Klara ate my shorts

Monday 25.04.10

Having a late brunch and packing up our tents for the last time during our 3 nights in a row in tents camping / no shower "challenge", we had intended to go further north through some of the more scenic parts of the atlas mountains then head west towards Marrakech, and then south towards Ourzezate before getting too close to the city.

As we drove off, we could feel the temperature drop rapidly from 35*C all the way down to 12*C, and even getting a few light showers of rain.

On the way up a mountain road my intercom had died and I suspected that it no longer would take a charge. Jim was in the front leading so I figured I'd just overtake him and have him stop so we could chat and investigate further.

I opened the throttle and pulled in real close towards Jim at about 85-90 km/h in the opposite lane when all of a sudden two things happened simultaneously: My rear wheel locked up completely and the engine died just as I was overtaking Jim. I shouted something like "OH SH*T!! JIM!! TROUBLE!! STOP!!"

Of course the whole reason I was overtaking him was because of the dead intercom so he didn't take notice at all..

I was sliding along on my now locked backwheel trying to maintain upright at 80 km/h and decreasing, trying to understand what had happened. Did I do a crappy job with the rear brake caliper? Did my whole engine just seize up solid? I imagined the worst scenarios as I slid to a halt. Jim had noticed I no longer were to be found in his rearview mirrors and were coming back around.

I jumped off the bike and did a quick overlook, I can't remember if it was me wondering where the hell my top luggage bag had disappeared to or if it was Jim laughing and pointing, when I noticed it.

One of the two bungie cords strapping it to the seat had snapped in two, whereas the bag incredibly had found its way back onto my rear tire where it caught and got jammed in there between the tire, exhaust pipe, chain and rear shock.

The bag was shredded open and my clothes and underwear took some abuse. I had to throw some away eventually, good thing a fire didn't start as the pipe was very hot and had melted some zippers on a jacket.

After Jim had finished laughing, taking pictures with BOTH his cameras AND filming with his video camera, he suggested maybe we should get it out of the road. We did so, and he helped me pack all my gear into a makeshift bag, namely the MC rain cover.

As we were packing, coincidentally 3 polish guys on similar bikes to us stopped by for a chat. One guy nodded with sympathy and said "yes, same thing for me, happen close to Romania".

Continuing into the mountains we saw some awesome sight and except Klara eating my underwear and us meeting Keith for a chat, a retired englishman all alone on his bike for a month in Marocco, nothing much happened. Keith had passed us earlier when I had the underwear incident, but he said he did not recognize our plates and thought we were Germans(?). He said that in his experience they are very serious bikers and not of the chatty kind, so that's why he'd passed us. (You should have been here with the Ural bike Dirk.. ;)

We enjoyed incredible sights and some fun riding on twisty asphalt roads.

We spent alot longer riding than planned and had to give up getting to Ourzezate that day, ending up in Beni-Melell instead. We checked in to the first hotel we could find and reluctantly parked our bikes in the street, allthough with a guard hired to look after them.

Tuesday and Wednesday 26-27.04.10

Our bikes were untouched in the streets of Beni-Melell and after a quick breakfest and a failed search for a place to buy myself some new sunglasses, we hit the roads again determined to get to Ourzezate.

We were trying to navigate to a famous waterfall but had misses a turn way back. Jim's bike Ida had started to run rough on some RPMs so he really did not want to backtrack and drive longer than necessary, so we continued south.

We only stopped for lunch in the shadows of some trees up in the foothills of the Atlas range where we met a man named Muhammed, a local teacher in the area who had stopped near the same spot as us to pray in the direction of Mekka.
He had some decent english skills and we talked about everything from culture to religion while eating our rations, it was pleasant.

Some more incredible roads and riding through the Atlas ranges finally got us to Ourzezate before nightfall, and we checked into a hotel called "La Perle du Sud", an overstatement in itself. "The partially clean Pebble of the south" would be more fitting.

Thursday 28.04.10

We've been staying here for two days now, sort of like a vacation in the middle of the vacation. Both us and the bikes needed some rest after all the rough riding and camping in the desert.
Jim has also tried to identify the trouble with his engine, changing spark plugs to tightening engine top bolts with only limited success in eliminating the problem completely.

The hotel is nice enough, it even has a bar and a "nightclub" in a bunker-type basement. Normally alcohol is forbidden here, but these semi-western type hotels still serve their guests. The DJ in the nightclub plays like it's new-years eve in 1999 every night, or more like 1979 by his choice of hits of Bee-Gees and Boney-M.

Curious what sort of huge parties were going on down there, me and Jim strolled on downstairs to have our first drink in weeks. Except for one guy looking like part of staff sitting alone in a corner and the bartender and a stonefaced dead-serious DJ hiding behind his booth, there was no-one there..
The light and smoke show going full tilt, speakers threatening to blow up by the volume overload.

I figure the DJ was hired at some point in time by the hotel manager to apply his "talent" for the guests, and the DJ decided he was damn well GONNA play until 4 in the morning EVERY night regardless if there were any people in the club or not, or if non-important reception desk man pleaded for him to turn down the volume due to complaints from the guests. Fight the battle disco warrior, fight the battle.
Different cultures..

Anyway, we ordered our drinks, Jim asked the bartender if he could make a Mojito, to which he promptly said YES, then disappeared up the stairs to the reception for 10mins, came back and said: "sorry, no.." So we ended up getting a basic rum and coke, and he even asked us while pouring them if it was enough. Funny.

Ourzezate tries to be a Moroccan Hollywood as this is the place where the big american film studios come to film their desert epics. Films like Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and many others have been shot here.

Wednesday after a good nights sleep we drove out to the studio sets and bought tickets for a tour. It involved getting a 10min long guided tour looking at props in a dark storage hall to an indefinitely long self-guided tour driving out to a huge castle built for Kingdom of Heaven. We poked around and took some photos, quite impressive structure actually, all construction rigs covered in plaster with real wooden and metal catapults and siege engines outside the walls. I will have to see the film again.

Today Thursday 28.04.10 we are packing up here in Ourzezate and heading back south towards the desert again and a place called Zagora. From there we had planned to do another off-track run west before heading into Western-Sahara and then the coast. But with Jim's bike not 100% we are doubtfull about getting too far off-road again. We shall see. :)

That`s a 50 meter long skid mark

What`s going on here then.. ahh Klara must still be mad at me..

Some pretty hefty skidmarks on those boxers if I ever saw some

Polish guys stopping for a chat 

 

Keith

Where we found Keith

Twisy roads ad infinitum, a bikers dream :) 

 

Strange looking mountain

Getting more green

GIVE ME THE LAST PEPSI, OR I SWEAR I WILL DRIVE RIGHT OFF THIS CLIFF!!

Amazing scenery all in one and the same day

A chat with Muhammed under a tree during lunch

Out of the mountains for fuel and dinner at a gas station 

 

Arrived at the hotel in Ourzezate

At the film studio set

Don`t worry Klara, she`s all fake and plastic and you`re.. eeh metal and plastic

Jim: "Let us in you filthy pig-dogs, we bring news from the Northern Territories!"

Magnus: "...and cake."

Me: "Man it`s bright outside, where are my sunglasses"

Jim: "Imbecil! Can you not see those are catapults at our gates! We are under siege!"

Jim: "Magnus are you sure it is safe to lean on that siege engine??"

Me: "Hah, no worries, Ridley Scott knows how to build them props strong!"

"MERDÊ!!!"

The Desert - Take # 2

Sunday 25.04.10

Waking up around 0900 I noticed I was not cooking inside my tent as per usual when not getting up and out before sunrise. There was a cloud blocking the hot rays if only for a short hour, keeping the temperature at a nice 26 degrees C.

Having been "beaten" by the desert the day before we still wanted to go West to our original destination of Fezzou, without using the asphalt road way to our North.

On our maps it looked like it was possible to go North of the valley we had been in the day before and it even looked like there might be some dirt roads. Surely this route would be easier.

Before leaving we decided to do a quick checkup of our bikes after the rough ride the day before. To my surprise I found one of the two bolts holding the rear brake caliper in place to be missing, and the remaining bolt about to fall out, making the caliper very loose.

Fortunately I had a spare bolt which fit, originally it was too long but with spacers it was all good. I put some loctite on them and lacking a good torque wrench I torque'd them up to 10 Molnes (ed: 3 times the strength of Newtons).

We packed up and headed out Northwest.

Driving by some old abandoned mud-huts to our left, some 4 kilometres away, I noticed a man on a bicycle (this is 3 hours drive from any road or settlements). He was just cruising around in the sun going nowhere in particular. But shortly after I saw him, he saw us, and he immediatly started pedaling like crazy on an intercept course to our front.

Not this again!

"Moped-man's cousin, 10 O'clock closing" I told Jim on the intercom.

Not about to be hassled again we picked up the speed thinking we would lose him quickly, him beeing on a bicycle.

Riding through rough terrain at speed while trying to navigate by map turned out to be difficult, so we winged it until we could lose our tail. I thought: "Really! Who can keep pedaling as fast as he's doing in 30+ degrees in desert areas for anything longer than 10-15 mins tops!?"

We drove for about 30 mins then stopped to get a look at the maps, surely bicycle-man had given up by now? Nope, back there in the horizon his upper body was popping over a crest in the hill, still after us. What is this?

We fired up the bikes again and drove even harder, half laughing incredously at the absurd situation we were in. He probably knew this area quite well, why stay on us for so long? Did he know we were eventually gonna hit a "dead-end" or something?

I think the "dead-end" he knew about was a big ditch of deep sand we had to get through, I almost got stuck, this time getting stressed out by bicycle-man now closer than before, who probably, in retrospect just wanted to sell us paper tissues or some such rubbish for a few Dirhams.

 But I will not let simple logic and reason deflate the actual (..or imagined) drama of this particular incident, so I say he probably wanted to carve out our spleens with a blunt rock(!).
Out of the sand-trap Klara! DEAR GOD, out of the sand-trap NOW!

So after a few kilometres passed the sand-trap we finally lost sight of bicycle-man. But I kept looking back for him for at least another hour. At one point my left-hand glove had fallen out of my tank-bag and I was very hesitant about going much further back out of intercom range to look for it, but I found it quickly enough.

After finally being able to properly study our maps and establish our position, we pushed on further west into the desert. The going was getting tougher and tougher and I even got stuck so deep in sand a few times that I had to unload the luggage and panniers to get out. We stopped several times when we hit deep sand or difficult areas to walk ahead a few hundred meters to scout and see if it was even possible to get through. It was very tiring work.

 After 4.5 hours we had gotten 30kms, we still had 50kms to go, in a straight line.. so probably more like 70 actual. We had not worried ourselves much with the status of our water supply, as this was going to be the easy route, or so it had appeared before we started. After a quick check we realized we only had less than half a camelbak each (1.5l) and we were using alot in the dry hot air closing to 40 degrees C. We normally would plan a total water usage of 6-7 litres each for a leg like this.

I started being more careful with my limited water supply, taking only small sips every 15 or 20 minutes. Everytime I did take a sip, my mouth was so dry that it felt like most of the water was absorbed before it went halfway down my throat. Hot water with that plastic aftertaste the camelbak gives had never tasted so good as right then.

The open fields of sand dunes were getting more and more frequent the further we got, and getting through sand that deep was not possible. We came to the conclusion that we were getting ourselves into a potentially dangerous situation in that we were so far away from help and that if one of us got injured, we'd have about one to two days tops in the scorching desert heat. So after pushing on for one last time to a mountain "island" in the sea of sand, we saw what lay ahead of us, even more deep sand.

 If we were to have any chance of getting through, we would have had to trail around the huge ocean of sand close to the mountain ranges about 30kms to our south, but that would have taken us about 2 days total and much more supplies than we had, so we finally turned back .

We reached the first town after many hours and ordered 3 sodas, 2 glasses of orange juice, and 2 bottles of water each, and an omelette special. It was delicious.

We only had a few hours of daylight left so we pushed on further to the West to Alnif by way of asphalt then North, abandoning our plan of getting to Fezzou. Our next plan was to get out of the desert again and into the high Atlas mountains. We got as far as Toumine via some beautiful gorges before we found a camping spot for the night.

Another long and tiring day over.

Our inappropriately named tents (not much of that around here)

Putting in a new bolt in the brake caliper

A dirt road way out in nowhere

Back-tracking looking for my glove (and bicycle man!)

And coming back after a while, with my glove(!)

This is where we turned back, on top of a mountain "island" with sand dunes all around us

Thirsty

 Passing through some pretty gorges on our way North

Found a camping spot and my beef stew ration is heated and ready to eat

The Desert - First Impressions

Saturday 24.04.10

After a day at the oasis near Merzouga to rest, wash clothes and generally just re-organize ourselves, we were ready for the next challenge. We had looked at many maps and talked to several people about the off-piste Paris-Dakar route through the desert. We finally got some GPS coordinates in the morning, but had also made our own on my iphone on a neat GPS app called "Motion-X", which shows a lat & long grid on top of downloadable google earth type satellite images. The route runs through the desert and some mountain-ranges parallell to a dried out river named oued Zîs.

We filled up with extra fuel and water, thanked Mustafa and the friendly people at the oasis for the stay and started heading South towards a settlement called Taouz from where we planned to go off-road and onto the route.

As we drove through Taouz a man ran up to Jim in front and waved his finger "NO!". Jim hesitated and slowed down as I said: "no no, keep going, go!" on the intercom. To Jim's defence, the man had a red cap and and a black shirt on with logo's of a Moroccan desert 4x4 jeep touring company, so he looked semi-serious, he wasn't.

He just wanted to appear important and sell us serious advice and directions, and after looking at Jim's map and routes he concluded that they were no good and that he would show us instead. He wanted to see my map as well since I had a different one, but I declined his "help".

Jim, way more diplomatic and patient than me continued talking to him, hoping to at least extract some useful info from him, but he too, quickly tired of him and in the end explaining: "No. You really really DO NOT have to come along to show us."

We drove off the road towards one of our first waypoints and quickly got into difficult terrain, our bikes weigh somewhere between 230 and 280 kg's and whenever we got sand deeper than 20-35 cm the bikes pretty much went where they wanted to go, with us as passengers. After a short hour we got to the first real obstacle, the first crossing of the dry river bed Zîs. I went first since my bike is more off-road friendly. I got stuck in the sand on my way up and out of the river bed.

The man who had stopped us earlier had followed us on his tiny pedal-moped and was eager to help me out and probably say:  "Told you."

I again declined his help, not so much as wanting to be an asshole, but because of the principle of it. We did not ask him to come along, but yet he chose to do so by himself.

After a bit of a struggle I managed to ride the bike up and over the edge, spinning sand many meters up in the air with my rear wheel.

Jim was hesitant about crossing, and doubting if this Paris Dakar route really was possible for bikes like ours. I was eager to push on so I drove another kilometer or so to see what conditions were like. It was for the most part hard dried out dirt-ground with only some portions of loose sand and a smaller easier river bed crossing up ahead.

Jim crossed with Ida like it was nothing. Confident, we drove on and slowly but surely made progress. We got better and better at driving through sand, and stopped only to let our engines cool in the close to 40 C temperatures.

Annoyingly, "moped-man" was still hovering around us, stopping whenever we stopped and always staying within sight. He was a strange one, and we really did not know what to make of it. We could do nothing though except laugh at the situation of us driving our big tough bikes through the difficult terrain, patting our backs, while he was staying with us on his little 25cc moped. Although to our defense, he could pick his moped up and walk if he wanted.. Not so with our big ladies Klara and Ida.

We spent 3-4 hours before we finally got to a point where a huge sand dune had completely blocked the trail. One the left side of the dune was a steep mountain side, on the other river Zîs which had deepened considerably since our first crossing. We came to the conclusion that if we drove down into the steep river bed we would be able to carry on West but without the option of returning from where we came. A point of no return as it were.

Having only gotten through a mere 1/3 of the route, we did not like that option and decided to backtrack to see if we could find a more shallow river bed crossing.

We did not find one after many hours of searching, so we hesitantly realized that it would not be possible for us to drive this route.

We headed back East towards Taouz but broke off to the North before getting near any settlements. It was getting dark and we needed to find a secluded spot for our tents. Moped-man was hot on our trail, but with more flat and open terrain we were able to open our throttles and finally loose him in the horizon.

We pitched our tents while heating our rations of chili-con-carne in the twilight. After we got everything set-up, and before going to bed, Jim invited me over for tea and an old episode of "Friends" on his mini-laptop. Good times.

Planning at the oasis near Merzouga

Some old soviet topographical pilot maps, unfortunately not for the southern areas

Soldering back on the microphone I accidentally tore off the helmet camera 

 

The view from our "backyard"

Playing around in the dunes

Topping off our fuel tanks at the last possible fueling point

 

These kids wanted to sell me some type of lizzard, I gave them a box of tic-tacs instead

Off we go!

Releasing some pressure out of my tires for better grip while moped-man stalks me

 

...aaaand I`m stuck, and stuck again. (those are camel tracks by my bike)

This is how far we got, notice the sand dune across the "road"

Time to go look for a spot to pitch tents

Jim is so quick he can take nice photos and still get his tent up before mine

Making a tea-cup out of the plastic bottle while waiting for the "cinema" in Jim`s tent

A clear night