What a day! After leaving my beautiful mountain tent location I carried on, elated by a beautiful night, silence and serenity. I drove towards Tazarine Des-Zerada, and then turned towards Merhraoua, taking another right into a beautiful road (GPS – a beautiful trail) that turned out to be a dead-end, but well worth it.

It started to rain, a break from the heat, and was reminded how slippery it gets when the surface is wet and the underlying ground dry. Coming out from a river bend the bike just slid from underneath me, and the panniers were tested for waterproofness. A friendly local came along to ask if everything was OK. Even in these remote areas, you never walk alone.

At the end of the road I arrived to a house and the very friendly inhabitants explained that there was no way acros the mountains from here, Even if i was very insistent. Getting back to the road I turned right, same concept, let’s see where this goes. This road in fact did take me across the mountains of a beautiful environment,  hills as far as you can see.

At some point (GPS my hospitable berbers) I was stopped by a persistent and willfully little boy (6 years old as it turns out). His insistence in turn helped me to overcome my own confrontational fears, and a look across to his mother showed an equally welcoming smile.

When I finally parked my bike the little boy’s face was so proud. And so my wish of the previous night became reality. The hospitality was tremendous with food and tea that was exceptional, apart from the dessert containing rancid goat milk. When the same was offered for breakfast in concentrated version, I politely declined.

The house was built by Atertouri himself before marrying Saadia. It contained 3 rooms, one was largely a kitchen, one a living room, and a third that I assumed the family bedroom. It was made available to me and I can only guess the family slept in the living room. The three children, 10, 6 and a young girl approaching two, were super friendly. Saadia is a master of using the corner fire to prepare tea and food. She knows exactly how much wood to use. She was also very chatty but less able to use her hands to mimic what she wanted to say by comparison to her silent and introspective husband. I had to look at all their pictures, and had to show them my family and explain my marital status. At least showing them pictures stopped any discussion of taking one of the local girls as a bride.   

I was not the first biker to stay there, as pictures of a Dutch biker showed. The experience must have been good, judging by the insistence of the little boy to stop me. I handed over a Swiss army pocket knife, and after many a tea overdose and stuffed like I was in Sicily I was only able to leave after promising to return. All of this without being able to communicate in language. Interesting enough, Saadia did not count the money I left them, she just put it away. She may of course have counted it later.

These people are incredibly poor, but very real. The use of mobile phones have greatly improved their ability in emergencies, even if they have to hold the antenna to a piece of steel in a particular room to get any signal. Upon leaving, one of the boys – of all the things he could have wanted – wanted the pen they had used to write names and addresses. Ironically, the pen is from a Swiss private bank. Unbeknown to him, the differences could not have been starker.