„My name is Islam,” said the local guy from Laayoune couple of minutes after starting a conversation with us. He had come to speak to us in order to practice English and talk to foreigners in Laayoune. And it was quite obvious we weren’t from around there due to our skin color and hair. Islam has a dream, the American dream. He wants to go to the United States of America and work as an auto mechanic, occupation he knew quite much about, having worked on the same job in Laayoune since young a... read more

Upon making the decision to go to Western Sahara all I really expected to see was a usual bomb-hole. And what we saw during our first hour of stay there, it was exactly what I expected. But once we got to the “right side” of the town, it was as nice as Agadir or new town in Marrakech, why not. And in this part of the town there was really no sign of anything Western Sahara could represent. We found ourselves a hotel, paid something like 200 Dirhams for it again and except for the missing picture... read more

Fortunately by the time we got to Laayoune, the sun was already up and after a cold night in the bus we were starting to warm up. Besides the sandy football field with dozens of too many people were kicking the ball back and forth (as you can see, I’m not a huge football fan, shoot me) there was a closed cafeteria, shop for carpets and closed office for SupraTours (office for one of the normal bus companies), nearby we also noticed an internet cafe. Before anything else we decided to smoke s... read more

Western Sahara was annexed with Morocco in 1976 and about half of the native population fled to Algeria where most of them still reside in five specially created refugee camps. No countries have officially recognized the country. „A guerrilla war with the Polisario Front contesting Rabat's sovereignty ended in a 1991 UN-brokered cease-fire; a UN-organized referendum on final status has been repeatedly postponed. In April 2007, Morocco presented an autonomy plan for the territory to the UN, which... read more

A friend of mine has asked me quite a few times if I’d like to go to Morocco with him. He’s been there before but thought that even though it shouldn’t be too dangerous, he wouldn’t like to take the trip to West-Sahara, more specifically Laayoune alone. Last time he was in Morocco his bus caught fire, go figure. I do hope it won’t happen this time, at least not while I’m there. Or if it does, I hope I can at least get a few good shots of it. If I remember correctly (well, I got my friend to ... read more