Larache to Fes

---

The main attraction of Larache turned out to be the very cheap (280dh) and very comfortable Hotel Espana, where we had a newly renovated room with good beds, lots of hot water, sat TV, a balcony overlooking the main square (with brand-new double-glazed French doors to keep out the din) and - not least - free wifi! But once we'd walked the corniche, dodging the garbage piles, and eaten a couple of times in the ocean-view Balcon Atlantico, we'd pretty much "done the town." Larache is a industrial fishing city with a big commercial anchovy and squid fleet, a seriously engineered rivermouth breakwater, and an impressive lighthouse (easily mistaken for a minaret) that helps guide the boats back from their nighttime fishing trips.

To be fair, we did visit the one site worth seeing near Larache, the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Lixus. This one got a big write-up in the Lonely Planet, and it almost lived up to the hype. We rode our bikes out over the bridge to a hillside site overlooking the estuarine wetlands of the Oued Loukka river, the spot the Romans chose to build a city devoted to the production of garum, a salted and fermented fish sauce hard to come by elsewhere in the empire. For a few dirham an elegant old gentleman watched our bikes (locked to the fence, of course - we're not crazy!) while his son, fluent only in Arabic, took us on a "tour" of Lixus, mutely guiding us around the broken walls and columns with the same vague herding motions - and the occasional vocal punctuation of "temple!" and "amphitheater!" - that he might have used to tend the sheep and goats that grazed throughout the site. In the end we gave him a nice tip for his unhurried approach and the discrete manner in which he temporarily disappeared while we ate our picnic lunch.

Just up the coast about 40km from Larache is the beach town of Asilah and, to see what it offered, we decided to leave the bikes and pack only what would fit in our daypacks for a quick overnight trip there by bus and grand taxi. While graced with historic features in its own right, Asilah is now most popular as a destination for European tourists and artists who come for the arts and music festival held every June and July. It was fun to wander the town, along the corniche and through its squeaky-clean medina, without a plan and with only the few items we'd tossed in our packs. Everywhere Asilah shows off its aesthetic credentials with permanent contemporary sculptual pieces as well as temporary wall murals that are painted by guest artists during arts week and then whitewashed over when the next year's festival comes around.

Predictably, most hotels were closed for the low season, so we let ourselves be led by a young tout to a guesthouse inside the medina where, after some tough bargaining down to 325dh, we acquired the key to a romantic top floor room with a large terrace, just a few yards from the surf breaking noisily against the medina's seawall. As the only tenants this night, we had full run of the living room, kitchen and a rooftop grill already set with charcoal, so we made a pass through Asilah's vegetable market and down to the fish-vendor's cart on the waterfront and acquired all the ingredients for a delicious home-cooked dinner of grilled fish and veggies with a big fresh salad.

After breakfast the next day in one of Asilah's streetside cafes, we crammed into the back of a grand taxi for the quick trip back to Larache. It hit Kate first - she has a faster metabolism - but it soon caught up with me, too, and by the time we were back at the Hotel Espana whatever unfriendly biological agent that I had been too cavalier to eradicate from the raw ingredients of the previous night's dinner had lodged in our lower GI tract, giving us our first real case of "tourista" since leaving home. Luckily, the Espana was an exceptionally comfortable place to "ride out the storm" (it had started blowing and dumping RAIN as well), so we spent another day recuperating before taking off on a blustery morning for a 40km ride to Moulay Bousellham, a well-know spot for serious birders and our next destination.

It may have been only 40 klicks, but with the rain, the killer headwinds and the crappy farm roads (we gazed longingly over at the smooth pavement of the cars-only Autovia for much of ride) - not to mention our still-choppy innards - we arrived in the little seaside town of Moulay Bousellham somewhat beatup, drippy and worse for wear. But our target in this town was the guidebook's recommendation, the Villa Nora guesthouse, and it did not disappoint. Villa Nora is owned by a British family but presided over in their absence by the indomitable Hamid, who welcomed us in to dry our clothes, sit by the roaring fire, and watch the dramatic storm clouds forming and reforming over the Atlantic from their big beachfront picture windows. It was a great setting for breakfasts on the veranda, walks on the beach between rain squalls, and curling up with our books by the fire in the evening (or watching BBC on the sat TV.)

After a couple of nights of pampering at Villa Nora by Hamid and his cook Salma, both the weather and our digestive systems improved to the point that we were ready to hit the road again. Our plan was to take the train a couple of hundred kilometers east to Fes, the first of Morocco's great imperial cities, and then ride west back to the coast again through the cities of Meknes and Rabat. So we packed up the bikes and headed off to Souk al Aarba, another 40km down the road, where Hamid assured us we'd be able to get our bikes on the 3:45 train to Fes. But after a nice midday ride through strawberry and artichoke fields we unfortunately found ourselves stonewalled again by the railway stationmaster in Souk al Aarba, who - for reasons understood only by Francophones and thus still mysterious to us - refused to put our bikes on the train to Fes.

This forced us to change transit modes and to get ourselves and the bikes onto a BUS to Fes - the last of which had already left for the day, necessitating a very unwelcome night spent in Souk al Aarba, a real hole of a crossroads market-town. Here we had our first experience as ripoff victims when a group of young boys running after us in the darkened streets managed to unzip one of Kate's pannier pockets and make off with some books, gloves and raingear (we recovered most of it thanks to the intervention of some resonsible adult bystanders.) We chose the least distasteful of the town's two very sketchy hotel options, and hit the bus station bright and early the next morning. Getting ourselves and our bikes on the big long-distance bus was surprisingly easy, and we got to play more typical tourist roles for a few hours, munching on our bag lunch and peering out the bus windows trying to figure out where we were while the countryside rolled by of its own accord.

One of the many pleasurable aspects of bike touring is being able to pedal away on your own power after exiting a ferry or train station, and we had that same satisfaction cycling past the clamoring touts and taxi drivers when we exited the bus station in Fes, heading for the French-built ville nouvelle section of town (we'd already figured out in Chefchaouen that staying in the ancient medina would be more trouble than it was worth, with noisy, cramped accomodations, narrow streets and stairs that are difficult to negotiate by bike.) We settled on the very comfortable Hotel Majestic, though - even with a basement garage - they unaccountably refused to provide any better bike parking facilities than a chained-up spot on the sidewalk; we solved the parking issue by finding a hotel down the street that let us lock up our bikes in a corner of their lobby for 10dh/day. That problem taken care of, we were ready to spend a few days diving into the famously labyrinthine medieval Fes medina.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check our expanded gallery of travel photos at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_hoge/collections/72157613626339376

And visit our home page at:

http://web.mac.com/steve_hoge

---

Photos

The Atlantic seafront at Larache
Our first glimpse of the Atlantic after cycling across Morocco from the Mediterranean.

The Roman ruins of Lixus
Just outside the city of Larache.

The medina seawall at Asilah
Asilah's medina is built right up against the oceanfront.

Wall murals at Asilah
During the summer arts festival the previous year's murals are whitewashed and new ones painted by visiting artists.

Rooftop terrace at Asilah
Our room opened out onto this terrace overlooking the Atlantic surf crashing onto the seawall of the kasbah.

Fish BBQ by headlamp on the roof at Asilah
The fish dinner that did us in - to be fair, it probably wasnt the fish, but the poorly washed parsely...

Villa Nora Guesthouse
The best place to stay in Moulay Bousellham; we were well tken care of here by Hamid and Selma.

Breakfast on the terrace at Villa Nora
Once the weather improved we could take our meals on the terrace overlooking the beach.

Comments

[Susan Rhea]

THANKS!!
Your stories and photos are great. Thank you so much for taking the time (and I know it is hard!) to record and share your adventures. You two are amazing - I want to drop in and be there also. Even repairing the bracket for the paniers in the middle of the roadway. simply amazing! Best Wishes for tomorrow and the day after - Susan

[David]

Asilah
Hey Guys! Just wanted to affirm what you said about the Atlantic coast. We stayed in Asilah at a place called the Hotel Sahara, which was a tiny bit spartan, but clean as a whistle and with lots of local charm in the decor. There was a garage next door overseen by an affable if somewhat disshevelled guy who came knocking on our door the second evening to inform us that we had a flat tire and that he would havi it fixed for 20 durham, which we agreed to. I had a couple of talks with him in Spanish and gave him a mini mag lite, and as we made to go, he took a decorated plate off the wall of his room and gave it to me. I thought that was pretty darn nice, and was really touched. We enjoyed the sea wall and breakwater as well and sat out at the harbour mouth to watch the fishing boats come and go, then made our way bak into town to have an excellent meal of paella-with some of the catch from one of the boats we had been watching, no doubt- and beers. I hope this finds you both well and happy, and if there is anything we can send to you at any point, lemme know! Our friends and family are duly impressed with the trek you both are engaging in, as am I (still!). David

[michael]

Villa Nora
Did you get to meet the owner Mohammed Bouhia?

[steve_hoge]

Re: Villa Nora
Yes, we certainly met him - I may have misspelled his name as "Hamid" in my entry, where I've described him as "indomitable" - and if you look closely you can see his picture in the photo of the front door at Villa Nora. (If you have an email address for him please let me know, since the emails I sent to the Yahoo acct he gave me have all bounced.)

[Sherrick]

Bouhia
I am married to one of his daughters, (in the US now). Unfortunately he disowned his family and they don't talk anymore. She has tried to contact him, but he refuses to talk.