Two steps forward and one back

Finally Ready to leave Rabat

I woke up about 4 o'clock this morning to go to the bathroom.  As I was about to step out off the tent I noticed that we were surrounded by about 5 cm of water.  They water the camp ground during the night with irrigation pipes, and forgot that we were there.  I had to go wake up the night guard to come and switch off the water.  It  was lying about 1-2 cm below my tent's water guard.  So close.  All my stuff would have been flooded.  I thought it was hilarious.  Hours away from the desert and we nearly get flooded.

It was such a mission to try and get a windscreen organised.  Because I am in Morocco nobody want's to sent it here. In the end I found a German company who where willing to sent me a replacement. The girl I spoke to was super efficient and we are not using DHL.  Can only hope it will be an improvement from the service I got with DHL.




It was about lunch time on Friday when we finally hit the road to Fess.  I had my spare tyre on the back and what a disaster.  Bike handled like a beached whale with a death wish.  I couldn't believe the tyre made such a big difference   It was fine before, and now handled even worse than when I had the three tyres on the back.  It was such a big let down.  Towards Fess we tried to stay off the main roads.  Was the most beautiful little roads, going up hills, passes and the quaint villages.  I loved it and the bike hated every minute off it.

Garbadge truck

The morning in Fess was washday.  The hotel in Rabat had no washing facilities and after a week even my cleanest clothes where beyond hand washing.  I used the time to completely repack the bike, get rid of more stuff and re-organise it, trying to balance the weight better.  That evening I did the same again.  Good result, the bike handled perfectly yesterday.  Still heavy, but loads better.  Zen is coming closer.

Fess was a bit off a double edged sword.  In the afternoon we went walking around the Medina.  We didn't want a guide because it was Saturday afternoon and most off the stalls were closed.  Not really worth paying to be shown around.  We had the weirdest experience with the guides.  Most are pretty persistent and will start showing you stuff, and if you don't explicitly tell them 'no' they continue and then expect you to pay afterwords.  Now we are pretty used to this and have got the hang off saying 'no'. 

 But there was this one guy who would not leave us alone.  He would walk just behind or in front off us for couple minutes and then join us and start showing us stuff.  We would say 'no' multiple times before he would hang back again.  Few minutes later he would repeat the whole process.  This went on for quite a while.  His second trick was to take short cuts to get ahead off us and as we walk out off the alleys he would start his sales pitch.  Every time it would be like we haven't dealt with him before.  Persistent my a....  It nearly became quite aggressive before he left us alone.  The weirdest for me was the animosity the locals had towards the tourists.  You could feel it hanging in the air.  We did not feel welcome in the Medina in the slightest.  The next morning we went to the leather tanning factory and what a nice place.  The locals where fantastic, helpful and so friendly.  Completely the opposite from the previous day.  I really enjoyed the experience and Fess managed to redeem itself a little.

Yesterdays riding was fantastic again.  We are slowly heading up the mountains, so it was all mountain passes with massive plains in between.  The scenery was very dramatic and changed so much.  The plains were so different that you could have been travelling in different countries.  The one would be fields of yellow grass with dark rocks everywhere, and the next would be this red sand/clay with nearly no vegetation and the passes would be green pine forests.  Fantastic ride.




Poor Morton (travelling companion) had so many problems with his bike yesterday.  Twice we had to stop and practice being bush mechanics.  The last time we were in the middle of nowhere, after doing some exploring, with the sun coming down fast.  The rear sprocket managed to come off the rear hub, it was quite a rush to replace it before the sun set.  He knows what he is doing and we managed just in time.  We found a camp site after about 10 minutes and had camp set up just before sunset.  Perfect timing.  In hind sight it might not haver been the cleverest thing to go exploring in the late afternoon, especially since his bike was niggling yesterday. Morocco might not be so bad, but we can't take such chances further down the road.  Lesson learned.