September 15, 2014
Monday / The Turnaround: Erfoud to the End of the Asphalt and Back.
Now I'm here I miss cooking my own food and the independents that gives not to mention lower daily expenditure. Not having found alcohol for my stove in the usual places like supermarkets, which aren't too common in Morocco, I cannot cook anything, everything I eat is prepared by others. The cuisine is quite good though and eating out is inexpensive. Dinner costs from forty to seventy Dirhams, three to six euros; then breakfast costs thirty Dirhams, and lunch another forty to fifty. All the same eating out all the time together with camping fee, which for the moment is fifty, add up to a lot of money. A daily budget approaching twenty euros.
The Moroccan part of this circuit has been expensive. Though today I can celebrate a milestone. Today I've reached the end of the road south. I'm metaphorically a stone's throw from the border with Algeria, a country with a modest Mediterranean seaboard but a vast interior stretching all the way down, having southern borders with Niger and Mali and Mauritania to the south west. From this point and now on I'll be facing north having turned a major corner.
Having poured over the Michelin map countless times this last few weeks my route back north is like a well revised syllabus for an exam. I take yellow road R702 from Erfoud where I'm now west a hundred and forty Ks to join red road N10, and continue a further hundred and seventy west through "Vallee Du Dades" to Quarzazale on the crossroads with N9. From here I haven't made up my mind whether to continue west on 10 to Agadir on the Atlantic coast, or north on 9 over the Atlas to Marrakech. Only time will tell. It has been suggested I should head into the High Atlas. But remember my rim has a crack at the spoke eyelet due to incorrect truing. That has been soldiering on and hopefully continue doing so for the remaining duration of the tour so long as I stay on asphalt. It would be pushing my luck by riding on bumpy stone embedded tracks in the Atlas. Besides since when have I been a fan of mountains. The 9 shown on the map deviates from a straight line from side to side almost on top of its self indicating quite a climb, but as its a major route the gradient will likely be gentle and hopefully I'll get the mountains out of the way in little more than a day if I decide on that route.
That is in the week or so ahead. I had intended doing today's ride to the sand dunes yesterday; but, on Saturday night laying in my tent trying to sleep around midnight a dog started yapping. By the high pitch it was a small dog and I felt like getting up and killing the bugger as it's annoying screeching yelp went on and on. Anyway I didn't sleep well and woke up tired at eight Sunday morning. And an early start is important as it becomes unbearably hot and sticky from midday on. Also most of the days I've been here, strong wind picks up later waving the palm trees violently from side to side and you see me run to make sure the tent is sufficiently anchored as the sun is blocked by a brown haze of airborne sand.
I was up shortly after dawn today there being no dog last night, or perhaps Is so tire I slept through the racket. Then with the bike ready leaning against the wall outside the café, I've to wait for someone to wake up to prepare breakfast. An example of lack of independents mentioned earlier due to no fuel to cook my own. But breakfast is worth waiting for. A big omelette, salad and bread and a good cup of coffee.
I'm on the road for eight. From the campsite I spin the pedals effortlessly without the burden of panniers and I feel like a train leaving a station, moving forward slowly at first and gradually picking up speed, going faster and faster until the countryside races by, which in this case is palm forest either side. Entering the village traffic slows me: lots of cyclists plodding along, each down pedal stroke slow like turning a heavy winch. Riding old nineteen eighties mountain bikes so covered with dust they're hard to determent the original colour. And as well pedestrians walk wide in the road. I pass kids walking to school and groups of women scurrying about totally entombed in black burkas, while men mostly in western dress sit round in groups at cafes. All drivers are men, nor do I see a woman police officer. Eventually I reach and take the left turn leading towards the dunes. More vehicles moving at every angle in a narrower street and people walking in all directions before reaching the edge of town and the straight desert road ahead with plastic bottles, plastic bags and all sorts of household rubbish strewn across the gravelly sands and scrub to the side.
I was told the road is paved the whole way and was enjoying the cool morning air and graphite flatness and faint brown haze lingering after yesterday's sandstorm dulling the blue sky. The lumps of hills to the side with sand drift sides. But a dozen kilometre in the asphalt comes to an abrupt end. The gravel onward is badly currigated reducing my speed to ten kilometres per hour. It is now after nine and with thirty-five kilometres of this left, I calculate I will reach the dunes at twelve thirty, hang around an hour an a half, perhaps have lunch, then return and be back at this point at five-thirty followed by an hour and a half back to the campsite, getting back at seven. I decide to turn round and have an easy day.
Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 5,530 km (3,434 miles)
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