Walker Ferguson is a young athlete with a storied past and exciting future. He’s traveled the world atop bikes, boards, and everything in between. Walker contributes weekly to the Beyond Coastal blog offering his insights, experiences, product feedback, and adventures in travel and sports. Like Beyond Coastal, Walker is just as at home in the surf as he is in the mountains. Here Walker describes an adventure aboard “Picanto” in Marrakech…

The Flight from Girona, Spain to Marrakech only takes a couple hours, but is a world apart. The janitor sweeping the runway when we landed was the first indication we were somewhere new and foreign. Our Korean Smart car, or Kia Picanto, as the manufacturer likes to call it, awaited us in the rental lot and from the condition it greeted us in this was certainly not its first rodeo. Three people, my sister Coral, Will Frischkorn and myself piled in with our luggage and started off on our North African surf adventure.

Marrakech was stop one and it did not disappoint. Crazy markets, hustlers on every corner, cobra snakes, lots of haggling and some fine purchases were the order of the day. Heading out of town the next morning Picanto felt a hell of a lot smaller stuffed with three rugs, a new leather luggage set and an inordinate number of desert nomad daggers.

After the hustle of the city it felt surreal to head into the low Atlas Mountains where small mud brick towns, and donkey carts are the norm. We pushed Picanto hard and to our amazement he pulled us through every time. High Mountain passes, highway cruiser and surf mobile all in a nice 500lb package.

Arriving at the coast we found it had been raining hard for the past few days. All of the creeks were flowing and the trash from the foothills was massed on the beaches. This is when the biggest test for Picanto arose. A normally dry wash between our lodging and the surf, was quickly named “Shit Creek”. It was waist deep with a garbagey, sewagey mess. The problem with shit creek was that the depth varied wildly based on the rainfall inland. One morning it would be hubcap level, that afternoon it would cover the hood.

This certainly spiced up the dawn patrol missions: rev engine, get head of steam, roll up all windows, close all vents and pray, repeat on the way home. The reward was super fun surf and goats climbing trees. Yes there are goats in trees and they are amazing. Picanto nearly met its end in Moroccan ditch at the first goat tree sighting.

One week, 21 tagines, and 500 miles later we returned to Marrakech and our plane home. The evening before our morning flight we pulled in looking for an airport hotel. For some reason you are not allowed to drive through the usual passenger drop off at the airport. This became quickly apparent after the giant policeman (at least he seemed giant from the front seat of our mini machine) stepped in front of our car and started waving frantically.

Figuring we were in for another pay off, RE: ticket, as much cash as possible was quickly hidden and the window rolled down. License, paper work and a very surly, unfriendly policeman. He asked where we were from and given that he had my license I could not go for my usual Canada response and timidly replied “USA”. Giant smile, “Ah, America, Obama. Good, good. You are my friend, go ahead. Have good trip.” A very fitting end to a great trip of firsts.