Alert! Rally maps showing WS

[Peter Girling]

Hi all,

I've recently been contacted by two groups who were held up at Tanger Med port. Their vehicles had rally decals showing their route through North Africa. Both groups had maps showing Western Sahara as a separate country from Morocco. Customs officials and police were quite insistent that WS is part of Morocco and would not let the groups continue unless the decals were removed.
After a couple of hours argument and discussion, a compromise was reached using heavy use of permanent marker to re-draw borders.

Something to bear in mind whatever your view of the whole WS situation.

Happy trails,

Peter

[Tim Cullis]

That's been the case for more than a decade. The only maps you can buy in Morocco are those that (a) include Western Sahara, and (b) don't describe it as a separate country. Map makers don't want to faff about with multiple versions of maps so consequently most road maps of Morocco to be found anywhere in the world meet these criteria.

I have an old map from my 1972-4 trips, must wave it about some time...

[Henn]

Yes, back in 2010 we met a fellow overlander who had the flags of all the countries he was planning to visit on the side of his 4WD. On arrival in Morocco they took great offence over the Western Saharan flag. After hours of fiasco the authorities peeled the stickers off and took the contact details of the company who'd printed them for him.

Fawlty Towers approach works, "don't mention the war".

[kingkurt]

I had a very heated discussion with a history teacher from Rabat I met in a bathhouse regarding Western Sahara or 'Southern Morocco' as he very loudly insisted