Awoken by a beautiful sunrise, it is orange juice and bread with jam for breakfast, enjoying the beautiful spot and pristine view, with my back towards the industrial magamouth behind me. Oranges are great for traveling on a bike, they give water and vitamin C and handle the daily “ride of camel” of an enduro. These things matter if you have opened a pannier to mushy peaches and mashed banana! Even if the peaches in Marocco are to die for.

So North of Safdi it is piste between cultivated fields and Atlantic rollers to my right (with real waves! Med take note). The triumphant feeling of riding a bike offroad in total freedom and beautiful location comes upon me again. Along this stretch is the beautiful of town El-Qualidia.

Along a stretch of lagoon, right across where the sea has broken through a rock formation, leaving Atlantic rollers to break once at the rocks and once more on the lagoon beach. A spectacularly beautiful location and probably one of the quiet gems of thus region. South of Safdi I follow my nose and the piste becomes no-piste to off-piste to where-the-hell-is-the-piste as I am driving again between people’s living rooms and across their fields. At some point I even get my bike stuck on a rock, front wheel in the air, back wheel spinning on sandy ground. The lengths I go to entertain local goat herders.

So pulling me to Essaouira again is the promise of wind, cruely disappointed by the time I get there, and windfinder indicating days of doldrums. So decision time. Head south into the Western Sahara and perhaps Mauretania to obtain much needed adventure points and deserve to wear touareg blue? In the end the guide book has not much good to say, even if the thought of “Dakhla being for travelers while Marrakech is for tourists” appeals to me.

So I decide against barren stark desert heat and the additional 3000km to do it, and decide to come back with a biker buddy in more appropriate temperature. Instead I decide to more or less retrace the route and cover a couple of stretches missed out. So now heading East towards Jebel Toubkal. Beautiful pistes and I am lost. At the end of a cross country exercise I come to a tar road, and at the fountain some guys are hanging out. I am trying to establish my exact position from electronic GPS, map, and my newfound Moroccan GPS friends. It would help to speak Arabic or French in these moments.

They seem a friendly bunch and one invites me to stay for the night. I am introduced to another guy supposedly very important and official. When eventually I am starting to follow my newly appointed hotelier friend, the official indicates to me not to do so. He hands me his telephone and a voice in French (the local superboss) makes me understand to better follow the official. He takes me to something that must be the local town hall (except there is not really a town and hall would be sheer exaggeration…).

There is a big Morrocan flag flying above. He is kind enough and shows me where I can wash my hands and feet. Next follows another lengthy discussion between official and superboss, and once more the phone is handed to me and the voice in French of superboss makes me understand that it is better to drive further north to a town to find a hotel. So be it, I think I would have been happy and safe in my friends house or garden, but you never know and so I push on in the dark, 34 degrees Celsius and I am happy for every momentary respite even for half a degree.

Turns out I push onto Marrakesh before finding a hotel. OK, so many changes of plan today, so be it. I get stopped by a police partrol, they show me that I exceeded the speed limit. After previous experiences I expect the worst. The officer asks my nationality, and I explain Alleman. To my surprise he then shows me and his colleague that the laser speed trap device is made in Germany, and so Mercedes and BMW and German laser speed trap device and I get waved on. You gotta love it. I do hope that the seeming goodwill towards Germans is for Mercedes and BMW, and perhaps abstaining from supporting NATO actions in Libya, as opposed to another lesser honorable reason in the history of the Germans…

And for a change some value for money, 280 Dirham per night at Hotel Imlilchil – at that price well recommended.

Invariably Murphy’s law is always at work. A change of plan to continue the trip by 4×4 and spend an extra 1500 Euro, and drive an othwerwise unneeded 1000km, and most importantly changing completely the nature of the trip to comfort, space and air-conditioning, all caused by a short in the side stand. Could I have known? It took 5 minutes with the bloody BMW diagnostic system to find a short in the side-stand, causing the misfires. I cut the wires myself, and learn patience with the pace of things in Morocco. In total I spent at least 30 times the amount waiting than the total repair had taken. But it brings me to the principle of BMW to build complex machines but making the BMW diagnostic system available only to BMW service stations. A BMW is supposed to go beyond where the road ends. What do you do when you have a stupid short in the side stand on the other side of Timbaktu? There is a SA company that have hacked the BMW diagnostic system. I am buying it. However I would wish that BMW learns from Apple (ease of use) and open source software!

As said once before I am not into product placements, but since it is so good:

http://www.hexcode.co.za/products/gs-911

Available at: http://shop.touratech.ch/bundle-gs-911-notfalldiagnose-gerat-enthusiast-bluetooth-3pin-adapter.html

Morocco is a country of vast differences between rich and poor, the wealth of Mohammed VI is estimated according to Lonely Planet at between 4 and 20 billion USD. The English crown is also very rich, but in the UK there is a democratic electorate that tacitly approves the situation. Here there are many people living in abject poverty. Rise up, stand up, stand up for your rights – Bob Marley comes to mind. But perhaps like the reggae movement, Moroccans are too stoned to make for effective change.

Anyway, repair done and off we go. Two little wires cut and connected and the BMW performs like a dream. On my way south along the Atlantic coast, the temperature is for once bearable. Dusk is setting in, and as darkness approaches I am desperate to find a place to sleep. Just south of a large port (Port de Jorf-Lasfar) and (coal?) power plant I find my dilapidated prime Atlantic residential drive through motel, with a perfect view of the sea. Slightly elevated with beautiful rocks and beach below. OK, view marred to one side by the port and the power plant. Dinner tonight is a lush 3 course affair, orange for starter, bread and strawberry jam for mains, and haute cuisine Moroccan orange for desert. I spend my night here after a midnight clandestine investigation of a whiff of music, knife in trouser, assures me that there is nothing to worry about.

Above image is of Fatma, beduin princess, ruthless barterer for ancient berber fashion. This is what she has to say as her part of the trip is coming to an end:

OK, the world order is restored, there is wind in Essaouira. Which means 1, 2, 3 and 4, and me, we are in perfect harmony!To a pantheist these words could not be more true: ” Contact with nature can remind us where we come from and why we feel so alive!”.

  Kiting in Essaouira has a number of benefits, generally there is wind, there is plenty of space, the water is warm, the sun intense, and there are a number of kite schools and rentals in the vicinity, without feeling the place overrun. There are also a number of good restaurants on the beach and accommodation at any level to fit the wallet.  And then there is Gladys:

  Since life cannot consist of kite surfing alone… Essaouira also has a couple of quaint ancient corners to get lost in without the same hustling of Marrakech.

Gerally I am not into advertising for anybody specifically, and therefore I rarely refer to specific names but if you want to know the name of this riyadh, contact me – is is awesome but comes at a price.

If you are a kite surfer, chances are you like 1) wind, 2) sun, 3) water and 4) beaches. But if you have 2, 3 and 4, but you do not have 1, it is almost like going into instantaneous depression.

So take her shopping, and horse riding.

The end of Ramadan is a huge festivity, it is a public holiday and everyone is out:

All of this makes Katherine rather philosophical:

I occasionally get told by people close to me that I have a “testa di Berber” which means as much as being a rather stubborn individual, and it is true. Of course it could also mean commitment to a cause, and that is to get as close as possible to Toubkal, however – by machine – as opposed to by foot or donkey.

Everybody needs to learn sometimes… 🙂

But we do make it to Lake d’Ifni, as a small consolation.

And this is what it looks like:

I can positively attest that from the south side, this is as close as you are going to get, perhaps a couple of hundred meters closer on something that resembles a donkey on wheels (KTM690).

We are rewarded with a  great picnic lunch in the gardens of Eden in this valley in which water does not seem to be in short supply, in stark contrast to the rest of the country.

Another particularity of this valley is the prevalence of beautiful doors:

We continue down the less spectacular roads to Tarouddant, which has a beautiful hotel outside the city and I decide to give Katherine a rest from her tough Berber existence.

We wake up this morning with the mission to find Djebel Toubkal, at 4167m the highest peak in North Africa. Setting off from Ouarzazate towards Tacheddirt and Sour, and from there Westsouthwest towards Imlil. This passage takes you through beautiful scenery and impressive brown mud-house villages.

Here is a little reptile friend we made on route:

Nestled in-between these mountains is a beautiful town Tiourar, that I can only recommend to any off-the-beaten-track traveller.

Progress today was slower than anticipated so the search for Toubkal must continue tomorrow. In the meantime we have found a small roadside hotel and we negotiate setting up tent on the roof. Katherine argues we just had the best Tagine EVER in Morocco.

Occasionally my smurf is really cute… 🙂

And here follows her interpretation: