In July 2015 I experienced a number of firsts, although I have been riding Harley Davidson’s for 20 plus years, it was the first time I had ridden one in Morocco and come to think of it, it was the first time I had been to Morocco. It was also the first time I had made a long distance motorcycle trip with someone on the back with whom I was in an intimate relationship. It all added up to a very interesting time in a country that surprised us with its friendly people, history and stunning diverse geography.
My motorcycling history is not peppered with frequent two ups, as the saying goes. I have only on a handful of times ridden on the back of a mates bike and there have been even fewer times when I have had a mate on the back of my bike. Nearly all of my motorbike touring has been the bliss of isolation on my own bike, where the mind can settle down and somehow make light work of solving hither too difficult problems in life. Punctuated with coffee stops, lunch breaks and of course evenings in the bar with your travelling companions. It is a perfect mix for me of being on my own and yet with my mates at the same time.
When I have been on the back of my mate's bike or one of them has been on the back of my bike, there is a certain uneasiness introduced into the ride. The chat, for example, is limited to bloke stuff, like pointing out exotic cars and or females. Above all the golden rule is absolutely no physical contact which is easier said than done, other than to point out said exotic cars and or women.
On the occasions when I have ridden pillion on my mate's bike, my time seems to have been completely taken up by making sure my crutch area comes nowhere near his rear, as that can spoil an otherwise perfectly good ride, no pun intended. Pointing out said exotic cars and or women is a no-no in these situations as a firm grip must be maintained at all times to prevent the inevitable slide forward on the seat. Then of course when I am riding the bike and I have a mate on the rear any talk about exotic cars and or women can also be problematic, as invariably the rear passenger will lean forward to talk to me and if I turn my head at the same time to hear him better, bingo we are practically snogging in full view of the driver of said exotic car and or of course, the said exotic woman.
But this trip was different, for a start off I was sleeping with my pillion passenger and that made for a very intimate motorbiking experience. Having that constant physical contact really made a very big impact on the journey. There was not a lot of chatting as obviously Clare was not that interested in either exotic cars and or women, but a whole new form of communication was established purely by being so close to each other. In short, I can't recommend it strongly enough, just don’t expect your pillion to be able to navigate.
Unlike most motorcycle trips around Morocco, our trip started in Portugal where we collected the bike, a gold coloured Harley Davidson Road King. The first thing we had to do was find a crash helmet for Clare and with some local help we found ourselves in a back street motor bike dealers, actually to be more accurate it was a moped dealer. Having tried on what seemed like every helmet in the place Clare horrifyingly settled on a bright pink one, which even more horrifyingly she actually liked. Next job was to get some sort of a rucksack to transport our camera equipment when we were away from the motorbike and here I absolutely insisted it should be pink, just to keep the theme going.
Once on the road we quickly crossed the border into Spain and straightaway there was a marked difference in the geography, it was as though we had moved from an area that had a casual approach to agriculture to an area where agriculture was clearly a professional. Spain seemed more civilised, more organised as opposed to Portugal’s rugged wild west feel and then we arrived in Seville, culturally as far away from the modern-day Portuguese Algarve as you could get.
I never really understood the importance of Seville to the history of Spain. But it was from here that Ferdinand Magellan set sail for the first circumnavigation of the earth in 1519. Which you may think is strange considering its 80 kilometres by river from the sea, but it demonstrates the importance of the city to Spain. Having wondered around the beautiful city, we ate that evening at a very pleasing street restaurant on the banks of the river that literally took the Spanish to the four corners of the world. It was a simple meal of perfectly fried small fish, squid and cod balls, not that I knew that they had any.
Early the next morning we set off for the two-hour ride to the Spanish port of Algeciras and the FRS ferry to the new Tangier-Med port in Morocco. Unlike the heat of the day before, this mornings ride was chilly, damp, misty and not what we were expecting or equipped to deal with, so we froze. The Spanish port was a little confusing despite the fact that there were people at every junction to assist you, eventually, we found ourselves waiting to board the ferry.
Once onboard I was delighted to find that I could spend the duration of the 90-minute crossing in various queues completing all the paperwork to get us and the bike into Morocco. I had read of the nightmares motorcyclists had had at Tangiers where hours could slip by with no one seemed interested in helping, except for the guys who make a living by being paid fixers and who get you through the port and off on your way. So I thought this 90 minutes in queues might just be well spent.
First getting us authorised to enter was straight forward it just required queuing and a current passport, but the fun was to come, getting the bike in. In the second queue I came across my first friendly Moroccan who in broken English and my limited French helped me complete the paperwork. What really concerned me however, was not the paperwork, but trying to explain what a guy from South Africa was doing taking a bike owned by a person who lives in the UK and is registered in Portugal into Morocco. To make things worse whilst waiting in the queue I realised I had left my driving license in London. But like all these things I need not have worried. The official looked at the paperwork and either thought it was all in order, or it was too difficult for him to make any sense of and stamped all the paperwork giving us the green light to take the bike into Morocco. I know the paperwork was in order, but the speed our documents where stamped was, I am sure because it was in the too difficult to work out pile.
I was right the 90 minutes spent queuing on the ferry was indeed well spent, because about 10 minutes after leaving the ferry we had passed through customs and immigrations and was on the road leading us over the mountains and off towards our first stop Chefchaouene, otherwise known as the Blue City. From the port, it was a majestic 200-kilometre ride first over mountains, then along the Mediterranean coast before turning inland and following a very impressive gorge to the Blue City.
One word of advice, as the new Tangier-Med port is so new a lot of the infrastructure you might expect around a port is not there and by that, I mean petrol stations. Everyone has cars, but where the hell they get fuel from was a mystery to us and we ended up running on vapour by the time we found a petrol station. So a good tip is, fill up in Spain before you cross over.
There is a saying "saving the best for last", but for us, we did it the other way around as the Blue City was by far the best place we were to visit on our trip and rather than being the last place, it was the very first place we visited in Morocco. Once we arrived at the city something that was to become a familiar factor of the trip kicked in, we couldn’t find the hotel. But on this occasion after some asking around and generally following our noses we managed to find Dar El Nos and its wonderful owner Ali. I think the wifi code for the hotel summed it up, Happy Seven.
This was an old house or Dar as they are called in Morocco, right on the edge of the old city and within walking distance of everything a visitor needed to visit. Ali had rented the building and was slowly renovating it and turning it into his business as a small hotel. At this point it's appropriate to use another saying, "nothing was too much trouble” because that summed up Ali perfectly, he is the most amazing host. During our stay he took me to his house so I could store the Harley in his garage, he took us to show us restaurants, he fixed Clare’s watch, he got a local sim card for my iPhone, he took me to the cash point, showed me the local garage for fuel, explained the problems with visiting Morocco during Ramadan and served up an amazing breakfast.
Ali told me that he was born in Chefchaouene and was educated there before leaving to travel around Morocco furthering his education and working. He decided, a few year ago to return and start some kind of a business, why? Because he found that the city was so laid back compared to the rest of Morocco, he knew this is where he should be. He was right the Blue City was certainly laid back and was probably the most laid back place we were to visit, except maybe for Merzouga in the Sahara which during Ramadan seemed not so much laid back, but spark out lying flat on its back chilling.
Time for another tip and I have mentioned it a few time so let's make it clear, do not visit a Muslim country like Morocco during Ramadan and certainly not when Ramadan falls in July when the days are long and the nights are short.
Initially, Ramadan makes you feel as though the whole country is one of those 24-hour supermarkets, as things appear to be open all day and all night, but that is not really the case. Yes there are places open during the day, but they will be operated by a skeleton staff who will be asleep. Yes there are places open certainly late into the night, but they will be operated by people whose first priority is to eat as much as they can before it gets light again. Don’t get me wrong, it was fascinating being in a Muslim country and experiencing Ramadan, to me its what travelling is all about. But, its also very hard on the none Muslim traveller, because basically nothing works.
Very few shops appear open, certainly no cafe’s or restaurants are open during the day, all public works seem to be suspended or worse still take place at night and believe me road works taking place at 2am outside your hotel is no joke. When I say we experienced Ramadan we really did, we had breakfast every day at about 0630hrs and then the next time we were able to eat was 2030hrs. That’s a long time and often by the time you get the chance to eat you are way past it and go for a simple salad before going to bed. I didn’t think it would, but it did annoy me after a while that in the various hotels the staff ate before they opened the restaurant to serve their paying guests. We just had to get used to being very hungry waiting for the staff to finish eating before we could.
On the plus side as a weight loss treatment, it's fantastic, people spend a fortune going to these health spa’s to drop a few kilos forget it, Morocco in July during Ramadan is the way to go, so there’s another useful tip for you.
Chefchaouene is indeed as its nick name suggests, blue. Ali told me that mosquitos are repelled by the colour blue which seems as good a reason as any to paint the whole place blue and it seemed to work, as we got zero bites the whole of the time we were there. But in fairness we didn’t get any bites anywhere else in Morocco either. Its also a photographers paradise, the old city is a maze of small alleys and squares and all are painted in many, many shades of blue which coupled with the clear mountain sunlight is nothing short of mesmerising. There is a market, but it’s as Ali would say laid back there is no hard sell and there is no bartering until you start it. We spent two lovely relaxing days wondering around the old city, walking up the mountain to watch the children playing in the crystal clear mountain stream that flows past the old city, eating in roof top restaurants at night overlooking the floodlit Casbah.
We could have and should have stayed longer and that is another big tip.
Before breakfast, on our last day in Chefchaouene, I went to pay our bill, which Ali had ready waiting for me. After paying I wanted to give Ali a 200D tip for the outstanding service he had provided to us. He stated it was not necessary, but I insisted and so he said "okay 50D", I said “no" and offered him 150D. Ali starred at me and said “75D" and in the end, we agreed on a 100D tip. This was the first experience I had ever had of reverse bartering and to boot over the amount of a tip. But as we were to find out most Moroccans were happy just to help out whenever they could, which is a rare characteristic in today's world.
After a wonderful breakfast of fruit, yoghurt, honey, jams, fresh bread, pancakes, fried eggs and cheese in the rooftop restaurant of the hotel, we set off in bright sunshine for Fez, 220 kilometres away. The temperature rose as we passed through lush green valleys, busy village markets, flat barren plateaus with locals collecting water from wells, their donkeys as usual overloaded.
I am not certain what the little donkey ever did wrong in life, but it seems to get a very bad deal everywhere except for the few that enjoy life living on green grass being patted and adored by young children. Even the mildly abused donkeys paraded on British beaches wearing "kiss me quick" hats with their ears poking through holes, have a better life than those across Africa and Asia. For these animals surely are "beasts of burden", almost always their health and wellbeing is neglected, they are given a bare minimum to eat and they are loaded up with monstrous loads. In return the donkey for some unknown reason gives a life time of devoted work, never complaining, never causing a fuss, just quietly getting on with it until the day arrives when it simply can not do it anymore and then it will be dumped and abandoned where it fell and left to breathe its last breath.
I should say that before we left the Blue City, over breakfast we had a good go at trying to make a plan to find our hotel in Fez, notes were taken and maps were studied. When we arrived in Fez after a long, hot, hard ride the very first thing we did was to get hopelessly lost and a little frustrated. But help was at hand in the form of a local on a moped, who claimed to know the hotel we were due to stop at and would take us there.
We were later to discover that the actual place where he collected us from was about 500 meters from the hotel, but under his guidance we rode for another 20 minutes around the road network that circumnavigated the old city, being passed to a second helper on another moped on route. Even more surprisingly this outstanding guide service was for free, all we had to do was go with his uncle the next day on a tour of the old city, something I was happy to decline. Riad Louna our hotel, was a 200 year old house right smack in the middle of the old medina, Any hope of parking the motor bike on the property was gone, as to get to it you had to go through a maze of tiny alleys no more than a meter wide.
But thankfully the hotel had a safe parking place a short distance from where the bike was parked and a member of staff came with us to assist in the parking. This consisted of a large semi-underground ancient warehouse, protected by a bunch of Moroccan men who were all asleep on the floor just inside the large wooden doors, Ramadan in action or not as the case maybe. This was something like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but surprisingly everyone seems helpful once they were awake and by torch light guided me to a suitable parking space.
That evening we ventured out into the medina and straight away we realised this was not the Blue City and laid back were not words you would use to describe this place, it was manic. Lots and lots of people filling tiny alleyways with stuff being sold everywhere. We quickly retreated back to the Riad, which in Morocco is like a Dar an old house, but a much grander affair with a courtyard garden in the centre, usually with a tranquil water feature. Our Riad was exactly like that and despite the fact it was meters from the mayhem of the medina inside it was peaceful, relaxed and many degrees cooler.
So another tip, if you are looking for a calming space in which to live, get hold of an old Moroccan builder, they clearly know a thing or two about creating peaceful spaces.
The next day we had taken the hotels advice and obtained the services of a tour guide to take us on a walking tour of the ancient medina and as far as I know, he was nobodies uncle or indeed any relation to anyone at the hotel. It was good advice too, as I think it would have taken a small miracle for us to find just one of the sites we wanted to see and then we would never have found our way back to the Riad, certainly not before the car park guys had given up on us and sold the Harley. The day did not start off promising as we were taken from one worker co-operative to the next, each looking to sell us something. But after some firm direction was given to the guide we soon got on with things and started to see the history of Fez, which was nothing more than outstanding. The oldest university in the world is right there in the medina, its still standing and looks I imagine exactly how it did in 707 when it first opened its doors to male students, except today its a mosque.
Down more tiny alleys that look exactly like every other tiny alley in the medina and we were standing outside another mosque and this was very different. I know Morocco is in Africa, but the alley outside this mosque looked just like a busy market in some central African country. Afternoon prayers had just finished and the alley was filled with black Africans all in their very best fancy dress, full of colour, chatting and laughing as only Africans can. Our guide told us that the mosque was a monument to the man who is credited with bringing Islam to Africa and as a result, muslim Africans travel to Fez to pray at the mosque. I wanted to know if the Africans had made some sort of pilgrimage to come to this specific mosque he looked at me, smiled and told me that they were merely passing through Morocco trying to get to the UK.
Next up was a very entertaining herbalist, who took great pride in showing us his products and telling us what all of them did. For no particular reason, I showed an interest in his anti snoring potion and his cure for constipation, although he did say that the cure for constipation would cure my snoring as well. It seems it would be so effective at curing constipation I would be on the toilet all night and not able to sleep, let alone snore. I felt compelled to buy some.
Next up was something that would be seriously affected if constipation in pigeons ever set in, it was the leather tannery. The images of this place over recent years have become almost iconic and judging from the number of tourists there, we weren’t the only ones to know about it. But, I hear you say what has this got to do with pigeon constipation and the answer is they use pigeon poo mixed with water and dyes to tan the leathers. Needless to say, it also stinks and to give you some idea of the smell a long way before you get to the actual tannery, they give you bunches of fresh mint to hold in front of your nose. As it happens the smell when we visited was not that bad, although you could imagine what it would be like on a sweltering hot day when they have just added a fresh load of poo. It's not just ordinary poo from ordinary pigeons either, they have found out and the mind boggles how they found out, but poo from city pigeons had little bits a grit in it which damages the leathers. So they only deal in pigeon poo from country pigeons as their poo is grit free and therefore good poo. I know there is a lot of talk of poo here, but I don’t get many chances to write about poo never mind good or bad poo.
In the morning after an early breakfast, it was time to go and wake up the guys in the Raiders of the Lost Ark garage and retrieve our Harley. On pushing the big wooden door open there they were, spark out on the floor on a variety of mattresses, wrapped in blankets. I know I was paying these guys to look after my bike, but to be honest I didn’t expect them to sleep with it. Again by torchlight we were guided to the bike and as I started to pack the luggage onboard they started to clean the bike from top to bottom for me.
Soon we were out and onto the quiet early morning streets of Fez. We first found a petrol station and then tried to get out of the city.
It was at this point that we found out that Fes was a whole lot more than a large manic ancient medina, it was in fact also a large manic modern city. Here another factor of the trip started to develop, to go alongside the one about not being able to find our hotels. This was one about us not being able to find the right road out of the places we had been stopping in. But after some confusion and asking a couple of guys in a petrol station that did not understand a word we said and we did not understand a word they said, we managed to find the road out of Fes towards our next destination Midelt.
The trip to Midelt all 230 kilometres was gobsmacking amazing and turned out to be one of the big surprises of the whole trip. I guess when I had thought about Morocco before going on this trip, in my mind's eye I saw a land of desert, sand dunes, oasis’s, palm trees, guys in long white dresses and camels. The road out of Fes took us slowly uphill, through some nice little towns until bingo we were in a full-on Swiss alpine village called Ifran, with Swiss cottage type houses and complete with ski slopes and a ski lift.
But that was only part of what was in store for us, as we rode into the Ifran National Park we took a narrow road which climbed gradually through rolling hills and along with nice valleys, out onto to a high altitude flat plateau. All of it at this time of the year was covered in lush, deep green grass. The land was dotted with small tented settlements which were obviously the summer homes of the nomadic shepherds and their families who had made the journey up to the plateau with their flocks so they could feed on the nutrient-rich grass. If we were ever in any doubt we were travelling through a foreign country this sealed the deal, it was an almost biblical scene, something that had no doubt been done for hundreds of years and with the exception of the odd 4x4 vehicle parked outside a tent, nothing seems to have changed in all that time.
At the end of the plateau, we came to an escarpment at the bottom of which was a pale reddish brown plateau covered in a heat haze. The road down the escarpment was like riding into a furnace, we left the cool clear mountain air and entered the heat of the barren scrubland where we assumed the shepherds moved to during the winters when their summer location would be covered in snow.
On arrival in Midelt we were surprised to find a cafe open, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stop and sample Moroccan roadside food. Our expectations were soon dashed as the only thing on offer was fresh orange juice, but in the searing heat, it was most welcome. Not long after we had sat down a young Moroccan introduced himself to us and before long was emptying his small rucksack onto our table to show us the fossils he collected in the area. Of course, his main aim was to try and sell us one or two of them, but by now we were getting good at explaining we were on a motorbike and couldn’t carry anything, no matter how small. This was obviously not going to get in the way of a good chat and the guy continued showing us his stuff and telling us about the area. When it came time to leave he offered to show us to our hotel, which was a good job because although Midelt is quite a small town, the hotel was extremely well hidden deep in a residential area. My guessing was we would never have found it ourselves. As for the guide service, it was again free, all he asked was that we came back to his uncle's cafe in the evening when they will be able to serve food and eat there. As good as he made it sound, it lost out to the ladies cooking at the small hotel where we were stopping. As we entered there was this amazing smell of home cooked food and although we would have to wait until 2030hrs to sample it, we thought it was worth the wait.
After another very early breakfast we set off to our next hotel in a town called Merzouga, 280 kilometres away and which is situated right on the edge of the Sahara. The road leading away from Midelt was dotted with old Casbah’s or castles, although most of them are like large fortified houses. Nonetheless, they are straight out of stories about the Foreign Legion. In fact, it was around about here that it dawned on me why Morocco didn’t seem all that alien, a foreign country for sure, but somehow very familiar.
Even though I had never been here before I felt as though I knew the place well. Of course, the reason for all this familiarity was because I like so many kids of my age, grew up with Disney stories, tales of Arabia and magic carpets, Ali Baba and of course The Adventures of Tin Tin. No Christmas was complete without a bumper annual book in which the Islamic architecture of the type we found in Morocco featured and films with men with big beards, curly shoes and curiously curved swords. As we passed the old Casbahs, green oasis, camels, palm trees and rode through the archways that singled the start of a town, long forgotten memories of childhood were triggered. Maybe this wasn’t my first visit to Morocco maybe I had been here before, I was 6 years old and was fast asleep dreaming of an adventure in a far-off land.
Two days in Merzouga certainly gives you a chance to unwind and during Ramadan, it was way, way past laid back, the whole place seemed to be on pause. That was except for a young lad who was about 7 or 8 years old and approached us on our first evening in Merzouga when we had wandered out into the dunes to take some photos. He offered to exchange money for us and added that he had the best rates and he would better any other rate we had been given. Now we all like getting a good exchange rate, but to be honest I could not quite see how doing a deal with a 7-year-old in the sand dunes on the edge of the Sahara at sunset, was going to end well.
Our full day in Merzouga was exactly that, full. After Breakfast Sayed a 21-year Berbere took us on an 80-kilometre 4x4 drive around the Sahara where we drove across the deep sands. We visited an enclave of Black South Sudanese who to escape the troubles in their country had wandered off across the Sahara before settling just outside Merzouga. we also popped in to visit a nomadic Berbere wife and her children in their mud hut surrounded by goats, some of which were clearly just hours old.
So what did we learn about Sayed on this trip into the desert, well he can speak Arabic, Berbere obviously, French, Spanish and Italian, although he claims to be rusty in English he did a pretty good job? He was intelligent, can operate a computer, has a good knowledge of world affairs and can give an educated opinion on most things. He knew a lot about fossils and how to find them, he also knew a lot about the history of his people and those around him, such as Muslims and the South Sudanese. He can drive a 4x4 extremely well over sand, reading the dips and dunes with the same precision as a TT motorbike rider reads every inch of the Isle of Man circuit. On top of all this, he has very good interpersonal skills and is extremely polite and respectful. Oh, and one other thing, he has never ever been to school, not even just to have look. As he put it, the desert was his school. So in a country that gave the world the very first university, it seems it also has a very effective free open university type thing, called the Sahara.
Following close on the heels of our 4x4 trip was another journey over the sand dunes on perhaps the undisputed king of overland desert travel, camels and ours were named Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley. As sunset loomed we headed out into the silence of the sand with Mohammed our camel handler, also a Berbere and also with an interesting story to tell. Mohammed’s father is a nomad living in the desert constantly on the move, but his grandfather was one of the last persons to take part in the legendary 52-night camel journey to Timbuktu in Mali, in order to trade. Each year they made just one journey to Timbuktu and they measured it in nights not days, as they travelled by night, resting during the heat of the day. Like Sayed he was not a Muslim yet showed full respect for Islam and Ramadan and lived side by side with Berbers who are. Like Sayed, his view was simply that Berberes were around long before Islam and so they were never originally Muslims, they are as they say free.
The next day after our usual early breakfast we prepared to leave Merzouga, the young Berbere who ran the hotel wished us a safe journey and told us we must come back, but just not in Ramadan. Which kind of summed things up for me. Here was a young Muslim businessman and I got the impression watching him and his colleagues over the few days we were with them, that Ramadan to them was something they had to endure, something they had to do rather than the sacred ritual its intended to be.
Riding around the Moroccan countryside it seems that there has been a lot of expensive investment made in the rural areas. There was evidence of some very expensive irrigation systems being installed to literally turn sand into lush green fields. There was expensive looking viaducts, large agricultural buildings, large-scale planting, road and house building. But, they all had something in common, they were all in a very bad state of repair and almost always looked un-operational, unoccupied and abandoned. I got the feeling someone or some organisation had paid for a project, but there had been no money or planning for routine maintenance and the general upkeep. In some cases, it looks as though money had poured in to get a project going, but for one reason or another the project simply never actually got going. That said the rural areas were awash with nice shinny new cars for the locals drive around in.
This in part gave rise to a brand new travel game I invented whilst riding around rural Morocco and please feel free to play it yourself. What you have to do whilst driving around is pick any building you can see in the distance. Then in the time it takes for you to travel to that building and pass it, you have to try and work out the following;
Is it a commercial, agricultural or residential property?
This may sound easy, but in reality its far from it.
If you think it is an agricultural or commercial building,
try to work out what possible use it has or had, out in the middle of nowhere.
Again may sound on the face of it simple, but it's not.
If you think it's residential, try and work out who could possibly have lived or does live in it?
Whether they live on just the ground floor or just the first floor and what is the other floor used for?
This, believe me, is far for easy.
No Matter what you think the building is, agricultural, commercial or residential try to work out the following;
Is it in the process of being built?
Is it in the process of being knocked down?
Is it in the process of being renovated?
Is it a project that never got going?
Is it a project with no maintenance plan?
Is it in use, in other words, none of the above?
As I have stated all of this may seem very easy, but in actual fact to the untrained eye, there is little or no difference between a family home and an abandoned commercial building which was at one time part of a project. Remember you have to work all this out before you pass the building. Without a doubt this is a mental game that will keep you amused for hours as you trundle through the Moroccan countryside. If you are like me you will find it will actually add many hours to your travelling time, as you will find yourself slowing right down to allow more time before passing any given building, giving yourself enough time to play the game and work the above out.
Ahead of us was a 250-kilometre ride to our next overnight stop at Tinghir and when we got there our hotel turned out to be a restored Casbah full of interesting art. Our room on the top floor was extremely spacious and just what you would expect from a visit to Morocco, shutters on the windows, high vaulted ceilings, terracotta walls, tin lamps and crisp white linen, there was also a very nice swimming pool. But because this was Ramadan every time you wanted something you had to wake someone up, then bingo at 8.30pm you can get whatever you want. Although having woken the guy in reception up all hopes of getting onto the wifi was dashed, because although the hotel had it, this guy didn’t know what it was. It is at times like this that you realise just how important a little thing like wifi is to you when you are a long way from home, I guess it plugs you into the familiar when you are surrounded by the unfamiliar.
I can remember years ago when booking hotels for motorbike trips, the first thing I asked was had the hotel got a bar. A few years later I was asking hotels if they had a gym, now you do not even consider a hotel unless its got wifi. I actually think some hotels say they have it when they don’t and then when you are there they tell you there’s a fault or as in this case, you put a man in reception who claims not to know what wifi is.
In the afternoon we took a ride out from the hotel to explore the locality and we followed the signs for a gorge. The ride to which was very attractive, a steady climb up a hill to reveal a fantastic view across a long oasis, many villages with their mosque towers stretching above the palms and the distant plateaux. This wasn’t the first oasis we had come across, although it was probably the biggest, several kilometres long and obviously following the river which we were to find further along running through the gorge. I am pretty sure that the trees that cram into these oases are just normal trees, exactly the same as you would find anywhere else. Except all the ones we found in oasis’s across Morocco appear to be so green, so lush, they seem to be unreal. I think it because first of all they are probably very healthy, they live in a near-perfect climate for them with ample water to drink and secondly, they are usually in a barren setting with very little other colour to detract from them.
We were to discover the real attraction of Tinghir is the Gorge du Todra, a tight narrow gorge with almost vertical rock walls on either side, along the gorge floor ran a shallow fast flowing river and a gravel road to its one side. Because this was Ramadan there seemed to be a lot of locals hanging out in the shade of the gorge and taking advantage of the cool water, but as we have become used to seeing most of them were sleeping. I kid you not we actually came across one family sleeping in the middle of the river on a small island made of stones no bigger than the mattress they had somehow managed to get onto the island. This was perhaps the most extreme example of Ramadan sleeping we had come across by a long way.
That night we ate at our hotel which was very romantic, we sat in the open air across the courtyard and pool from the old Casbah which had been illuminated just for us as we appeared to be the only guests. It was late for us approaching 9pm and on offer was a selection of tagines, the famous Moroccan dish. We had already had a few during this trip and to be honest some were good and some were bad, but really none of them was anything to write home about. On this particular occasion the tagines were bad and again I think I know why. You see a tagine is a type of dryish stew made in a conical pot and obviously takes sometime to cook properly. Which is why at nearly 9pm I though having tagines on the menu would be a disaster, because they could take up to 90 minutes to cook. Ours arrived in about 20 minutes and I think that is because they cooked them in a pressure cooker before transferring to the tagine pot for serving. Sure the pressure cooker cooks everything, but it also takes away most of the authentic taste of the dish, hence they were bad. So another little tip, make sure your tagine takes at least an hour from ordering to arriving on your table.
The next morning we were up and ready to go at our usual early hour, but today there was tremendous news, Ramadan was officially over. The guy in reception was cheerful as we paid our bill I guess he had eaten a hearty breakfast in the bright morning sunlight. The hotel was just a few hundred meters from the road that was going to take us straight to our next hotel in the town of Quazazate some 180 kilometres away. The ride was enjoyable for several reasons, first we passed through the major rose growing area of Morocco not that we saw many roses, but we did see lots of places selling rose water and other rose-related products. Then there was the many villages which house the people who work in the rose production business. Villages are always interesting to ride through, they are like little islands in a vast sea, little micro-communities each going about their daily business and here they came one after the other. Then finally there was the people themselves. Moroccans as we had discovered were happy, cheerful types, but on the morning after the end of Ramadan they were overjoyed. We had to slow right down as the village streets became full of people hugging each other, laughing and generally having a good time, many were in their best dress and had just completed their morning prays. For the first time since we arrived in Morocco, we were able to stop in one of the villages and have a cup of coffee at a roadside table and watch the world pass by. It was whilst taking coffee I received some very sad news via the cafe’s all important wifi, the Australian rugby team had just beaten South Africa 24 - 20.
When I say people were in their best dress, I really do mean dress and that includes the guys. I have to say I really quiet liked the outfits the guys wore, they were long straight shapeless dress type affairs that stopped tantalisingly just above the ankle and had a long pointed hood, which was usually hanging down the back. They came in various colours, but by far the most popular colour was white, in which they almost always looked crisp, clean and cool. But, the guy's outfits took a little getting used too. At first, I thought they looked a bit like a cross between one of Snow Whites little dwarfs heading off to bed and a clans man of the Klu Klux type. To be honest it was hard to know whether they had just got up, just going to bed, dressed for a day at the office or a night on the town. However, if they had a small rug rolled up and over one shoulder they were either going to or coming from prays at the mosque.
Quarzazate was an interesting place, in the main its a nice modern looking town in the middle of a large barren flatland. But its the centre of the booming Moroccan film industry with serval film studios based around the town, the most famous of which Atlas Films, which was where the Star Wars films were filmed amongst many others. I think I am right in saying this was the first time we managed to find our hotel straight off, but that is because it was quite literally on the main road we arrived on. We arrived early in the afternoon and after a swim in the pool we walked across the road and enjoyed a nice lunch at another roadside cafe, the end of Ramadan had certainly bought an instant change to our trip. Although the town was modern it did have a very old medina which was right opposite our hotel. We wondered around its narrow alleys, people were milling around and not sleeping, although there was absolutely no sign of R2-D2 or any of his family members.
That evening at a time that suited us, we ate on the roof of a very nice restaurant across the road from our hotel. It was an excellent meal with great views across the town and we could just make out a large lake in the distance illuminated in the moonlight. Our waiter, who was very attentive bought us a book showing the signature of Indian born Krishna Pandit Bhanji, who is better known as none other than oscar winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley CBE. He and his wife eat at this very restaurant whenever they are in town, which to be fair is not often. However, they did come several times looking at the evidence presented by the waiter, whilst Sir Ben was making a film in one of the towns studios, Hollywood moment or what.
After our starry night meal, we walked along the main road and sat on a wall to people watch, for tonight was the first night of Eid Al-Fitr a very important Muslim festival that marks the end of Ramadan. The main road was full of people all dressed in their very best outfits, the actual road was as busy as any London city centre road during rush hour and they all seemed to be going in the same direction. Obviously, there was going to be a big party somewhere tonight. But tonight also had one other surprise up its sleeve, for it was tonight that in Morocco the clocks go forward by an hour, the night porter at our hotel very kindly confirmed this when we returned.
So having had a shorter night that usual we got up the next morning and was first in the restaurant for breakfast and then loaded up the bike. This loading up ceremony had now become routine and was something we could do with our eyes closed in a matter of minutes. In fact the whole process of loading and unloading had become very easy as we had things stored in suitable bags, one a water proof and more importantly dust proof bag on the back of the bike with all our clothes and a laptop computer, a rucksack in one pannier with all the camera equipment and two small shoulder bags in the other pannier with passports, cash and other important stuff in. In fact it was all so well sorted I could carry all the luggage into the hotels myself, a small bag over each shoulder crossing my body, the rucksack in one hand, the water proof bag in the other and crash helmet with sunglasses inside shoved under one armpit, leaving Clare to arrive in reception looking amazing, smiling at the receptionist and carrying just her helmet.
Its funny, the journey to the Harley each morning from our hotel room with all the bags was always easy, not exactly a joy, but easy. The exact same bags at the end of a long hot days riding, on the journey from the bike to our hotel room suddenly became very heavy, awkward and the whole process became intensely difficult. So I have decided not to think of the journey from the bike to the room and I certainly have stopped thinking the work is over when we arrive at the hotel. Instead I don’t give myself false ending, I know the journey is over when the bags are in the room and I’m relaxed on the bed. This is not just a story about how bags mysteriously get heavier during the day, its actually about relationships and the way we interact with each other. You see in the morning after a good nights sleep and an often interesting breakfast we are all smiles and pleasant to everyone we meet. But at the other end of a long hot ride normally with a battle to find the hotel we can be intolerant, short-tempered and even rude and if we are, its not a true reflection of ourselves or of what we think and feel about other people. Its just that the bags have got heavier as the day went on. See I told you travelling with an intimate partner was good, you can learn a lot about them and yourself no matter how long you have known each other.
The only thing left to do before we rode out of Quarzazate was to pay the bill which was easier said than done, because although it was 8 am it only seemed as though the night porter was on duty in reception. He, of course, could not speak English and why should he, but he did not seem to understand my broken French and as I didn’t speak Berbere or Arabic we were getting nowhere fast. Eventually, he looked as though he knew I wanted the bill for my room for the night, something I felt confident I could get right in French. He checked some paperwork, then tapped at the computer keyboard and then told me by waving his hands that there was nothing to pay. Maybe he was right I though because even though none of the hotels to date had accepted credit cards, I had to give my credit card details when booking the rooms online. I just figured that we had come across the first hotel on this trip that accepts my card and indeed there was nothing else for me to pay. With that, we fired up the Harley and rode off into the morning sunlight unopposed by the night porter who came out of the hotel to wave us off. Needless to say over the coming days and weeks I was to find out via several emails that I had in fact not paid for this hotel room and the various methods to pay were next to impossible for a foreign tourist. Another little tip, its easier to pay the hotel when you leave than few days later from another city hundreds of kilometres away.
Today's ride was the best ride we had had during this trip and indeed proved to be the best ride of the entire trip, the 202 kilometres to Marrakech was via the legendary N9 which is rated as one of the best motorcycle rides in the world and it wasn’t hard to see why. From Quarzazate we climbed steadily up a hill at first through open plains and then into valleys where the road became a lot more bendy. Again we stopped for a coffee at a roadside cafe, hey this was post-Ramadan and the dawn of a new age in our travels. After coffee, the road twisted its way through small villages and the valleys got narrow and narrower and all the time the road was going up a hill, in some places very steeply. Then we found ourselves riding along the ridge of one of the Atlas mountains, to say it was spectacular wouldn’t do it justice, the view off to our right was of deep valleys, high mountains and soaring eagles hunting in the mid-morning sunlight. We followed the ridge until we came to what was obviously the high point of the road and as we took the sweeping bend to the left suddenly in front of us was a view that just demanded to stop and photograph. Below we could see the road we were to ride twisting its way down through a series of mountains, clinging to ridges with hairpin bend after hairpin bend, there was no doubt why this was rated so highly as a motorcycling route. The ride up here from Quarzazate was amazing, but this, this was way beyond amazing. We stopped at the first hairpin to take it all in and got chatting to some locals from Marrakech who were on their way to go trekking in the area, it was after all Eid and everyone was in holiday mood.
For the next few hours, we weaved our way down through the Atlas mountains following the fantastic N9, the first part of which was clinging to the sides of the mountains with steep drop-offs to either side of the road. Then passing through busy mountain villages with restaurants cooking all sorts of meat kebabs and real tagines on bar-b-qs at the side of the road. Through heavily forested hills with tantalising views every now and again of rolling valleys still a long way below. Time for another coffee, this time the cafe although on the side of the road, from the rear patio, had views right up and down the valley below us. As good as the views and the road was, it also proved to be the most dangerous section of our trip. I think it could have been the euphoria that must come at the end of Ramadan, or the excitement of Eid, or just plain bad driving, but the drive down was punctuated with a number of attempts by local mini bus drivers to kill us.
Our arrival on the outskirts of Marrakech marked the start of our usual problem, how to find the hotel. This time we were pretty confident we had done our homework and we had a fool proof plan and at first it seemed as though we had. But a short distance into the city we were directed off our course and onto a long detour which eventually abandoned us in some Marrakech suburb with no more signs to follow. We were well and truly lost, but thanks to all the other times that we had been lost on this trip, this didn’t phase us out. We swung into our normal routine of asking for directions, not fully understanding the directions given, following our noses and then asking again. Then we hit on the idea of getting a taxi to take us to the hotel and we would follow behind, which is what we did and without a doubt, it was the best 20D we spent on the whole trip. The taxi driver seemed to enjoy it as well, he drove with his hazard lights on so we could spot him amongst the hundreds of identical taxi’s. Of course, this caused lots of other motorists to shout at him for causing confusion, he shouted back and indicated towards us. We weren’t sure what was going on, but we were about to arrive at our next hotel in some style and to a soundtrack of confused motorists hooting their horns, gesticulating and shouting at our taxi driver. Incidentally, when we did arrive at our hotel it was nowhere were we thought it was, so our master plan to find the hotel ourselves was never going to work.
We parked the Harley on the pavement right outside the hotel which was on one of the main roads through Marrakech and right opposite the biggest mosque in the city, something that was going to be useful as a marker for when we walked around the city. We did our usual unloading routine and checked in, then the receptionist showed me where to park the bike. About 200 meters from the hotel was a junction between six roads and in amongst these converging roads was the entrance to some waste land surrounded by a high corrugated iron fence, which was the car park. But like the "Raiders of the Lost Arc” car park in Fes, it was well run and secure, except this one looked a bit like Beirut after a bad night of bombing.
Now as we had found out Morocco is full of friendly, helpful people more than willing to assist us whenever we needed it and never expected payment in return. Marrakech introduced to us a new breed of Moroccan, a lying, deceptive type eager to extract cash from visitors to their city in whatever way they could. I am not sure what has caused it, maybe it's the cities rich and long history as one of the worlds ancient trading centres, maybe its the influx of "kiss me quick” type tourists taking advantage of the cheap airlines that now fly to Marrakech, seeking a few exotic days away. Or maybe they are not from Marrakech at all, but just come to the city to make some money from visitors.
Marrakech is a fascinating city and has a lot for visitors to see, but it's really spoilt by some of its people. For example, a local will ask where you are going or what you want and then when you tell him, he will waste no time in telling you that it's closed or you cannot get that here and then try to direct you to their “uncles” place to look at what he has on offer. This actually happened to us many times, once we were on our way to the Royal Palace to see a Photographic Exhibition, we were about 200 meters from the entrance when a guy in a cafe asked us where we were going, so we told him. He told us that the Palace was closed, but we should go to his “uncles" across the road where we could buy a carpet. Now the carpets in Morocco are fantastic, but they don’t fit on a motorbike and are very expensive. So why this guy would think that by telling us the Palace was closed we would think “oh well the Photographic Exhibition is closed, let's buy an expensive carpet instead”. It just doesn’t make any sense as a sales tactic.
On another occasion, we spent ages trying to find an old house in the Medina which had been converted into a photographic gallery, its famous, its in all the guide books. First of all we were approached by a guy who told us he worked at our hotel, he was the night porter and that we didn’t recognise him as he had taken his uniform off to go home and to reinforce our confusion he took off his sunglasses so we could recognise him better. Having hooked us he managed to get us into a place that sold massive ancient wooden doors and other architectural artefacts, none of which would fit on a motorbike either. From there we were taken to an art gallery selling Berbere paintings, and then we were on our way to a man who sold genuine Argon oil. It was at this point I told him to clear off which he did instantly, leaving us totally lost in a network of very narrow alleys. Having worked our way back out of there we were then approached within 50 meters of the photographic gallery by a local wearing a Manchester United shirt, always a bad sign. He said he would take us to the gallery and promptly turned us around and did a few lefts and rights down more narrow alleys and then asked for money for helping us. I also told him to clear off, which he did equally as fast. At this point a boy on a push bike offered to show us the gallery, what had we got to loose we hadn’t a clue where we were. We followed the lad on the bike as we retraced our steps back to where the Man United fan collected us and 50 meters further on, the lad on the bike singled to the left and there was the gallery. Lad on bike just waved and rode off, not even attempting to ask for payment. You see there you go never paint everyone with the same brush, in a city where it seems to be a sport to mess visitors around as much as possible, there are some people who are true Moroccans, helpful and friendly.
So a very big tip, when in Marrakech if someone says they work at your hotel and will help you, ask which hotel they work at and if anyone tells you somewhere’s closed without a doubt the one thing that place isn’t, is closed. Getting around Marrakech we were to discover was not so much about going where you wanted to go, but about where the locals want you to go.
Marrakech is certainly an interesting city and probably has something for everyone, except a beach and an amusement park. We spent a great day at the gardens of Yves St Laurent’s house. The famous french designer had a lovely house in a not so lovely area of the city. The house had been originally built by a guy who was a keen gardener and set up a great garden. Yves carried on his good work and using his own design skills he incorporated the colours of Morocco into the garden. So think lush greens, bright yellows and deep blues, punctuated with flashes of terracotta. The garden also now houses the YSL Berbere museum which is well worth visiting, beautifully presented with interesting objects. The ancient Berbere jewellery is worth the visit alone. As we walked back to our hotel from the garden the temp hit 49c so another good tip, walk on the shaded side of the road as much as possible, the locals do it for a very good reason. Of course, the “kiss me quick” tourists in their Islam insulting skimpy clothes walk on the sunny side so they can get a tan in the few days they are there.
We found another very interesting thing to do in the city and that was a days cookery course during which we were taught the secrets of the tagine and how to make Moroccan bread. The course was run by a Frenchman who could have been one of the clowns in a Cirque du Soleil show and his Moroccan wife and more importantly her mother. It was here that we learnt about the restaurant secret of using a pressure cooker to cook their tagines quick. We were also told that one of the vital ingredients of a tagine is rancid butter, which is either left out of the pressure cooker process or if added is not cooked through properly, both results in a bad tagine experience. The tagines we cooked on the course were 100 times better than just about all the ones we had had so far on our trip, with the exception of the one cooked for us in Tinghir, but that had been cooked by a woman who knew what she was doing and it had taken ages to cook.
Early the next morning I collected the Harley from the bomb site car park, I had prepaid so it was just a case of saying good morning to the guys, ride it along the deserted pavement and park it outside the hotel. Within minutes we were loaded up and pulled off the pavement onto the main road and mingled with the light early morning traffic as we headed out of town for the motorway and Casablanca 278 kilometres away. As the sun quickly warmed up the city streets it dawned on me that there was something very special about getting up early and leaving a place at the start of another journey, the anticipation of what was to come, the adventures that waited for you and a time to reflect on what you had seen so far. Now that’s not a famous quote, I thought that one up myself and it's exactly how every morning on this trip had started. Of course, the end of the day's journey was a different matter as we battled to find the hotels and sadly today wasn’t going to be any different.
As we followed the signs for the motorway, my mind started to think back over the journey so far and it came to me that we had not seen any fat people, some slightly overweight maybe, but no fat or obese people, which is becoming something quite rare at the moment. But then as though to prove my point about Marrakesh being different from the rest of Morocco, there was a really fat guy waddling down the road towards us. Oh yes, another thing we hadn’t seen on this trip was anything that could remotely be classed as a supercar, about the best we saw was a Dacia 4X4, white with black wheels it looked fine, but just not what you would call a supercar. A four-door Maserati is a supercar and I am wrong I have seen one of them, guess where Marrakech. So I came to the conclusion as we left the city, that bits of it were different to the rest of Morocco in so many ways.
The journey to Casablanca was the most boring so far as it was along a motorway from the one city to the next, of course we could have taken the back roads, but we wanted to get to Casablanca and a fast few hours on the motorway gave us a whole afternoon on the beach. Which was an interesting experience in itself. But first our hotel and for a start it had definitely seen better times. It turned out that it was built over 80 years ago by the French and along with the tree-filled square it sat in, it must have been a very pleasant place in its day. All the buildings bordering the square were of the same vintage and all showed signs of their age. The square itself was traffic free, but that didn’t stop me getting the Harley onto the pavement and through the square and right in front of the hotel in order to unload. Again Morocco surprised us, the hotel turned out to be very good, it was clean, very atmospheric and full of character. Our first floor room had those great floor to ceiling old French doors with metal shutters that opened up onto a small balcony overlooking the square below and the docks beyond. It was like one of those places in an old spy film the sort of place Humphrey Bogart would turn up in, why they never made a film in this city I will never know.
Actually, it reminded me a lot of a hotel in one of the Bourne films where a massive chase and plenty of fighting started and ended in a car exploding or something like that, I’d have to play it again to get the sequence right. We really enjoyed the hotel and our room had an edginess to it which was hard to put your finger on, but it was kind of tacky yet sexy, slightly seedy yet spotlessly clean and tidy. A room where loose women and assassins would hold up, where spies meeting to handed over microdots would meet, where politicians cavorted with their lovers and where these particular travellers hung their washing over the balcony doors and shutters to dry in the warm Casablanca afternoon sun.
Ok enough of the room back to the beach, the guy who ran the hotel virtually insisted we went there and I must say he did make it sound like a must see place. It wasn’t. The beach was absolutely packed with thousands of Moroccans and because of Muslim rules, the women were in the sea wearing more clothes than we had worn riding the Harley up the motorway. The place was full of cheap looking restaurants, crowds of people and sadly rubbish.
I have discovered an absolutely must have piece of kit that no Moroccan worth his weight in couscous would be seen without it. “What is it”, I hear you say? Its a cardboard box about the size of a large cereal packet, that you cut along one side and open up into one flat piece of cardboard. Once you have this vital piece of kit, you must carry it everywhere you go, without exception.
It transpires that the cardboard forms a useful array of functions, placed on or over the head it can provide welcome shade from the intense sun and heat, it can hide identities by providing a modesty shield, it can be used as a fan to generate a gentle cooling breeze, or can be used to swot away the many flies. But mainly its used to sit on, when sitting on benches, in cafe’s, on small motorbikes and on pavements or grassy areas. Where it forms a protective barrier between their clean, crisp, cool white robes of the clansman type and the piles of rubbish which is discarded everywhere. So there is another very useful travel tip when in Morocco make sure you have with you at all times an empty cornflakes box.
If anyone had made the decision to have a romantic weekend in Casablanca based on all the old films they had seen they would be very disappointed, as we were. That night we walked to the docks and found a fantastic fish restaurant, it scores high in all the guide books and it wasn’t hard to see why, the food was excellent and the service was brisk, a tad too brisk if the truth was known as we were in, fed and out in next to no time.
The next morning after a very nice breakfast in the hotel we set off on a long walk around the city, we saw everything from the very dirty and badly looked after old Medina, the early 1920’s shopping streets in the French boulevard-style road network, the kings Palace and a modern medina. The verdict, well disappointing leaps to mind the whole place just seemed to be a hectic mass of people and cars and along with Marrakech was fast becoming one of the low points of the trip so far. That night though things picked dramatically, because we went to eat at Ricks Cafe, how could you not. First of all it was not what I was expecting, I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was not it. I think I half expected some sort of themed place a bit like TGI’s, but heavily themed to the film. But no this was an exceptionally fine restaurant with not a piano in sight let alone a guy called Sam. The only concession to the film was the fact that on a flat screen in one of the plush bar areas, the Casablanca film was being shown, but with the sound turned right down so it did not interfere with the carefully created ambience of the place. The meal we had was nothing short of stunning and I had my first alcoholic drink since arriving Morocco and gin and tonic to kick things off.
Following another good breakfast at the hotel we quickly zoomed off on the Harley to the nearby Hassan ll mosque, which is built right on the beach and next to the marina, which is in the throws of being constructed and a block of swanky looking flats. Unlike a lot of mosques in Morocco, this one was open for none Muslims to take tours and so that was what we were there to do. The mosque itself is reputed to be the third largest in the world, the other two are in Saudi Arabia. I guess its just not done to go and build a bigger mosque than the one at Mecca or Medina. This one, despite only being the third largest, was spectacular to put it mildly. It took 6 years to make and 25,000 labourers and 10,000 craftsmen worked on its construction 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Perhaps the most interesting fact regarding the building of the mosque was the fact it wasn't designed by a Moroccan or even a Muslim, but a French architect who just happened to be a very good friend of the King. So its good to see that even in a Muslim country the old African tradition of jobs for friends continues on.
Okay, some more facts, it has space for 20, 000 men to pray and 5,000 women and 250 people work full time at the Mosque providing everything from cleaning services and security to tour guides that seem to be able to speak all the major languages of the world. The King visits the mosque twice a year at Eid and on the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed and because he is the king he has his own door that only he uses and from which he walks the whole length of the main hall before arriving in front of the Imam.
Once the tour was over we rode back to the hotel and loaded up for the short ride to the countries capital Rabat, just 133 kilometres away. No hotel tonight, we were stopping with my godson and his family who had just started a 3-year posting to the Moroccan capital. So without a hotel to find things should go better and we really did plan this extremely well to make sure we found their house the first time. But we found out that city centre hotels and houses in residential areas are both very difficult to find and so we again resorted to the taxi trick, the driver of which took us to a nearby health club and a really nice guy playing tennis was able to give us directions to our destination.
There is something about capital cities the whole world over London has certainly got it, so has Paris and so has a lot of other capitals and Rabat is no different. In a country that at best looks half finished and covered in litter, Rabat has a refined feel about it. It has nice shops, neat little street cafes, art galleries as well as old Medina’s and souks. We spent the next day wondering and to be fair getting lost in the medina and souk, before finding a great place to have lunch, a restaurant which was part of the old Medina wall. In which we enjoyed a great plate of freshly fried little fish of various kinds. After we wondered through the city, stopping to buy a selection of lovely cream cakes and then heading into a modern art museum. I came to the conclusion that whatever it is capital cities have, Rabat certainly has it, just.
The next morning we bid farewell to my godson and his family and set off for Tsar es Sghir, where I hear you shout and is it a place or a decease. Well, I can tell you it's a lovely little Mediterranean seaside place just a few kilometres from the new Tangier-Med port, out of which we were due to depart for Spain the next day. The 290-kilometre ride started would you believe in rain, yes rain none of the tour books said anything about rain in July and so we had absolutely no suitable clothes to wear and so we got wet. But after an hour or so of getting wet, suddenly the sun got switched on and it was set to full power and by the time we rolled up outside our hotel we were warm, comfortable and completely dry. Notice the fact that I said we rolled up outside our hotel with not a hint of drama or the mention of a taxi, that is because we managed to find this one completely on our own. Mainly I guess because the town was so small it would have been very difficult to miss it.
Tsar es Sghir was like a little oasis, unlike anything else we had seen in Morocco, this place has a nice golden sand beach, beach umbrellas and good quality sun beds. The sea was calm and deep blue with locals whizzing around on some very fast jet bikes and sandwiched between the beach and the rolling tree-covered hills which formed a back drop was the small town of pretty little white painted buildings. Looking out to sea I studied the coast line and as I did I thought to myself that bit of Moroccan coastline looks exactly like the rock of Gibraltar and of course there was a very good reason for that, it was bloody Gibraltar. It looked so close I just naturally assumed we were in some big bay and that coastline was part of the coastline I was on. But I was wrong, that coastline was not part of my coastline at all, it wasn’t even part of the same countries coastline, in fact it wasn't part of the same continents coastline. How wrong could you be I was in Africa and that was Europe.
As we watched the sun drop and turn the sky above the blue sea a golden haze, Europe seemed so close, so tantalisingly close. No wonder so many Africans choose this stretch of water to try and enter Europe, it does seem that 30 minutes on one of those jet bikes and you would be eating paella and enjoying a cold San Miguel beer at a beach restaurant on one of the Costas. Who knows some of those Africans we saw leaving the mosque in Fes may tonight be risking everything to cross the Gibraltar Straights into Europe and no doubt onto the UK. This last glorious sunset also marks the end of our last full day in Morocco as tomorrow we make our own Straights crossing, but we shall be doing it legally onboard an FRS ferry.
What have we found out about this amazing country and for me it was the scenery that surprised me the most. We saw everything from ski slopes covered in lush green grass and inhabited by nomadic sheep herders, high mountain passes with steep gorges, deserts and sand dunes, rocky plains as flat as a pancake and as far as you could see, rich farm land and green green oasis’s full of palm trees. Then there was the people, who with the except of those that live in Marrakech were friendly, helpful and happy, they were a joy to be around. It was not just with us, they seemed equally friendly and gracious to their own which is nice to see and which rubs off on you. The whole place is a bit like a giant museum and the history of the country is amazing, its no wonder the place looks old, because it is. They have centuries-old buildings everywhere that are not only still standing, but are still in use and furthermore have been in continuous use since the day they were built. Which in the case of the worlds first university in Fes means over 1300 years of continuos use. You can forgive it for looking a bit worn around the edges, except in that particular buildings case it didn’t, it look extremely well looked after. The roads on the whole are good and even the standard of driving is good, we only saw three accidents and they were in the countries largest city, Casablanca and we saw them within 30 minutes of arriving there.
So the country has a lot going for it, the views are great, the people are great, the roads are great and its a living museum, oh did I mention its also cheap. What is there not to like? Well there is one thing, generally the whole country could be described as a bit of a rubbish dump, now that is not something that would put me off, but as I understand it the country is trying to improve its tourist trade something that a North African Muslim country could find hard to do in the current climate. But having it littered in rubbish will not help them become a tourist destination at all.
We sat out in the hotels garden and had our last breakfast in Morocco, then after filling up with fuel we rode the few kilometres left in the country along the main road to the port and our ferry. The crossing was quiet as not only were we some of the very few passengers onboard, but the sea was also flat calm. So all in all the crossing was relaxing and we had time to watch as we sailed past Gibraltar, into the bay and our port at Algeciras. The relaxing time was however about to come to a very abrupt end, as we entered the car deck and walked to the Harley, Clare was the first to notice that fuel was leaking from just below the tank. On close inspection it was coming from the valve that delivers the fuel from the tank into the pipes that take it to the engine. I am avoiding getting to technical here as basically I hadn’t got a clue. Clare tried to exam the valve and in doing saw turned the leak into quiet a strong stream of fuel now gushing from the valve. In a blind panic I pulled the pipes from the valve and to my amazement the leak stopped, but as soon as I reconnected the pipes the leak started up again. I must say the ferry staff were amazingly helpful, although I guess the fact I had a bike leaking fuel onto the car deck had something to do with their concern. They summoned the ferries chief engineer, a massive Spaniard who was not only the engineer, but a keen motorcyclist. He played around whilst the ferry was being emptied of all the vehicles. He continued to play around whilst the ferry loaded up with the vehicles it was due to take back to Morocco. I did think were going to have to go backwards and forwards on this ferry between Spain and Morocco until the chief engineer could fix it. He had however worked out it was the seals in the valve that had given up the ghost and he was trying to fix it with a variety of seals he had for fixing the ferry. You see this is an important factor of the Harley Davidson engine, its big and not very sophisticated and so bits from a massive ferry could just possibly fix it.
But that was only plan A to let chief engineer fix it, plan B which ran along side plan A was to make plans to get the bike off the boat and then get it recovered somehow from the docks. Running alongside both of those plans was plan C, which was to somehow get the bike as far as a motorbike mechanic who the chief engineer told us treats sick Harley Davidson’s. His garage was about 5 kilometres away from the ferry. Just to be sure there was also a plan D running at the same time and that involved me contacting our man in Portugal and asking him to talk to the Portuguese insurance company and find out what they actually meant in the policy about roadside assistance and did it extent to dockside assistance in Spain. So the race was on, which of the four plans would work first. The ferry was now full and one of the massive doors at the front was already shut, we all looked at each other and then at the chief engineer. He stood up and announced he had fixed it, but it would need a proper repair job. Clare asked if it was safe to get it off the ferry, I asked if it would get us to Seville, he smiled and said it would be okay for a week or two. I wasted no more time, I got on and signalled to Clare to get on, we said a big thank you to everyone, Clare even kissed the chief engineer which was a nice touch, but I wasn’t gong to do it and we rode off the ferry and through the port and off to Seville.
The ride to Seville was mentally taxing nothing to do with the actual journey, or the road, or even the Spanish drivers. No, I just couldn’t stop checking to see if the leak had started again. I was also trying to work out if, in the heat, it was about 40c, the bike suddenly turned into a fire ball what would we do, I never did come up with anything resembling a workable plan. The fact that every few kilometres we seemed to pass signs on the side of the road of where vehicles had been on fire, was no help at all. But we made it to Seville and we had one of our best attempts to find a hotel. We just headed for the centre then pickled up the river and from there rode straight to our hotel. Alright it was the one we had stopped at on the way to Morocco and so we should have been able to find it, but it still came as a pleasant surprise when we actually did find it.
After carrying the heavy bags to our room and a rest on the bed followed by a shower, we walked out into the warm evening sunlight. The streets were starting to get ready for the night, bars were preparing tables on the pavements, buskers were setting up their stages, locals and visitors ambled along the pavements, the sun slowly turned everything amber, people on boats slowly cruised the river whilst drinking what looked like wine. We walked over the bridge and to our favourite Guinness bar in Seville, to be honest, its the only Guinness bar we know in Seville. Then after a glass of the dark stuff, we walked back across the bridge and to our favourite restaurant overlooking the river. Like our visit to the same restaurant nearly three weeks before we had a lovely relaxed meal of fried fish and various tapas sitting in the open, taking in the evening air. The ambience was, however, periodically pierced by a string of blokes who move from street restaurant to street restaurant whaling, strumming guitars and pretending to be the Gypsy Kings or at least one of them. Still when in Spain.
Our last day on the motorbike and we managed to get ourselves out of Seville, fill the petrol tank and get onto the right road for Portugal with absolutely zero drama, funny isn’t how just as a trip comes to end everything starts to fall into place. 230 kilometres later and we were cruising the streets of Vilamoura looking for our very last hotel on this trip, which we managed to find almost without a hitch. We unloaded the bags into our room for the very last time, quickly did some washing and put the clothes out on the balcony to dry and then took the Harley back to its home and bid farewell to our trusty steed. With that, a trip of some 2,980 kilometres, 14 hotels and 28 loadings and unloading of the bike, came to an end.