Morocco: An Encounter by Bicycle

A short while ago me and three other cavalier adventurers embarked on a trip to Morocco. We were going to ride our bikes from Marrakech to The Sahara loaded with everything we’d need to support ourselves en route. Please excuse the lack of place names and distances; we rarely had any idea of where we were (which made the trip what it was). It went a little something like this…

Day 1: Marrakech

After stepping off the plane in to a tiny Marrakech Airport in to some very welcome warmth and unpacking the bikes, which thankfully all arrived in one piece, we were thrown straight in to the confusion and seemingly organised chaos of Moroccan traffic. It felt like a free-for-all, with people driving however they wanted with a slightly unsettling confidence. Having said that, everyone seemed to be courteous towards cyclists, giving us a friendly pip of the horn when about to pass, very unlike the aggressive horn honking most of us receive cycling in London. I’ve only cycled on the right side of the road in a couple of countries but with a lack of complex junctions it made the whole thing feel very natural.

A Moroccan kid on an absolutely thrashed mountain bike with one barely working brake and a busted derailleur decided he wanted to race us along the main road which made for a friendly welcome.

After a short, seven mile ride in to town we went looking for ‘Casa Del Sol’ where we planned to ditch our bikes and bags and go for a wander around the Medina.

All we had was an oversimplified map and a compass, which told us that our hotel was just off the north side of the main market square… Anyone who has been to Marrakech before will know that as soon as you leave the square you are confronted by a somewhat confusing, sprawling maze of streets. Needless to say that with our very limited French vocabulary it proved quite difficult to navigate, but about an hour later, by chance, we stumbled across it.

We spent the day mooching around in amazement and bemusement at the vibrancy and chaos of Marrakech, trying our hardest not to be sucked in to the ‘hustle’ of the market, which evidently relies greatly on tourism. It’s hard to describe just how manic the Medina feels when you’re surrounded by busy food stalls, snake charmers, trick monkey trainers and people pedalling wares in a forceful fashion. It has to be seen to be believed.

I felt like one day in Marrakech was more than enough. It’s a hectic town and mentally draining, what with all the stall owners trying to sell souvenirs as well as the sheer volume of people. It’s an experience no-one should pass up on, but you have to be ready for the ride… I’m glad to say that our trip was about to get a whole lot more relaxed and down to earth.

Day 2: Marrakech to Unidentified River Camp Site

We left at 7:30am on advice of the locals to avoid the market opening in the morning. In retrospect, the next few hours were the most frustrating part of our trip. Simply trying to navigate our way out of Marrakech and to the main road (if you could call it that) that would be the main route of our journey to the Sahara. We got lost several times due to the severe lack of signage, but a trusty compass got us there in the end by merely following the needle South East.

Once on the N9 riding was smooth and care free. We had estimated distances to travel each day but there was no sense of urgency as we were free camping wherever we found a likely spot. The whole ‘winging it’ ethos bought a greater sense of adventure and spontaneity to the trip. Words and photos don’t really do justice to the Moroccan landscape. To truly experience it I advise each and every one of you who read this to go yourselves.

Disaster struck after about five hours of riding. My jockey wheel split in half, making it nigh on impossible to cycle. Thirty minutes later and in a seriously bad  out mindset we stopped in Touama for lunch and to discuss what we could do to fix the situation. Obviously out in the sticks there was a serious shortage of bike shops. After eating, Straton went for a wander around the back of the café and stumbled upon a clapped out MTB. After a short chat in broken English and a lot of pointing at the bike, Mustafa the café owner agreed to give us one of the jockey wheels, for which I offered him 40 Dirham (which equates to around three quid) and we we’re back on track. It was fate… The trip must go on!

The first day also heralded our first major climb and descent. Half way up the 20km of very steep mountain pass, Mick’s old school cup and cone bottom bracket came loose. We decided to push on to the summit where I managed to borrow some tools from the guys in the café to fix it. The majority of serious mechanical work on this trip we’re done in true D.I.Y. fashion, with hammers, screwdrivers and adjustable spanners. Shortly afterwards we descended around 10km laughing like kids bombing hills again.

We stopped riding at around 6pm and set up camp in a clearing by a river. A Moroccan boy named Ali stumbled across our camp whilst out picking herbs and spent the evening hanging out with us. We bought some thyme from him to use in our salad before he headed back to his home when it got dark. It was warm enough to sleep under the stars so we didn’t need to put the tents up. We were slightly paranoid about our possessions so we booby-trapped our panniers by tying pots and pans to them, so if anything moved we’d wake up. Adventurers and ideas men… on top of the game. We laughed about it in the morning, as it was totally unnecessary. The sky was clear and with no light pollution the stars we’re probably the brightest I’ve ever seen.

Day 3: River Site to Ibrahim’s Farm

I had a poor nights sleep, due to the river rapids. The noise of the river was like white noise, overwhelming at times but often a sense of relaxing comfort. It gets cold in the mountains at night too…

We stopped for lunch and ate Berber omelette. It turned out that there is very little variety in cafes in Morocco. It’s either meat tagine, with mostly unidentified meats or alternatively a Berber omelette. I can’t complain though because it all tasted amazing, it soon became a joke talking about what we’d eat for lunch or dinner. After riding all afternoon we took a short break from the sun before tackling a 25km ascent up ‘Col Du Tichka’. With Bleddyn suffering from sunstroke and my knee giving me some stick I wasn’t feeling too confident about it, but we killed it and for every mountain climbed there is the reward of the descent the other side… If anything, that is what kept us going on these passes.

The descent led us down in to a beautiful lush agricultural valley with a complex farming structure on the mountainside and some of the most thought-through natural irrigation I’ve seen. It must have been in the making for many generations. Everywhere you look, farming was rife and it was evident that everyone, men, women and children, worked very hard to keep the farms in shape and productive.

Everyone we’d seen or passed on this trip so far had welcomed us with open arms and we saw smiles everywhere we went. Lots of people waved and laughed at us. I wander if they were laughing in applaud to our trip or laughing at our stupidity for tackling mountains fully loaded. Either way it felt like a good response.

Then we reached the base of our descent to be greeted by hostile faces lining the streets. It felt like we’d just ridden in to a town in a Wild West film. All of us agreed to try and get dinner somewhere before looking for a campsite. After asking for food in a couple of cafes and being told to leave for unknown reasons we decided to buy some vegetables to cook for ourselves and move on. A couple of local kids told us to camp at least 15km away from the village so we hot the road sharpish all feeling slightly uneasy.

A little way down the road, Straton got a puncture. Whilst we fixed it, Mick went off to scout for a site and ended up speaking to Ibrahim, a farmer who agreed to let us camp on his land. Mick was the only one of us who could speak French so they had yet another broken conversation about the area, our trip and where we’d come from whilst we waited for Mick to relay what they had just spoken about. Ibrahim mentioned for us not to avoid the village we’d just passed though and gestured the devil horns above his head, which we could relate to following our experience not so long before. He was farming the land with his father who spoke to us continuously in Berber for about ten minutes and couldn’t seem to grasp we didn’t understand a single word, we smiled, and laughed and he seemed happy, so we listened to him talk. They let us light a fire, helped us collect wood and roots to burn and left us promising to keep an eye on our campsite over night.

Day 4: Ibrahims Farm to Ouzerzete via Ait Benhaddou

We rode out at 8am and crushed 25km then stopped for a short lunch. The land was becoming much more arid and baron and we were definitely feeling the heat. We were all drinking between 5-8litres of water a day. We ate up another 11km of fairly straight flat road before turning off on to rough gravel tracks that lead to Ait Benhaddou, a famous Ksar used as a set for a fair few well-known films. The track was incredibly bumpy with large jagged rocks scattered across the ground, it made for a pretty gnarly ride but it was great fun. My 26” wheels and larger tires really came in to play here. With everyone else riding 700x32c feeling the impact of rough terrain much worse than me.

After an afternoon exploring the town and relaxing we set off to Ouzerzete. We’d managed to ride around 80km as the land was fairly flat but we we’re feeling the strain of sleeping outdoors on rough ground so we looked for a local campsite in search of some luxury i.e. a shower. We stumbled across a Berber campsite just outside Ouzerzete where spent the night sat around a fire having more broken conversations with a Berber named Said. He was a truly fantastic host who kept us topped up with sugary Berber tea (or as they call it whiskey Berber) and strange old Berber jokes we had trouble understanding.

The closer we got toward the desert the stronger the winds became which carried with it a dry heat making it more difficult to ride even in the shade of the clouds. The landscape was unforgiving and undulated repeatedly. Every climb was gruelling, but the motivation was always the thought of the descent the other side.

We saw a fair few exotic animals on this trip, albeit most of them were road kill, but I also saw a few animals that I’d always thought of as very English animals: hedgehogs, squirrels and kingfishers.

Day 5: Ouzerzete to Agdz

My legs were starting to ache from all the climbing, but it’s a pain you manage to push through. It’s all in the mind. I got a puncture only 1km after leaving the campsite, which was frustrating, but considering how far we’d travelled we’d been pretty lucky. The temperature was around 40 degrees. In that heat your body and mind definitely start to slow down. We rode for about 4hrs or 40kms without seeing any villages or people, though baron rocky landscape that stretched on as far as the eye can see. There were a couple of pretty sizable climbs in this section. The less there is to look at, the harder it is to ride and the slower the time passes. We almost ran out of water after about 35km, which was pretty scary, as we had no idea how much further we had to travel before finding somewhere to buy water. Makes you appreciate the necessities of life. Luckily a tourist mini bus stopped ahead of us and they decanted some water and assured us we only had another 5km to go to the next village.

Straton got his second puncture, caused by the glue from previous patches melting in the heat, and Mick’s bottom bracket started coming loose again half way through the ride and was making a persistent squeaking, a constant reminder that something if it blew then we’d be stranded with no way of repairing it. I tried to treat it like a mascot egging us on.

Our major ascent today was to 1900km over a distance of 5km, which was rewarded with nearly 20km of down hill in to Agdz. Upon arrival in Agdz we spotted a Moroccan called Jamal who we’d spoken to in a previous village when we stopped for lunch earlier that day. We spent the afternoon with him and his father in their shop drinking tea and talking about the fact that they spent six months of the year travelling by caravan with 100-200 dromedaries from Morocco across the Sahara to Mali and back to pedal their wares. They talked about navigating by the stars and the arc of the sun. They seemed to have a very traditional and romantic way of life. Amazing to think that this still happens.

After leaving and heading to our campsite we stopped at a food market to buy dinner. The markets in Morocco are incredible, and cheap. We bought enough to feed all four of us for less than £4.

Day 6: Agdz to a Panoramic View

We had a pretty bad nights sleep due to locals having some kind of party until late, then being woken at 4am with call to prayer from 4 different mosques all at once… It set off the dogs and donkeys, and then some car alarms kicked in and people started shouting, which made for a pretty hilarious cacophony of sound, which as frustrating as it was, had me in stitches.

On the way out of town we managed to borrow tools from a motorcycle workshop to fix Micks bottom bracket. We offered to pay them for the tool loan but they refused so Mick bought them all Coca-Cola. Coke has such a huge presence in Morocco with every village shop having a hand painted very recognisable sign Coca-Cola on their wall.

We kept the cycling light today only covering 39km, resting at an oasis for the afternoon where we watched kids fishing with their bare hands and catching turtles. Mick lost his shorts after we left, which had us all cracking up as the only other shorts he had with him were the Lycra shorts he was wearing.

We got a lot of waves from people we passed today. Everyone we met was so welcoming and seemed pleased to see us. There seems to be an unfaltering honesty from everyone, especially the kids.

We set up camp atop a hill with the most amazing panoramic view, watched a beautiful sunset and slept under the stars.

Day 7: Panoramic View to Zagora

After a good nights sleep, we left the campsite early and crushed 44km before lunch.

We had a lot of kids throughout the day chasing us down the road asking for pens. “Bonjour Monsieur, Une Stilo?”. Needless to say we finished the day with only one or 2 pens left between us.

After another 20km we stopped in Zagora. Tomorrows ride was going to be a tough 80km to the hot desert and we were all really tired enough to agree on a hotel. It was a pretty uneventful day. Not much to see en route. We had our first beers since Marrakech. Booze is hard to come by in a country with a religion that doesn’t allow for the consumption of alcohol. Beer along with a hot shower, cool swimming pool, some shade and comfy beds made for a good end to the day. When we went down to the pool for a swim there was a kid playing Spanish guitar. Some sweet finger picking vibes… but when he saw us ‘tourists’ he started riffing Hotel California. Brilliant.

Day 8: Zagora to Tagounite

After another early rise, we ate a hearty hotel breakfast, cramming in as much ‘eat as much as you like’ buffet I could get. We smashed out 63km with a fairly big mountain pass in the middle. At the summit we ditched the bikes and climbed an extra 100m up a jagged slate peak to see the view. The silence is eerie at the top of a mountain. My shout had an echo trail that rang out for about 20 seconds. Nothing like I’ve heard before. The size of the valley we were looking down on just doesn’t translate in photos. We rode 25km further to Tagounite, a desolate town in the midst of development. Nearly every town we passed through on the trip seemed like it was half finished, but we rarely ever saw anyone working on the buildings.

The riding today was nice as the breeze kept us cool. We phoned Jamal (our friend and also the only person we saw more than once on this trip) when we arrived, who arranged for one of his friends (another Said) to take us out to the desert to stay in the dunes for the night. He turned up in a battered old Renault car and drove us 20km out to the dunes. We picked up an old Berber who was casually walking though the desert on the way to the campsite. The car was full so he rode on the roof. What a dude. That’s the norm.

It was nice to ditch the bikes for the evening and just walk around the dunes. There is a beautiful and peaceful silence in the dunes. I can see why people choose to live here still. Pretty much the only sound you can hear is the wind rolling over the dunes and the fine layers of sand it shifts off the top as the dunes slowly move. Meditative.

We watched another stunning sunset and went for a short camel ride. Have to say that it was a bumpy ride and I wouldn’t want to travel on one for six months solid in a caravan but it was fun all the same. The Berbers bind the camels’ front legs at the knee to stop them running off. Seems cruel but once you understand that they are working animals / beasts of burden you can understand why this is the case. The Berbers we met all seemed to have a good sense of humour and a light-hearted attitude to life. We asked one of the guys at the camp where he lived and his response was “In these shoes”.

Day 9: Tagounite to Agadir/Agadir to Tagazoute

After being dropped off back in town and collecting our bikes we sat around for a few hours drinking tea and waiting for a taxi.

There was a large military presence in Tagounite. The officers don’t give off a very authoritative image as they all ride around on clapped out bicycles and mopeds. If the English military or police did that they’d be a laughing stock, I have a feeling the only reason this wasn’t the case in Morocco was the fact they carried guns. Big guns.

When the taxi finally arrived we embarked on a ten-hour 400km journey to Agadir. It turned out to be a somewhat eventful ride. We realised the drivers licence had expired 4 months ago after him asking us to read the date on it, we picked up strangers and delivered mail for friends en route and were stopped by the police four times. Luckily he wasn’t asked to show his licence the first time we we’re stopped and he took a small detour to renew it shortly after. It seems like the law is pretty corrupt over there. The taxi driver had to bribe each of the police with a few Dirham every time we were stopped.

We finally arrived in Agadir at 10:30pm. From there we rode 30km in the dark to Tagazoute. The main roads exiting such a large city were pretty sketchy and we saw two accidents within a few miles of leaving. We thrashed down a few hills along the way so fast we managed to overtake cars.

We arrived to Tagazout early in the morning unscathed but very tired. We found a spot on the cliffs after a slightly frustrating search overlooking the sea and slept under the stars… and so began the relaxing beach part of our holiday, which lasted all of two days before setting off again due to boredom.

Day 12 & 13: Paradise Valley

After two days at the beach we got bored and went cycling in Paradise Valley in the direction of some waterfalls where we stayed the night and spent the next afternoon diving in to ice-cold mountain-spring pools. The ride there was really testing. It was just over 50km and took us ten hours including a couple of breaks, as I’d say 80% of it was climbing. To put it in to perspective it only took us four hours to do exactly the same route the other way round. It’s very evident why they call it ‘Paradise Valley’. The greenery is lush and the farms thriving. The valleys are a mass of olive and almond fields and there are an abundance of beekeepers.

Morocco is a beautiful country and I would recommend everyone to visit and to do it by bike, as you see so much more than you would otherwise. The roads there are mostly in good condition and drivers seem very considerate and give you plenty of room. The only inconsiderate drivers where white tourists driving hired 4×4’s. The people of Morocco are friendly and welcoming. True Morocco lies far outside the main cities and towns so be sure to stray from the beaten track.

It’s the most satisfying feeling, conquering a country by bicycle. I plan to do it as regularly as possible. The magic of touring with friends can never truly be told through words and photos, only by experience itself…