Stand-by, then fast forward

My apologies for this long-overdue post. We are well and, as some already know, no longer cycling in Africa. Our trip came to an unexpected end last month as we were struggling with the costs of living in Senegal and with our savings rapidly melting away. Not having a home to go back to meant that we had to worry about our finances for the duration as well as for the aftermath of the trip. We felt we could no longer afford spending money travelling, particularly in a country with prices closer to Europe’s than Morocco’s.

Dakar was our final destination, and flying to Paris just on time for Christmas proved to be a real test for the mind – we were grateful for having escaped all the pre-festivities madness yet being able to join in and celebrate but the culture shock, even after only two months spent in Africa, was great and difficult to overcome, not to mention the feelings of regret, confusion and missing on something even bigger than we could imagine… One thing is for sure, Africa has left an indelible imprint on us and we will be back!

But for now, let us enjoy for just a a few more hours the snow and sub-zero temperatures (it was -18 Celsius four days ago!) Poland is offering us, before going back to more serious business. After weeks pouring over the Internet in search for our next home among several European destinations (unfortunately we also had to dismiss our initial idea of relocating to Spain this year, given the current economic situation in the Iberian peninsula), we may have found the city that will give us both enough opportunities to keep us busy for the next few years to come. And, as an added bonus, it is a bicycle-friendly place The adventure goes on!

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Relax …

Sidi Ifni beach shortly before sunset on 03.12.2009

sidi-ifni_03122009_sea

Close your eyes, listen to the ocean (just click on the player above), relax, travel and be with us

We cycled some 70 km up the road and are now in Sidi Ifni, a pleasant and peaceful town on the Atlantic coast… still pondering on the possibility to cross Mauritania as recent events may have compromised our plans… Stay tuned for more information!

A nice surprise…

Bouizakarne

Artur and Rose, a lovely retired couple currently staying at the Agadir campsite, had offered to look after our belongings while we were busy sorting out our visas for Mauritania in Rabat. They welcomed us back on Thursday night with apéritifs and a lot of advice and stories about Africa and the world (they have been travelling extensively throughout their adult lives)… We finally got back on the bikes on Saturday morning and enjoyed very much cycling the 90 km which separate Tiznit from Agadir. The road was flat for the first 65 kilometres (and uphill for the remaining 25 km) as well as empty, as most Moroccans were busy celebrating the ‘Eid el Kebir at home with their family.

After a quiet night spent at the Tiznit campsite (where we met Archie, a retired gentleman who was travelling on his motorbike from Bristol, England to Ghana and is currently spending the winter in Morocco), we left for what we thought would lead us to Sidi Ifni, a town located on the coast, 75km further South and highly recommended by Archie and locals alike. Thinking there was only one road going South, I never bothered checking my map or asking anyone for directions that morning. What a mistake! It took us over 15 km of hard cycling uphill to realize we were on the wrong track and heading inland along the anti-Atlas mountains instead of down the scenic coastline… Jędrzej refused to turn back (“a waste of almost two hours of hard work!”) and insisted we carried on, but I knew this would make for a really long and hard day and realized there would be no accommodation until the town of Guelmin (108 km South of Tiznit) which, looking at the road condition and surroundings (mountains), would never be reached before sunset … I was so angry with myself for not checking the route earlier on and, as the day got hotter and cycling tougher, felt once again miserable and not up to the task. I broke down in tears several times throughout the day and cursed myself endlessly for leading us to this terribly hilly road. We only saw a couple of villages on our way and only men could be seen wandering down the streets. No feminine presence whatsoever, even at this time of the day, in broad daylight! It is rather common not to see any Moroccan woman outside of her home past a certain hour, but it was only about 3pm, and I felt increasingly out of place and vulnerable in this rather adverse environment. We had been told that we would find a hotel in the small town of Lakhsas but all we could see as we cycled past it was two dozens of young men standing by its front door. Was the hotel even still operating? We did not dare stop to find out and, as the road finally started to become flatter (after 50 km uphill), we turned all our hopes to the town of Bouizakarne, another 15 km away. Approximately only an hour of daylight remained, so we were more than relieved when we understood that the road would only go downhill from there on: we then reached a pass and had a blissful 10km downhill. The view was breathtaking, with the sun slowly setting and the landscape turning into a beautiful shade of pink, the anti-Atlas mountains visible afar (reminding us greatly of our beloved Atacama Desert in Chile). The picture I inserted at the beginning of this post certainly does no justice to the beauty of the scenery; nor can it translate the happiness we felt when we saw Bouizakarne appearing at the horizon. Nevertheless, it will give you a feel for this surreal-looking place.

The campsite in Bouizakarne was unfortunately closed, and so was the only hotel in town (Moroccans were still celebrating the ‘Eid), but someone generously offered to call the hotel’s owner on our behalf: Hamid turned up minutes later and agreed to let us in despite the holiday. An entire hotel just for the two of us! We now are the proud and only residents of the anti-Atlas:

This is the second time only we get to sleep in a bed over the past month. To be honest with you, we are quite happy lodging in our tent every night, though we are thoroughly enjoying electricity straight from the wall socket, a dining table and chairs which all are at our disposition in the hotel.
Today, we are catching up with the Internet, laundry, bike maintenance (I have had problems with my bike brakes ever since this trip started- there seems to be no regulation system for the back set of brakes) and stove maintenance (our MSR Whisperlite pump broke after only two weeks of usage and cannot be replaced in Africa, so we now have to pressurize our fuel bottle with a foot pump– we wish we had gotten a Primus stove instead– fitted with a steel pump, not a plastic one). Tomorrow, we will be heading to Guelmin, the gate of the Sahara, where our crossing of the desert will begin…

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Contretemps

View Larger Map”

We left the bikes behind us in Agadir a few days ago and travelled to Rabat (approximately 500 km North of Agadir)in order to sort out our visas for Mauritania, since they can no longer be obtained at the border: first by bus to Marrakech for 4 hours, then by train from Marrakech to Rabat for 4 1/2 hours (there is no direct connection between Agadir and Rabat). We each paid 340 Moroccan dirhams (that’s £27,€30 or $45) for a 30 days, single-entry visa (instead of the 200 dirhams previously asked for at the border). With the additional bus/ train/ hotel costs, our visa expenses for Mauritania come up to a total of 810 Dirhams each (£64, €71 or $107)… Ouch! However, and after hearing far too many stories of travellers either stuck much further South in Dakhla or who had to fly back/ hitch a ride/ cross the Sahara again in order to reach Rabat and the Mauritanian embassy, we do consider ourselves quite lucky indeed (the Mauritanian authorities only stop delivering visas at the border on 4 November 2009 and, as a result, far too many people are still unaware of it).

On a more positive note, we enjoyed very much strolling along the rather peaceful streets of Rabat and spending some quality, undisturbed time in the hassle-free Médina. We also met a few cool people who all came to the capital for their Mauritanian visas: Aki the biker who is travelling as far as Nigeria before going back to Hong-Kong; Antoine, Alison and their son Marius going to Mali with their van and finally Marco, an Italian cyclist who spends 6 months a year on the saddle and is aiming for Mali too this year. We hope to see you all again on the road shortly!

And then…

We set up our alarm at 6AM yesterday, had breakfast in the dark and, by the time we were ready to jump on our bikes at 7.15AM, the day was slowly breaking. Having learnt to unpack from our panniers only what is necessary for the night certainly helps with repacking them quickly in the morning!

There were more hills, but also, finally, down hills! So we eventually began to make some real progress and, by midday, we had already done almost 50 kilometres… More hills came on the way though, but, as we could now see the ocean by our side, we felt stronger and stronger… At around 3PM, feeling hot and sticky, we decided we could no longer press on the pedals further while watching all the surfers waiting for the big waves, and awarded ourselves a well-earned break, and a quick dip in the water:

Feeling refreshed, and with already 70 kilometres covered on that day, our hopes were now rather high… “We might finally do 100 kilometres today! Hallelujah!”…

However, a camp site sign judiciously placed on our way distracted us from all our good intentions… Wiesław, a biker from Poland we met at the camping entrance, finished to convince us to stay there for the night, so we called it a day and, instead of cycling the remaining 25 kilometres still separating us from Agadir, we agreed to spend a lovely evening in his company instead.

Things are looking up, except perhaps for the fact that the rumour goes that it has been impossible to get a Mauritanian visa at the border for the past seven days! We do not quite fancy cycling to the Mauritanian embassy in Rabat some 500 km up North, then South again, so we will have to wait a little, ask around and study our options: cycling an extra 1000 km in order to buy a visa, taking a train to Rabat and back (and where can we keep our bikes in the meantime?) or chancing it altogether and showing up at the border without any visa, with the risk of being sent back after having cycled over 1 000 kilometres across the desert in vain?

What a fool I was…

To believe that I was immune, after two weeks in Morocco… I am talking about my stomach, of course… I was about to share with you a blog on how tasty Moroccan food is, and how neither tap water nor street stall food made us sick… until I started throwing up all night between Monday and Tuesday and had to rest in the tent for almost 24 hours. I got better within a day though, and we were able to leave Essaouira on Wednesday morning.

What a fool, too, to think that all the roads in Africa are flat! Well, alright, the Atlas mountains are located in Morocco, but there are inland, right? So one could assume that the coastal road should be an easy ride, right? Well, wrong! Not only had we been struggling with head winds from the moment we arrived in Marrakech until the day we reached Essaouira, but even once we had left Essaouira, with favourable winds and the mountainous terrain behind us (or so we thought), the road kept going up, up, up… then a little down, then up again, and again, and again… We felt very low, fighting with our bikes, the road and ourselves all day long under a temperature close to 30 Celsius (almost 90 Fahrenheit) at 9.30 AM already, and not even averaging a speed of 12 kilometres an hour! We are in awe and admiration of you all, cyclo-tourers, who manage to clock in 120 kilometres a day and still have the time and energy to take wonderful pictures along the way and share fantastic and interesting stories with us all on the Internet when off the saddle… Even though we have been getting up at 7AM everyday and started cycling at around 9AM every time, we have always ended up with less than 80 km under our belts by the time darkness sets in (between 5 and 6PM) and have felt so exhausted afterwards that we are asleep almost a soon as we jump into our sleeping bags (which often is as early as 8PM!)

The thought of flying back home crossed our minds… But wait, that’s right, we no longer have a home, the road is our home now! Besides, it is cold now in Europe, and we only have summer clothes left with us…