camel Kefta is a bit like a “build-your-own-boerewors-roll”) – and our first secret Islamic bar, in the space of an hour.

The bar was crowded and rowdy but we appeared to be the only non-muslims. Please excuse the photo quality – cameras were forbidden in the place which was packed with intoxicated patrons so a partially concealed iPhone camera had to suffice…

This old guy roams around the secret muslim bar looking concerned and selling black bags to Muslim gentlemen who don’t want their purchases seen on the judgemental streets of Dakhla.

The Extreme Peche camp is full of controversial characters and all of the conflict that goes with this. It can get a little taxing dealing with all of the big personalities in the camp – especially when the wind never stops blowing and the surf refuses to arrive.

Yesterday we were approaching our limit of tolerance when a breath of fresh air rolled into town in the form of two brand new Toyota 4×4s. The Around the World By Road expedition is a group of American friends who left New Zealand a year ago, drove through Asia and Europe to Morocco, and are heading to Cape Town before they drive up the Americas to end in New York.

The secret muslim bar in Dakhla tends to get a little rowdy around its 6pm closing time. Maybe that’s why this guy arrived in a hard hat!

Last night – sitting in a Moroccan tent, in the middle of a tense campsite, in a fiercely contested land – I realised that the cause of most conflicts in our world today is a lack of understanding of the good of people…

…and it occured to me that the group of people I was sitting with (which included a Belgian hippy who lives in his van, four American designers and film-makers travelling round the world, a club-girl from Brighton and the two other AfricanSurfers) were indeed among those that knew the good of people – precisely because they had travelled so widely.

Two more expeditions meet. We weren’t at all jealous of their sponsored 2008 Toyota trucks. (L-R: Stone, Steve, Brook, Lurks, Steve, Nicky & Mark)

The philosopher who came up with that saying I began with hit the nail on the head. He must have been eating camel at the time.