Guillaume Gomard wrote: why do you call it a "nightmare"? Was it really too hot?
Hi Guillaume!!
Not only the hot, but the extreme hot consecuences are:
a) You get tired quickly when the weather is often more than 40º
b) Animals are in estivation or actived just few minutes during the day. Nocturnal species usually begin to move at 12:00-1:00. So you catch it, take photos and release in the exactly place or out of the road (2:00), put the tent and go for sleeping (2:20). And at 7:00 the tent is hot as hell! Also hotel rooms. So you sleep 5 hours or less.
c) If you find herps during the day, you can not get photos, the ground is hot and animals open the mouth and can die. Except Trapelus. We found one in the road in Smara sunbathing with 48º!!!! Even Uromastyx were hidden. Sometimes in all around you there are no shadows in kilometers. So you have to take quick photos and leave the animal go to the burrow.
d) Water is hot.You can buy cold drink, but in 20 minutes, it will be soap!
e) You can put cold air in the car, but if you go out of the car the change of temperature hit the head as a stone
f) You have to work very hard to find each species
g) But the WORSE in Morocco are the Moroccan drivers. Moroccan people is always friendly and I really love them, but when they take the car, truck or bus they change in mad people. Not everybody but 50%. In august due to the extreme hot just a few vehicles appear during sun hours. And when the sun is dissapearing you can see in the roads the trucks and buses. They drive at 100km/h in a very bad roads. And they NEVER stop. So if you are driving in your side of the road at night, they always use the strong lights and you cant see nothing. And if in their side of the roads there is a motorcycle broken (without lights of course), a donkey DOR or something like this, they dont stop! they enter in your side at 100km/h. Then or you go out of the road or you will die. And with their strong lights you cant see so if you drive in a 4x4 you can go out of the road "without" risk, but with a normal car, it´s possible that you break the wheels or something like that. We talked there with many local people and they know that the roads are the biggest cause of mortality. Many people walk in the road at night without lights, specially in summer with the hot during the day. So many people die on roads hitten by cars/trucks/buses. And is also "probably" that you kill anybody there with the car when you try to avoid be hitten by another car/truck/bus. So always is dangerous the Moroccan roads, but in summer is specially dangerous. And finally, their vehicles are not recently built, no. Their vehicles maybe were built in 1980. Old Mercedes, old trucks and old bushes are typical. I attach a truck photos for example to show what I am talking about. These trucks at 100km/h. It is crazy...
More seriously, you encountered a great variety of herptiles, so why do you call it a "nightmare"? Was it really too hot? Is it common to observe 
