Wednesday we headed out of busy Rabat city and our destination for the day was a place called Azrou. There is supposed to be a wildlife reserve there with monkeys roaming free (who doesn't want to see free-roaming monkeys?! Who?! I know I do!).
We never got there as I first misplaced my sunglasses so we had to backtrack to the Rabat house and look for them (not finding them), then later we missed a poorly marked exit on the highway. The GPS Jim have does not have maps outside of Europe either, but detours have been fun so far and requires some creativity and impulse decisions on our part, so all good.
It was getting dark though and we did not want to break our rule of not driving during night on the first real day in-country. We did unfortunately break it though.. We did absolutely not want to go near any city centers to look for hotels, reason being the large amount of hustlers and troublesome persons praying on tourists like ourselves.
Instead we drove around the outskirts of the city of Fes looking for hotels, only to be told by everyone that we had to go downtown. We agreed to push further South towards smaller towns and maybe look for a place to pitch our tents.
Finding a place for the tents proved to be hard, as there are always people around in the strangest places. We are of course not allergic to other people, but 2 Scandinavians on fully-loaded motorbikes draws a lot of unwanted attention, and we do not want to split doing guard-duty all night whenever we are camping.
We finally ended up in a village called Imouzzer du Kandar south of Fes into some foothills. There we found a "hotel" for the night, and some guys in the street were willing to rent us a nearby garage to store the bikes for 20 Dirhams each (about 20kr). We accepted and loaded our gear into our rooms just as rain started pouring down.
Thursday morning we checked out of the hotel fetched our bikes and started heading South. We skipped the monkey place since we would have had to backtrack alot and lose time, but might still go by on our return trip.
The detour the day before meant we were on a different road than planned, but it turned out to be one with amazing landscape, from forests to mountains, ravines, lakes and rivers to "infinite-looking" straight roads across vast deserted plains We captured lots of still and video images that day.
The route took us roughly through the towns of Ifrane, Medelt, and Er-Rachidia. This day we were determined not to do another ride through the dark looking for a place to sleep again. The night before I was really set for finding a spot for our tents, so with the towns spaced further and further apart, odds were good for finding an isolated spot. Time was ticking though and the road we were on were littered with small little residential areas mingling with people.
Every time we thought we had found a spot, some rocks turned out to be people out in the middle of nowhere as if animating into life by our mere proximity to them.
Just as twilight was closing we found a huge open desert-type area with only light brush vegetation as far as we could see into the horizon. I pointed towards some mountain-ranges 90* offset to the road and who knows how many kilometers and said on the intercom "let's go there!", Jim hesitantly agreed as he did not like going into too rough terrain with his heavier road-bike "Ida".
After driving off-road for a long while, barely seeing any lights from cars on the road we had been on, we decided to wait a bit to see if any "rocks" appeared to be moving towards us. None did, and as the last of the twilight turned to night we hurried pitching our tents, and I fired up the stove to heat water for our supper: field ration nr 3 "chicken in herbal sauce". Things just taste better when sweaty, tired and sitting on a jagged rock on the ground out in the vast open expanse.
During night the winds picked up drastically and we had to bolt down our light summer tents as they were threatening to take-off with us in them. Very fine red dust also accumulated quickly inside and I covered everything the best I could and tried to sleep with the noise of the wind howling and the tent flapping thinking: "were those footsteps I heard??". In a dark noisy tent in a desolate unknown area, my mind does go a bit paranoid.
I started thinking: "We went quite far off that road, not any sign of civiIisation out here... I wonder how far away we are to the Algerian border and AQIM territory... probably a long ways away, nothing to worry about, I should try and sleep and not think of silly things that keep me awake.... I guess if I really wanted to know I could just use the GPS on my iphone... better not though... *CRUNCH* Now THAT could surely not have been the tent?! *checks GPS on iphone* That was a lot closer than I thought.."
Well I fell asleep eventually and of course all was fine. :)
Beautiful riding conditions
Lunch near Ifrane
Road as far as the eye can see
First camp
"Who DARES wake me?!"
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