Never drunk so much water in my life!

(Kees)

So stage three of our bike tour has begun. Dan started feeling better after his Mad Camp Souira disease, and I was keen to press on from Marrakesh. For him it was either bus it and meet me at the next town or ignore the stomach and come climb the mountain with me like a real friend would do. He opted for the latter. Lucky too as I can hardly get beyond fixing a puncture without getting frustrated with it; so could just imagine myself when a real breakdown comes along.

So we were on our way going up a very slow gradient towards the so-called High Atlas. The countryside was pretty, again every town had an abundance of friendly locals and we could see the mountains getting closer and closer. Now was the last a good thing or a bad thing? I wasn't sure at the time. The pass was at about 2,200 meters. We did our usual thing of stopping in a random town and sitting down with the locals and getting our fruit fix- this time the town was called Taferaite, town with a main road and plenty of dust to go round for all: like most towns I guess. After the initial mini-climb we found a great cafe with a great view and had a bit of a stop and then 10ks up the road, a restaurant with a roof top view- better yet. We'd climbed some height by now, but the real grunty bit wasn't showing up yet. So as the road did its slow winding up the hill thing, things got more remote and the rural Moroccan lifestyle of the Atlantic coast was back! There were many villages scattered up the hills, plenty of dried up rivers and then the views...

At the bottom of the major climb was the village of Taddert- a friendly place with a crappy hotel made for a great night's sleep. The following day we got up at a reasonable hour, had an omelet and peanuts for breaky (a great combo), and decided to climb up the Tizi-n-Tichka pass. It took about an hour and we got plenty of unexpected support on the way, people in cars handing out water, people cheering, tooting etc etc. The hotel had ever so kindly given us a bottle of frozen water too, which lasted until about half way up the pass. It's the first time that I've appreciate ice so much in my life!

In reaching the top of the pass, we had a bit of a photo opportunity and then descended down, down down. The next bit of the trip involved a slight detour: off the main road and into some 'off the beaten track' remote, rural valley with gravelly winding roads. It looked easy enough on the map and sure, it started off OK. The road wound around and down the beautiful gorge, passing a whole lot of Kasbahs and villages and the odd person would be out and about. However we were getting a bit concerned about water as there was a complete lack of sellers, but then eventually to our relief found some cafe in some horse town with a gravel road. From there the old road became no more than a zig-zaggy rocky path that 4WDs would sometimes struggle on. The scenery was nice enough but our bikes were taking a bit of a hammering and so were we and the light was minimising. So after about 30ks of that stuff, enough was enough. We got to some village called Achahoud and found a sign with Saloon so we gave it a shot. Communication with the 'staff' was at an all time low and we were unsure whether it was a guesthouse, restaurant, cafe. So Saloon (think Western?), not a clue. Anyway, they (it was a number of women in charge) called up the town's English speaker who turned out to be very helpful and we negotiated some sort of package deal consisting of supper, sleeping place and breaky. Food and drink came out straight away which was all pretty pleasing.

With all the town's flies buzzing around us at about 7am it was time to get up. It was another 15ks and we were out of that darn gorge. We were suppose to stop at some famous town with a historic thing called Ait Benhaddou, but completely missed it. We eventually made it back to the main road with all the trucks, cars and buses smoking away. After several more hills in the heat we made it to Ouarzazate. We don't really recommend it, but it was close to a lake which made for a great night's camping.

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