http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/steve_hoge/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from steve_hoge en-us Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:53:05 +0000 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:53:05 +0000 From Akcay it was a 50km gently rolling ride to the town of Ayvalik relatively quick but somewhat painful due to the level of traffic back on the big D550 highway. In Ayvalik we did a quick survey of intown accomodations but then decided to head out to Alibey Island a 10km ride across the harbor causeway from Ayvalik proper. After a pointless ride over the island's steep spine to the Lonely http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Aegean/Ayvalik/blog-307013.html We arrived by ferry from Istanbul in the port town of Bandirma on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara to begin the actual cycling portion of our trip intending to follow the circuitous coastline of the North Aegean for parts unknown to the south. Between extended stays as ordinary tourists in Marrakech and then Istanbul we'd been nearly a month off our bikes so we set a modest goal of 6 http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Bozcaada/blog-304404.html After a tough transit from Marrakech we were in a state of somewhat exhausted excitement when the crossBosphorus ferry finally cruised into the Golden Horn and deposited us our bikes and a boatload of fellow commuters on the quay at Eminonu. Our initial impression of Istanbul formed by the shifting views of the hilly skyline seen from the ferry and solidified by the sheer mass of humanity we http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-291613.html After we returned from south of the High Atlas to Marrakech so Kate could travel back to North Carolina for a family gathering she spent a furious last day of shopping around our neighborhood in the Ville Nouvelle looking for gifts for the folks back home and then trying to pack up all her spoils. Hassan our innkeeper at the Hotel Toulousaine was kind enough to take her to the airport for her http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Marrakech-Tensift-El-Haouz/Marrakech/blog-283351.html On our exploration of Morocco south of the High Atlas we had originally considered cycling a loop from the Draa Valley village of Tansikht through Risani and Erfoud back to Ouarzazate but soon realized we wouldn't have enough time to complete it before Kate had to catch her March 18 flight from Marrakech for a quick visit to the U.S. So not wanting to pass up the Dades and Todra Gorges don' http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Souss-Massa-Dra-/Ouarzazate/blog-278862.html After a day exploring the extremely photogenic kasbah at Ait Ben Haddou we had a relatively short morning's ride to get into the city of Ouarzazate at the intersection of the Dades and Draa River valleys. Ouarzazate was the real beginning of our trip south to the end of the N9 highway at M'Hamid where the paved road finally gives way to the hammada and sand dunes of the Sahara. While riding o http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Souss-Massa-Dra-/Ouarzazate/blog-270604.html After returning from a fresh 3month renewal of our Moroccan visas in the Spanish enclave of Melilla we wanted to spend as little time as possible in Marrakech and get back on the road. Outside of its famous medina Marrakech is a large Europeanized city of vicious traffic and wicked dust storms and on the whole held few attractions for us. We had already arranged a flight for Kate to her fam http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Marrakech-Tensift-El-Haouz/Marrakech/blog-268528.html Our arrival in Marrakech at the ungodly hour of 330AM was the result of the vagaries of the CTM bus schedule and our haste to leave the city of Guelmime sooner rather than later. We decided that hanging out in the Marrakech CTM station until sunup when destinations like hotels and restaurants were opening up would be our best bet. But it's cold at that hour in Marrakech so Kate had to augm http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/blog-261618.html We left Agadir with a sense of impatience to get out of that tourist town and back into the wilder coastal landscapes not really wild of course since wherever you go in this country you are always surrounded by the curious and friendly Moroccan people who seem able to materialize out of even the most desolatelooking landscapes. Our destinations were the towns of Massa and Sidi R'Bat on the http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Guelmim/Sidi-Ifni/blog-258586.html After nearly a week off the bikes on vacation in Essaouira we resumed our southward journey down the coast with a very short 25km leg to the beachside village of Sidi Kaouki. This tiny town barely more than a bus stop and not even rating its own mosque has only recently appeared on tourists' radar screens and the road to it a 30km loop west of the main N1 coastal highway was only fu http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Souss-Massa-Dra-/Agadir/blog-257318.html We were looking forward to a long layover in Essaouira a place that had been given a universal thumbsup from everyone we'd talked to about Morocco. Essaouira has morphed from its original incarnation as a picturesque fishing town into a hippie hangout Jimi Hendrix made a fabled visit here in the 60s an enclave for Moroccan and European artists picking up annual cultural music and film fest http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Marrakech-Tensift-El-Haouz/Essaouira/blog-252721.html After a few days of taking care of business in Casablanca we were looking forward to heading south along what we anticipated would be the really scenic portion of Morocco's Atlantic coastline. The only big cities we expected to encounter along the way were Safi and Agadir although we weren't sure just how far we would go past Agadir the desert outposts along the coast seemed to diminish in a http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Doukkala-Abda/El-Jadida/blog-247492.html Rabat and Casablanca got placed on our agenda not so much because we wanted to see them as much as they were in our way their positions on the Atlantic making them unavoidable if we wanted to follow the coast road south. Both turned out to have their own interest or are we simply interestable making them worth the few days we spent in each.Rabat was the logical place to meet the coast on way http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Grand-Casablanca/Casablanca/blog-242839.html Founded as a imperial capital in 800 AD Fes's primary attraction is its ancient medina a walled city with a millenium of history that's famous for it's rug and antiquities merchants leather and other handicraft workshops and a thousandyear old Islamic university that is still in operation a point of pride that will be mentioned to you by all the Fassis you meet. The Fes medina is also notor http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/F-s-Boulemane/Fes/blog-238098.html 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 brandnew doubleglazed 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/blog-234977.html Chefchaouen translated look at the peaks is an extremely picturesque Berber mountain town perched on the western flanks of a 1800m peak the same one whose eastern visage taunted us all the way up on the climb from Oeud Laou. It represents the first gateway into the Rif Mountains as the highway heads south from Tetuan along the spine of the range into the heart of kif country. Kif a come http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/blog-231792.html Our next stop after Gibraltar was technically North Africa but still not exactly Morocco the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Ceuta is a vestigial holdover from the time that Spain claimed all of northern Morocco as a colonial possession dividing the imperial spoils with the French but only Ceuta Melilla and a few insignificant Mediterranean rock outcrops are left. Ceuta and Melilla are close anal http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/blog-228670.html The weather was good and we probably could have ridden up to the historic town of Ronda from Granada but there wasn't much to interest us between the two destinations so we took another of Spain's efficient and comfortable trains to get to our next cycling point.Ronda turns out to have historical interest due to its strategic location on top of impregnably shear cliffs at the edge of a roaring r http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Gibraltar/Gibraltar/blog-228657.html A funny thing happened on the way to Ronda...we were sitting on the comfortable fast train from Seville to our next cycling point in the hill town of Ronda and Kate idley pulled out the LP guide and started paging through the section on Granada. Oh too bad we're not going to see Granada and the famous Alhambra castle. It sounds beautiful right at the base of the Sierra Nevada. A few min http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Spain/Andalusia/Granada/blog-227872.html Seville a somewhat serendipitous stop on our tour has turned out to be a compelling destination a large truly sophistcated European city with much of its two millenium history exposed to the curious tourist. The parts of the city with the most obvious historic interest are fully as touristicallyoriented as Malaga but this place has much more of its own life independent of foreign visitors.W http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Spain/Andalusia/Seville/blog-227869.html