Contretemps

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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…

Essaouira

We finally made it to Essaouira on Friday morning, after two days and a half of cycling and battling with the wind against us all the way… Shortly after leaving Marrakech on Wednesday morning, we encountered our very first fellow cyclo-tourers on the road. Bartek and Pawel, from near Wroclaw in Poland, cycled from Malaga to Essaouira and back-up to Marrakech in just under two weeks. Well done guys! It was a pleasure meeting you both, and we wish you all the best with your forthcoming travel plans…

Ibrahim and his wife Amina welcomed us on our first night in their lovely garden near the town of Chichaoua. They have spent the past 24 years building their home, garden, café and boutiques from the barren land they then bought, and the result certainly is eye-pleasing:

But back to Essaouira:it is a very laid-back town located on the Atlantic Coast. It was very popular with the likes of Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s, and is for us a pleasant change from the noise and fumes of Marrakech. It was built from an old Phoenician settlment: the architectural ressemblance with two of our favourite sea-side towns, Cádiz and Marseille (both built by the same Civilization), is indeed quite striking.
Since we both love the atmosphere and rythm of this town, we are now taking a little break from cycling and will be staying in Essaouira for another few days, before making it to Agadir and further south sometimes next week…

Marrakech

Jemâa El Fna

We are leaving Marrakech tomorrow morning to make our way towards the coast and not Ouarzazate as initially planned. We experienced the Atlas mountains earlier on last week when going to the Ourika valley, and believe us, cycling uphill for 50 kilometres was hard work! You could say that our lack of fitness is one of the reasons that made us take this decision, but pedaling along one of the most dangerous roads in Morocco, as the mountainous N9 linking Marrakech to Ouarzazate is known as by many Moroccans (and indeed our guidebook!), is not something we are prepared to cope with at the moment…

Before leaving the hustle and bustle of Marrakech, allow us to share with you some of the sights and sounds one can sample every evening at Jemâa el-Fna, the big square which is at the heart of the city’s old quarters and where musicians (listen to the drums), snake charmers (hear the trumpet), water sellers (spot the bell rings), story tellers and other characters entertain and tease every passer-by, to the greatest pleasure and excitement of the gathering crowds…

Making our way, or how we survive London and airport security

Listen to ♫ ♫ ♫ Moulat chiki by Youmni Rabii ♫ ♫ ♫

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At Waverley Station in Edinburgh

After a final night bidding farewell to friends in Edinburgh, we got on our bikes on Friday morning. We were ecstatic yet a bit nervous to leave Scotland, having not even once sat on our heavily-loaded bicycles before. Our first steps were a bit hesitant and our front wheels wobbly under the weight. Steering with so much luggage on was a completely new experience for us but making our way to the train station was pleasant nonetheless. We reached the train station under a radiant sunshine. The journey to London was also enjoyable and rather uneventful. Cycling across London from Kings Cross to Brixton and beyond, however, proved to be quite a challenge. We did not quite remember the way and had to stop for a while at Trafalgar Square to check our A-Z map. Traffic was pure madness, as could be expected at that time of the day (4 to 6pm). Dozens of cyclists were rushing past us in their commute to go home and the three hills we had to climb up to Streatham Common, where our friend Huw lives, got our hearts pumping with craze. We spent the night (or rather, Jędrzej did, as I fell asleep shortly after midnight) catching up with Huw, Snez (his wife), Dan and Cornelius and drinking some deadly Śliwowica (a strong plum liquor) brought back by Snez from Serbia until 8AM!

At Paweł's: our biggest scrambled egg dish ever (with 24 eggs!)

Artur came to pick us up and the bikes on Saturday afternoon and the evening was spent with yet more friends at Paweł’s new home in Hoves and Sunday partly in Brighton, partly at Sandra’s and Grzegorz’s in Haywards Heath.

Just before making our way to Gatwick airport

We left town with Grzegorz riding with us to the station, and got to Gatwick by train at around 11PM.
What laid ahead of us was much more problematic than anything else we had experienced over the week-end: preparing our bikes for the plane ride and fitting all our gear into our 32 kg luggage allowance (20kg standard allowance and an extra 12kg book ahead for sport equipment) each. We spent a couple of hours repacking our panniers so as to carry all the heavy equipment with us, and another 3 hours to flush the bikes’ handlebar and pedals, remove the derailleur, wrap the lot in big plastic bags and place our panniers into two huge plastic laundry bags. We feared the worst, with one bag weighing 21 kg and the other 26.5 kg, but the lovely Hispanic lady who checked us in at 4PM did not seem to mind. She asked us how heavy the bikes were. “About 12 kg each”, I lied. They were in actual fact much heavier (about 15 and 18 kg), particularly since we had attached with some duct tape various things to our frames such as a tripod and a D-lock, but no one ever bothered to check. At £10 charge per extra kilo of weight, we should have paid over £150 in excess luggage but were not asked for a penny, a rather unusual thing for a low-cost company. We were pleased, to say the least. Getting a porter to take the bikes onto the plane was altogether a different story and demanded another hour, a lot of patience and thousands of steps up and down the two airport halls, carrying our bikes (or rather dragging them by their bag, as tiredness slowly but surely set in). Going through security and hand-luggage check was the funniest bit: “F**king hell!” the agent cried bluntly as he scanned our bags. We both had stuffed a lot of metal in our hand luggage so as to keep our checked-in luggage as light as we could (well, that’s a euphemism really!). “Wow, that’s heavy!” exclaimed another agent when lifting the pannier I kept as hand-luggage. “Is it really?” I replied, knowing too well that it must have been about 15kg and that I could barely lift it (As for the fleece I was wearing, it seemed to weigh a ton, with all its pockets full to the brim).“Are you backpacking?” she asked while going through every single item. “Err, not quite” was the superfluous answer I gave her while everything came to light: nuts, bolts, spare bike chains, bottom brackets, cables, batteries and solar-power equipment, tyres and inner tubes, books, etc. “Well, you certainly are well equipped” she added. “Is this a bike pump?” asked another person to Jędrzej. Jędrzej showed him how to operate our ceramic water filter and, after both finished searching through all bits and bobs we had with us, we were finally allowed into the departure lounge. Later on, we got to sleep for a couple of hours on the plane.

Arrival at Marrakech airport

The air was deliciously hot and dry when we landed in Marrakech. Our bikes, as expected, came out last from the plane but we did not mind since Marrakech airport is quite an airy and pleasant place to hang out at. We spend another couple of hours getting the bikes ready again for the road under the subjugated eyes of the airport cleaner who simply could not keep his astonished gaze off our tools and equipment…

02/11/2009; Monday afternoon, 1.30PM: at last, cycling our way into the heart of the Red City…