October 10th - Marrakech and a Morocco overview from Harriet

We’ve arrived in Marrakech. It’s feeling properly exotic here now, with palm trees everywhere and yesterday we saw a camel. Morocco has been amazing. There’s always something interesting happening - people everywhere! Everyone has been so nice to us. Even people passing us on the road shout “bonne route!” as they go past, and we get endless enthusiastic beeping of horns etc. We’ve also had lots of warnings about how careful we must be, but so far we’ve felt very safe. I think we’re an unusual sight, and lots of people look at us very carefully. We haven’t seen another cycle tourist, although there have been a few people on road bikes, and of course lots and lots of people riding ordinary bikes - mainly very decrepit looking machines with no brakes and buckled wheels - often with a second passenger, or laden up with enormous heavy cargo. 

We’ve had 7 days cycling in Morocco and each one has been different. We started by crossing the Rif mountains in the north. This is a poor, dry area, and a large number of people we saw were collecting water from the roadside taps, including tiny children. I don’t understand the water supply, but we were overtaken by several trucks that seemed to be carrying water up the mountain, and several of the taps seemed to have run out. There were also children by the sides of the road selling some nasty spiny berries, and we got the impression that life wasn’t easy for most people. A bit further along the road the water collection was done by donkey - either saddled, or a bit further still we began to see carts, and then some people had moped trikes, and even small trucks. I look around the dry landscape and wonder how anyone manages to farm anything, but I suppose they are expecting rain soon - and even winter, which is unimaginable in the heat we have at the moment.

After we’d left the mountains and travelled further south there  suddenly seemed to be proper irrigation everywhere and suddenly life doesn’t seem so hard. We went past enormous farms with big fields, and vineyards, although most places are tiny with small patches of olives, a few sheep, a few chickens. We see sheep and shepherds everywhere. I feel sorry for the shepherds who spend all day walking their scrawny sheep around what looks like non-existent vegetation - although they are always munching away on something. Whenever we stop cycling for any length break Phoebe whips out her kindle and starts reading, and I wonder what these shepherds can possibly be thinking about all day.

We’ve enjoyed eating in Morocco. There are often really delicious things being cooked by the side of the road, and the food is really cheap. When we don’t find food it’s not so good, because the shops don’t seem to sell the kinds of things that make a good picnic! Although we can usually find lots of nice fruit for sale, and in big towns there is sometimes a supermarket, but otherwise we are buying from tiny roadside stalls which all seem to stock the same ranges of nasty biscuits. Finding somewhere to sleep is less easy. We had heard that wild camping is easy in Morocco, but so far we have only used our tent once. We never find anywhere where we could possibly hide, and it’s quite difficult (probably worse because we are women) imagining who we could ask to camp on their land. The only time we tried this we were given a room in the farm buildings, which was fine for us. Hotels are far apart, but this is what we’ve been using most of the time, just because it means we can be sure of finding somewhere to sleep.