Start at OUED LAOU End at AL JEBHA
Day dist.: 90.27
Total dist.: 856.3
Riding time: 8:12
Avg speed: 10.9
Mx speed: 44.1
After showering went to victualize and hit the road at 12:40. I had to bike on a dirt road for about 4 kms and then take the dirt “route national” towards Al Jebha
I must take back what I said yesterday about Oued Laou not having a river (oued,) because in less than a km after I hit the “route national” I saw the river
The road was in pretty bad shape, as I was forewarned.
I may have mentioned it before but the ladies in the small towns and villages of this part of the country wear a very different type of dress which does not look Islamic to me but rather South American from the Andes. Also, both men and women wear a straw hat. I may be wrong but even though this is an Islamic land, again in this part one gets the feeling that they are not as strict as in the rest of the country.
I would have really liked to take a good picture of one of those ladies but it would be a little awkward to unabashedly go up to one of them and take a picture. It would also be looking for trouble. So, I did the second best thing, that is, from a distance I pretended to be taking a picture of something else while zooming in on my target and voila.
Ladies in traditional dress
The road was in pretty bad condition but the coastal scenery was beautiful. People that know the Mediterranean won’t be able to tell whether the pictures below are from Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc., or Morocco. Simply, the scenery is the same.
A little house I would like to own
Land’s end
Beautiful coastal village
Mediterraean coast
The road wasn’t getting any better
Entering a ntl park
According to the sign above I entered a ntl park of exceptional beauty. In reality there was no park at all!!! Let alone the exceptional natural beauty. I concluded that some signs can be deceiving even if or especially if they come from official sources.
Haystacks Moroccian style. Haystacks that look very different in shape than any I have seen.
Spithas parked while waiting
The never ending dirt road
Today the things I had to fend off against were the very bad quality of the pavement of the road which made biking difficult, considerably slowing me down, and making me worry about Spithas’ behavior. I must say though that Spithas behaved really well. And the second thing was the continuous uphill and then downhill The entire trip until the last moment was continuous climbing and descending mountains and hills. This really slowed me down further. I know that the sum total of the uphill and sum total of the downhill of the day were exactly equal because I started at sea level and ended up at sea level. Their distribution, however, was uneven and definitely pitted against me. The uphills were long and downhills were sudden and steep. Descending a steep downhill does not help much in terms of conserving energy. It is a short distance and you cannot speed a lot on Spithas anyhow, especially in today’s the rough terrain. The third but not as intense (today) negative factor was the head wind, which sometimes was strong but did respect me most of the time.
Coastal line
Hardly any road left because of the construction
View of the road from above
You can imagine(hopefully), that in order to be able to have shot the previous photo from above, how much Spithas and I had to climb.
Road blocked from fallen rock
The above indicates the advantages of traveling on a bike. Cars had to wait for a long time for the road to be cleared, whereas all I had to do was pick up Spithas and walk through the debris.
While biking near a worksite there was a near miss. One of the construction machines, bobcat I believe, (ekskafeas in Greek) was working along the road and at a higher level from it when a boulder started rolling down. I had not seen it and if the car that was coming from the opposite direction had not beeped at me and made a lot of noise, I would not have stopped in time and would have been hit by the boulder.
The fatal boulder
I went on biking and the time was going by. Soon it started to get dark and gradually got completely dark. It was a pitch dark night w/o moon. I took my flash light gear and biked on. It was difficult and slow. The road was still a dirt road filled w/ potholes and bulges that I could no longer see despite the flashlight. The only good thing was that there was no traffic. I still had another 20kms ahead of me to reach Al Jebha, my destination. At this point I had no option other than keep biking. The lack of options removed all the insecurities and at a moment where nothing was under control, everything seemed as if it were under control. Maybe democracy with all the options it brings w/ it is not the best system, who knows.
I biked on and at some point the road was split into two. I could not see clearly in any of the two directions and there were absolutely no signs. I did not know what to do. It was even too dark to flip a coin and let it decide for me. There were no cars passing by and I would either have to spend the night there or take one of the two directions and hope it were the right one. And then I could hear a car in the distance and see its lights. Actually I could see one light, the other one was not working. I went in the middle of the road, took the flashlight from the handlebar into my hands and started waving and screaming. The car, it was a cab, went by next to me and did not stop. My screaming continued, except this time it was curses hurled at the inconsiderate driver. May your car break down you m…f..r, etc. Keep in mind that my curses have a reputation that work. Still, the decision was made. I just followed the direction the car had taken.
As I biked on I saw another car which turned out to be a tractor coming towards me from the other direction. I did the same thing as before and almost blocked the road but the tractor w/ two riders on it just ignored me. On the other hand, people might have been scared to stop right in the middle of the night.
I biked on and ten minutes later I saw a light in the distance that looked like the rear lights of a car. The light was not moving. I gained hope, proceeded, and arrived at that light. It was a cab, it had a flat tire, and two men were trying to change the tire. There were also three women, one older and two younger that were standing outside the cab. I stopped and asked them and they said I was in the right direction and that Al Jabha was a couple of kms away and that I should just follow the road and where it splits I should make a left. The prospects of spending a night aimlessly biking around were shattered into smithereens, I was delivered. I was exhilarated and in return for the good news I took the flashlight from the handlebar and used it to shed light on the wheel the two men were working on. They had their own flashlight but it was very weak. The ladies, dressed in the Islamic attire that included a headscarf asked me all types of questions that I answered asking them back other questions. The conversation was taking place in both French and Spanish. At some point the man who seemed to be the father, said something in Arabic and Spanish basically asking whether tomorrow I would be interested tasting some hashish. I said I do not do that and one of the girls said that hashish haram (forbidden) and I did the right thing. Finally the new wheel was in its place but the car had problems with its starter. The ladies ended up pushing the car to start. They thanked me and told me to follow them into Jebha. As the car proceeded I realized it had light on only one side and it was the same cab that had not stopped 20 minutes earlier. My curses come true. I just wonder what happened to the tractor.
I biked on and watched the direction the car took in the distance. This was a good move because there was a 95 percent chance that I would have turned right where I should have turned left. I was almost there. On the way I saw a soldier holding his rifle and patrolling and a civilian walking along w/ him. I stopped and asked regarding my direction, just to make sure. They were very cordial. They told me I was in the right direction and when I asked about hotels they said that this is a small town and that there are three hotels, all on my way. I biked on did not see any hotels and kept biking till I hit the port gate (there was no other way to take.) At that point I stopped and asked two people sitting at a coffee shop where the hotels were. One of them, Said, got up and showed me the way to my room. This place was actually a hotel. The hotel was under construction, like everything else in this part of Morocco, and at the same time very descent and clean.
After I got settled in my room I went downstairs to give my passport info, pay for the room, and find something to eat. After Said got my info, I asked him where I could go to find something to eat, it was already 23:30, and he pointed at a table where two other guys were sitting and said “eat w/ us.”
The town is a fishing town and it appears that sardine is the most common fish they catch. There were plenty of large sardines on the table and soon Said had brought a salad. All around at the neighboring stores there were people barbecuing sardines. Everybody seems to be into sardines. They were really tasty. Before we actually started to eat one of the two guys started the same conversation about hashish and marijuana. He said that there is plenty of both that grows in the fields. He even produced a very long pipe that he himself used. To me that pipe looked like the opium pipes I’ve seen in the movies. He worked on a fishing boat catching fish, mostly sardines. He was a very pleasant fellow and even though his Spanish was limited we carried on a ie conversation. I spent at least one and a half hour eating and then sipping an herbal tea of the area, whereas, Ibrahim, the other fellow, was employing his pipe that went around to the other two table companions. They were also rolling cigarettes that were also making rounds. I’m not sure what the content was.
Finally, I called it a night. Went to bed at around 3:00 in the morning.
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