Travel Log Moroccan Bike Trip 2011

The air is fresh, the sun is shining, the road is clear and smooth, the scenery breath taking, I roll the throttle open a little more before squeezing the front break tightly, then releasing and banking the bike in to yet another tight bend. The suspension settles and I feel the bike grip the tarmac and pull round hard right, then hard left, I check my mirror and glance at the vehicle behind me to make sure we are still close together. The road opens up and you are torn between taking in the visa and enjoying the road. We pass small mud brick adobe houses contrasted against a crystal blue sky that has not a trace of cloudy. The air is full of unusual aromas, wood smoke mixed, animal dung, sweet mint tea and roasting mutton. There are few sensations in this world that can compete with the freedom and exhilaration of traveling by motorcycle in a distant land and today nothing else matters. When you travel by motorcycle, you feel the land, you smell the air, you meet the people in a total different way to any other form of travel and today there is a feeling of relaxed excitement and energised expectation as I realise I would not want to share this moment  with anyone else than with my brother Richard. We have at last arrived in Morocco.

We leave Portsmouth on the ferry bound for northern Spain at 10pm, already with a cold beer in hand and thoughts and expectations of the coming days travel and adventure. There is almost a party feeling on boards, a feeling of escape from the looming dawn of seasons change to winter, as looking around, it seems somewhat apparent from the age of our fellow travellers , that most are retired and heading south not just for a holiday but for their winter homes on the costa del Sol, where in no time at all they will be enjoying fish and chips and a pint in the local with all the other ex-pats that have bought places in the sun, then treat it like England – why do people do that?

We have a good lay in, which is quite easy to do as there in not a flicker of light in the room, it’s absolutely pitch dark, which make decending the ladder from my bunk bed for a pee, more than a little comical. I should have just pee`d on my brother, that would have taken us back to childhood.

There’s not much to do on board, except stroll around the deck and read, which is fine, as I haven’t even picked up a guild book on the country yet, so time is well spent doing just this and organising some play lists on my I-pod as well as getting a treat letter in the day seeing some Dolphins alongside the boat merrily jumping out the water.

We retire early as we are getting in to port at 6.30am and it’s a long day’s ride down to Granada in southern Spain, but this will break the back of this part of the journey and make for a slightly easy next day.

We are greeted in Spain by a cloudless sky and a fresh sea breeze as we head in land, make our first fuel stop and grab a breakfast of the staple contental sandwich, ham and cheese, with the addition of an excellent espresso, something that is not as easily found on the highways of the UK. The roads are relatively free of traffic and we make good head way before the sun starts to really heat the day. At our next fuel stop I manage to drop my sunglasses and run them over while wheeling the bike backwards, so I do some impromptu shopping in the garage and select a stylish orange pair!

 

The day is easy, if a little dull and uneventful, but today is about mile crunching, so as we pass Granada at around 5pm, I lament that I will have to see this fine Andalucía city another day. We hit the coast at around 6.30pm and ride another hour west before stopping in a small tourist town, feeling tired and hungry.  Tonight’s accommodation is a hostel, but at 30 euro and being right next door to a half decent resurant, it will certainly do. The days dust and sweet washed off we plant ourselves in said restaurant and order up two very well deserved and needed, ice cold beers.

A hearty plate of fresh fish is ordered, if the Spanish can do one thing well its fresh fish. Tiny nondescriped looking morsels that tastes like heaven and calamari that is as soft as butter, beautiful. 

Up early the next day, we are both filed with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Excitement for the coming week’s adventures and trepidation for what we have read is a ball ache of a border crossing. But first breakfast! We have been riding for about an hour when we pull in to a restaurant just outside Malaga. Now we all stereo type, but as soon as I ask for desyona (breakfast in Española) the waitress immediately asks if we would like egg and bacon, clearly my English ancient is quite clear, but either way I reply “of course”! And it has to be said that the place exceled itself, it was indeed and excellent egg and bacon and complimented with two excellent espressos.

We arrive at the port town of Algeciras at 1pm, in view of the British out post of Gibraltar, our last colonial holding and I shed a tear for our distant glory days. We book on to the 2pm ferry for the Spanish enclave in Morocco, there version of Gibraltar in fact. The boat is a catamaran and we are under the impression it will be a smooth and fast crossing. Well not exactly, is was surpassed to be 35 mins and took an hour and 15 mins and the boat bobbed around like a cock in a barrel and left me feeling somewhat queasy, so queasy I could eat and that has to be pretty bad for me to say that I can tell you.

Third world border crossings are nothing new to me, Richard on the other hand has only every crossed European borders, which in essence you just ride through. As we came to the caoss that is the Moroccan border I could see his eyes getting wider and wider with disbelief. We pulled over to take stock and he just looked at me and said “is this it” clearly somewhat shell shocked. We joined in the throng and the “helpers” descended upon us like flies to the proverbial. Swarms of men dressed in dresses and turbans flocked around us offering up there services to help with the burocracy that lay ahead. The reality being, it would all be so simple if they would just leave you alone, but it’s the system so we just selected two to “help” with paperwork. The look on Richards face as this pantomime unfolded was a picture, it was of wonderment and disbelief at the same time, at times I just had to sit back and watch as yet more people came up and offered there help to him, even though they could see we had “help”, it was quite the sight.

30 minutes later we rode out of the chaos and I pulled over and we shook hands, it was a lovely moment. The next trial was to tackle entering a town and finding some accommodation. This is always a difficult task given the size of the bikes, no map and next to no French language skills. It’s something that is OK with one bike, but with two it becomes a little harder when faced with taxi drivers from hell. After faffying around for 30 minutes and Richards temper starting to rise, we took the tactical disccion to get out of the metropolis and see if we could find something along the way. We had time on our side as we had gained 2 hours leaving Europe.

Once out on the open road we stopped at a tiny village and took a breather in a café and sampled our first Berber whisky, betting known as mint tea. It would be the nearest we got to whisky for the whole trip. I have never been one for doing much research on countries when I visit, I just get an idea in my head, read a little, then head off and this trip was no exception to that rule, so over our tea we looked at our options and by chance the next town along the road was Chefchaouen, described in Lonely Planet as a must see! Well that can be a curse and I have fallen in to that trap before, however on this occasion they were not wrong. The medina is a labyrinth of multiple shades of blue and turquoise, you walk around dazzled by the beautiful contrast of old stone splashed with such vivid colour and with every turn there is a new shade as the evening light starts to fade.

We leave town early to start making our way south, we head across the Rif mountains and swing through lovely mountain roads where the morning mist hangs heavy when we are on the left of the peak and brilliant sunshine when the road heads to the right, put a less poetic way, the left was f—king freezing and the right glorious! After a long day we overnight in the town Sefrou where we encounter the grumpiest of hotel managers and one of the coldest showers I have ever had. Fortunately we did have the foresight to bring a very large bottle of rum with us, so a large rum and coke made the evening feel so much better. 

By the next lunch time we were at the town of Midelt, the gateway to the Atlas Mountain and the start point for some dirt road. After gaining some local knowledge we headed out along the marked road, but fell foul of poor guess work and map reading and ended up in some dry river bed that was never going to be traversed on the fat old heifers that we were riding. We licked our wounded prides and decided to get some better directions and have a go the next morning, hoping to be in the village by the following lunch time. We decamped to a respectable hotel just outside of Medelt enjoyed some AC, a hot shower and a cold beer (amazing they do have beer in this country).

With various guides to the state of the road and the length ranging from great and only 3 hours, to shocking and 8 hours, we head out of town at 9am – we will not be at our next stop until dark, very tired, very hungry and one bike a little beaten up!

The road started well with easy graded gravel, but soon became a rather vague trail that had you asking yourself if you had taken a wrong turn or missed a sign. But with the odd encouraging gesture from a few Berber shepherds, we carried on until we for sure knew we were on the right path. We crossed over in to the next valley and started to descend a rugged step trail, very similar to what I have experienced in the Andes. I have to point out that while my brother is a very experienced biker, he has never done this kind of trip before and I could see that he was a little outside his comfort zone. The decent was perhaps more than we should have taken on with the road tyres that we had equipped our bikes, but once you’re in your in.  I reached the bottom of the valley and looked for Richard, but saw that he seemed to have stopped half way down, but as I focused in, I realised that the colours of his bike seemed to be in the wrong place and rather too close to the edge of the road. 

“Oh dear we have a problem!” I legged it back up to where he was and whilst his bike was not looking too good, at least he was all OK, but it had been a close call as the bike was balance very precariously on the edge of the road, with a drop of around 100 feet to the dry river bed, he had fallen some 15 feet down the hill side, if the bike had followed, then it would have made for a very uncomfortable scenario indeed. With the help of a local shepherd we dragged the bike back on to the road and assessed the damage. Fortunately it was only cosmetic and the damage was to bothers ego and confidence. In these situations you have no option but to carry on, there is no AA or RAC and the road back can be harder than the one in front, but I know how hard that challenge mentally can be. 

We took some time out in the shade, ate some food and just took some time to relax. I have done some difficult roads in my time, but I didn’t let on to Richard that this was a bloody hard one, much better to reassure and tell him that this was the norm. Inside I was just hoping that this would not get any harder, as I knew we were at the limit of what these bikes are capable of and I was not expecting the road to be quite this bad! We had to scout a few obstacles, but after 30 miles and 3 hours, we found some tarmac and thought to the rest of the journey would be easy. It wasn’t exactly that way, but by the time we arrived in Imichil at 5.30pm, we were both pretty knaked and Richard had indeed been introduced to adventure motorcycling. 

We rode in to the clear morning air rested, but still tired towards the Todra Gouge, one of Morocco’s high lights. The Atlas Mountains are a beautiful place to travel on a motorcycle, the roads (when there are some) are great and the scenery is majestic. Small Berber villages whose inhabitants still wear authentic ethic clothing and have not yet been polluted with the MYV culture, although I would suspect it’s not far away. The scenery is vast and at times distance is hard to judge, you roll over a mountain pass and gaze with wonder at the valley below. It’s a barren landscape, with few trees, the only water it a little rain and in the winter, snow fall. Which makes me glad we are here in autumn as the road would be impassable in the spring as the road crosses what are now dry river beds, which at the right time clearly are torrents.

By night fall the land scape is totally different as we approach the dessert town of Merzouga and the Sahara.After 6 days in the saddle we take a day off to rest, clean the bikes and do some laundry, there is only so many times you can turn your undies inside out and sand was starting to get in to places where it should not be.

That evening we had to do the whole tourist thing and take a camel ride out in to the desert. Now I hate these animals, well to clarify, it’s not them, its being on the back of them I detest. It’s so God dam uncomfortable, I feel sea sick and my balls feel like they are being torn off and they are so slow, it’s quicker to walk. After an hour purgatory we arrive at our “authentic” Berber camp and our guide sets about knocking up some grub. Now it was an awful experience getting out here, but the sand dunes of the Sahara are something to behold, as the sun went down and the sand turned golden then red, it was truly a beautiful visa. I have been in many deserts, but I have never seen 300 foot high dunes, quite extraordinary.

The other thing you come to the desert for, is the clear sky and the visibility of the stars, however as the night drew in, so did the cloud. And soon after, bolts of lightning, thunder and a wind like a hurricane. We are in the desert and its pissing with rain. A wet tent, sand in my eyes and sharing a bed with a stinky camel, or is that just my brother?!

In the mooring we are awoken by our Beduin “guide”, without even a cup of coffee and it’s still dark. We climb a large sand dune as the dawn breaks and the first light of day is there to guide us up the 100 meter slope, the sand is cool and damp beneath our bare feet. We reach the top and gaze at the horizon as the first rays of bright orange sun glimpse over it, instantly illuminating the orange sand and giving the place a surreal hue, its neither day or night, it’s that magical time when the dessert world begins to stir and the chill of the night starts to burn away and just before the sun heats to air around you to beyond oppressive.

Our camels and our guide are grunting with displeasure that we are lingering too long over this short lived pleasure, so with a grunt of my own, in more ways than one, I remount the ungainly creature and we set off back to the civilisation of our hotel. 

The day before we had washed these bikes, but this had been in vain, as the nights rain had brought with it sand and grit that made them look like we had just done the Dakar Rally. We rinsed both the bikes and our selves, then set off for a day’s ride to Agdz, out of the dessert and back to the foot hills of the Atlas. To keep with the current climatic conditions, within 10 miles we had to stop and don our waterproofs as the clouds darkened and the wind picked up and before too long we are riding in torrential rain that is bouncing off the road surface and little rivulets form across the road. As the clouds break and the sun shines through, I look in my mirror with fascination, as the spray from the bike forms rainbows that are blown about by the turbulence and the horizon ahead is clear blue sky, fantastic.

Our route takes us through the wide expanse of the Dades Valley, we belt along beautifully tarmacked roads, there are high mountains to both sides of us and each are experiencing some pretty extreme weather of their own. We watch as dark cloudy heave out bolts of lightning on the black rocks, while we continue our journey under a clear blue sky, following the Qued Dades River and the forests of date laden palms.

We reach Agdz before sunset and bed down for the night in a very run down palace, I’m sure it was quite something in its day, now well past its prime, but full of character and the odd bed bug I’m afraid.Our plan for the following day was to ride through the Dades Gorge, another great Atlas spectacle, but as we start to make our way up to the entrance, again the heavens open upon us and with though of washed out roads and flooded river crossing, we decide on the slightly more stable road through the Dades Gorge. And it does have to be said that we are guided by our stomachs a little here, as we know exactly where to stop for a good lunch!

We don’t escape the rain, but at least we are well fed and the landscape as we re-trace our steps, has changed dramatically. Amazing what a little , or maybe call that a lot of rain does to a landscape; the rock is black and the grass has a lush green evervesence, that before looked sun bleached and harsh, now , with the sun splashing through, feels like it has come alive. We have a long, but extremely rewarding ride back to Imalchil, we are damp and cold, but have had a great days riding and I have captured some of the best photographs of the trip so far, very rewarding. 

An early start, crisp mountain air and clear blue sky greets us the following morning. We stop to watch a herdsman help one of his goats give birth by the road side, before we finish our time in the mountains and start to make our way down to the lowlands. It doesn’t matter where I am riding in the world, its riding in the mountains that always makes me think that a trip is worthwhile and the Atlas have been no disappointment, I only wish they stretched up to the sea.

As we come down from the clear air of 2000ft and reach around 150 ft above sea level the air hits you like a hair dryer, the faster your seems to go, the hooter it becomes, one day someone will build and AC unit to go on a bike, fuck it was hot. We push on through to the quaint hill town of Moulay Idriss, apparently revered due to the fact that some relation of Mohammed was buried there, or at least his remains where taken there to make the site a place of pilgrimage.  The best thing that we found there was the lively square ad some great people watching while sitting having a coffee after a long and sweaty afternoons ride and we were both glad to feel the heat of the sun decrease as it makes it way towards the horizon. 

A brief visit and I mean brief visit was paid to the Roman remains of Volubilis the following day, not only was it blisteringly hot walking around in bike gear, but the site, described as Morocco’s best archaeological site, was nothing more than a pile of stones and just about worth the 10p it cost to get in. Another hot day in the saddle, but we made good time back to Chefchouen in time to have a wonder around the beautiful blue medina before the sun set and now armed with previous local knowledge, where able to find a place selling cold beer. See Morocco does have beer, not much of it, but for the intrepid and adventurous, it’s out there to be found. We slept well that night. 

Up early, we made Ceuta by 11am, losing 2 hours as we crossed back in to Spanish territory and claimed our seat on the boat back to Europe. We made it back to the mainland for 2 pm and heading in to Gibraltar, which has to be said we a real dive, no idea why anyone goes there, it just seemed like a quirky British sea side resort, all kiss-me-quick hats and fish `n` chips.

Back along the coast road we stopped at the small little tourist town, I forget the name, but it was the kind of place that you would forget the name of; we found some half decent seafood, but some very very cold beer. The air was balmy warm and the air was filled with the laughter of the Spanish enjoying a Saturday night out with friends. You would never know that this country was bankrupt.

Spain has done well out of its membership of the EU and this is clearly evident as we ride away from the coast and make our way inland. The infrastructure that has been built in the past ten years is staggering; dams, wind farms, major roads, with hardly a car on them, which makes for easy travel, perhaps they have built them for 50 years’ time, but as their population is only just increasing, like most other western European countries, you can’t but think that its easy to spend money when you have not earned it. 

We spent the night in a rather non dispirit Spanish town, but managed to find very interesting hotel, that was the anti-building to an old church, that sat upon a hill top overlooking the valley. The place had been restored and sat illuminated as the sun went down and the night air chilled.  The place had a questionable restaurant that served up a set 5 course meals and was accompanied with a bottle of local wine. Now please bare in-mind that we are now very close to the Rioja area, so you would think that it would be at least OK. Not a bloody chance, it was more drain cleaner than wine. The waiter clearly had an air of snobbery about him and seemed to think that serving a couple of scruffy bikers was not deserving of his station. With this in mind, I had already spotted a good bottle of red, sitting not too far away, so as he disappeared, yet again, I grabbed said bottle, but realising we had no bottle opened, Richard volunteered to try and push the cork in to the bottle; bad idea, very bad idea! With red wine splattered over him and a table cloth, we did our best to cover up our phopar and retired for the night, giggling like naughty school boys. 

And so to bed ,to dream of yet another great journey!!!