Telouet: Que le Maroc gagne!
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WE MADE the right decision to stop early, at the top of the hill. If we'd continued, we'd have been too tired to appreciate this morning's beauty. And shadows across the mountains would have stopped our seeing much of it. We would never have revelled in these glorious, barren mountains and fertile valleys and giggling streams.
We started with coffee and breakfast on a terrace commanding a sweeping valley where the morning sun threw long shadows behind the trees and folds of the land. This hotel turned out a surprise. It looked nothing from the outside and, if there hadn't been a sign, we'd never have believed it was what it was.
"You can have a room on the ground floor for 100 dirhams," a weary-looking man said from his cluttered office in an outhouse in the parking area. "Or one below for 200."
We asked the difference.
"Go and see," he said, and he gestured to a man in one of those wonderful Wee Willie Winky robes to lead us on a tour.
"No worry about the bicyclettes," he called as we left. "They'll be locked up here at night."
In France, people say vélo, short for vélocipède, French-speakers do all they can never to pronounce a word beyond the first letter O. Bicyclette sounds fusty, rather dated, but here in Morocco it's the word. Vélo just as often refers to a small motorbike and to use it for a bicycle causes a moment of mystification.
We didn't bother looking at the lower rooms. There was nothing special about where we slept. In fact there weren't even any sheets, a problem resolved by opening our camping kit. But our view of hotel rooms is that they're at their most useful when you're asleep, and that's when you don't see them.
Last night we discovered there was a large and well decorated dining room. And this morning we found that just beyond it was the breakfast terrace. The further we went, the better the place became. Why the lower rooms cost more, we never found out. Perhaps they had their own shower.
There are many Moroccans in France, because France and Spain shared Morocco between them until independence. It's French that became the dominant second language and it's France that many Moroccans yearn to live. All through this ride we have met Moroccans who knew the geography of France far better than we knew Morocco.
The grumpy man in the outhouse - we got the impression that some private war was going on between him and the restaurant manager - said he'd love to see France but that it was difficult to get a visa.
"We have to apply to the embassy and pay a fee," he said, "so we fill in the forms and pay the money and then Sarkozy says No and we don't get our money back."
The road to Tiz-n Titcha rises to more than 2 200m. We could see the pass and the snowflanks high above us. People peered from tour buses. We could see that the guides sitting in the front of buses approaching us had told their inmates to look out for us because, like monkeys peering through bars, we saw them looking down at us with bewildered grins.
Four women in pastel lined beside the road as we rode through a long, scruffy village which existed mainly to provide coffee and greasy food to tourists. Us included. They stood silent and disbelieving as we rode swan-like (I hope) past them. Their heads turned in the way that people turn at tennis matches.
They looked just a little too long for politeness.
"Don't stare, ladies," I said in a light but disapproving tone. I said it in English. They understood. They laughed nervously and didn't know what to do. It's usually only children who get told off for staring. We saw them again a little later, wandering the street, but they were too busy chattering to notice.
The pass, we'd been told, was long, high but not knee-breaking. We stopped at a shop and café to buy water for the climb. Again we attracted attention, but this time more appealing. The first was a German motorcyclist, grey-haired, wrinkled, sun-tanned face beneath a red bandanna. He and his friends were touring on loaded BMWs. As so often with motorcyclists, they understood the effort of touring without an engine.
"Respect," the German kept saying, all crinkly smiles on a kind face. Neither he nor I nor his pals would see 60 again. They'd been motorcycling all their lives and I'd been cycling all my life. We had all of us seen the world. We were a fraternity.
The Frenchman was a cyclist - "road and mountain-bike, I do both" - from Rouen. He was touring by car with his wife. We discussed Jacques Anquetil, who came from Rouen and won the Tour de France five times in a languid, uninterested way that took the fun out of it and annoyed France as much as he delighted it. I said I'd visited his grave at Quincampoix, the village north of Rouen where he'd been born.
"He moved to a château near Les Andelys," the man recalled. He was trim, medium height and smart but casual in slacks and shirt. "His wife still organises conferences there.
"Of course, they earned a lot less in those days. It's all commerce and business now, isn't it?" He rubbed two fingers and a thumb to make the point. He wasn't alone in being fascinated by the spectacle of bike racing but less and less interested or believing.
The pass took time to ride but it was never overpowering. It rose in Alpine zig-zags, with glorious views. There is satisfaction in a climb when a valley falls deeper and deeper below. The speed may be different but there's a feeling of flying a small plane, gaining altitude, leaving the world behind.
The air grew colder and thinner at 1 700m. Lorry drivers droned their lower gears as they descended cautiously. They went no faster going up. But either way, the drivers hooted or flashed their lights in encouragement, those coming down towards us sometimes alarmingly taking both hands off the wheel to gesture their enthusiasm. There is no Western boredom here. People are interested, involved.
A busload of passengers were lined beside an open drop as the road turned left round another hairpin. They broke off taking pictures to applaud. I never heard what language they spoke but one woman shouted "Hey, you're gonna make it" in an accent both American and non-American. The others took their cue and applauded.
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The top was a tawdry square of fossil shops - selling fossils to tourists is a nationwide activity - and stalls staffed by aggressive touts. One, thankfully too lazy to leave his stool, tried to converse as we sat with a coffee, watching a Polish girl shiver in thin clothing which probably seemed fine down in the valley. We were glad to get away.
We started the descent and then turned on to the 20km back road to Tetouet. It was a delight. The traffic was gone - the road was too broken anyway - and we rode for an hour through open Old Testament brown. Just as we thought we'd see a man in robes and sandals on the back of a donkey, one would appear. All we lacked was burning bushes. It was one of those rides a man would remember for ever.
Tonight we are staying in a house down a side street in a long village in open countryside. The man who runs the restaurant in the centre asked us if we'd eat early.
"No problem. We'll be in bed by 9."
"Then you'll miss the match."
"The match?"
"You don't know?" he asked, as though everybody knew. He was in his 30s, powerfully built with a shaven head. Like an Olympic wrestler, I thought. "Morocco are playing Algeria."
Football, of course.
"Ah," I said. Even I could understand the rivalry.
"Political," the hefty man said. "Very political."
"Que le meilleur gagne," we said.
""Mais NON! Que le Maroc gagne!", he laughed.
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