October 5th - First few days in Morocco.

Our initial entry into Africa (first time for both of us), seemed pretty anti-climatic. The ferry was only an hour! As we left the Spanish ground though, things immediately began to change. A very nice looking man was really friendly and welcoming as we crossed the border, and then it turns out he wanted to take us by taxi to the nearest city. This has been a common theme so far. Taxi drivers stop by the side of the road and try to persuade us that it would be much nicer in a taxi, they seem unable to understand that we actually want to cycle (most of the time anyway).

Day 1 in Morocco. Ceuta to a random village north of Cheftchouan - We quickly left the city behind and headed into the mountains (why are there so many mountains everywhere). I was quite concerned about where we were going to sleep but Mum assured me that we'd find somewhere - and sure enough, whilst filling our water bottles up I made friends with a lovely man who said we could come to his house and put our tent up in his garden, and he'd give us supper. This all sounded very exciting so we followed him to his house and sat in his garden. House was an exaggeration - it was essentially one room and there seemed to be hundreds of them. We sat in the garden (dirt square) and they brought us food. Then a woman came out and spoke to us in beautiful French, and then told us we couldn't camp in the garden but that there was a hotel 5km up the road. By this point it was quite dark and it all quite quickly went downhill (except the road). There were lorries overtaking us, dogs chasing us, children shouting... We eventually came across this very well lit up building and decided to stop there. It seemed to be some sort of cafe absolutely full of men. We asked them if we could stay and they said no, but there was no way we were leaving! Eventually we persuaded them to let us put up the tent in the carpark. This was all sort of okay until it started blowing an absolute gale, and neither of us got any sleep after that. I should say that although this all sounds quite awful, looking back it was absolutely fine.


Day 2. Random village to Ouezzane - We left early and set off for Cheftchouan. Our map has a chevron on it when the road is above 12%, and neither of us were looking forward to that bit. The climb was worth it though because the town was set high on the mountain and we got lovely views of  the sprawling village of red roofed houses. We walked through the market and had a look round, before setting off down the mountain. We went to a very french motel type place for some familiarity after the stresses of the previous night - it was lovely to swim in a pool, especially as it's so hot ALL THE TIME.

Day 3 - Ouezzane to Moullay Idris - Started with a traditional moroccan breakfast of flatbread, olives, cheese, honey and banana smoothie - delicious. We planned to make it all the way to Meknes but that was ambitious. It was hard going, draggy climbs with a bad road surface, and so so hot. We decided to divert and head to Moullay Idris, another mountaintop city which is in fact the place where Morocco was founded. The ride over the mountain through villages was beautiful, and we stayed in a hotel there and went out for moroccan streetfood.

Day 4 - Moullay Idris to M'rit - We had another lovely breakfast and set off south. The first problem was navigating through Meknes, cities are not easy. After that it was one road all the way to M'rit. Lunch was tagine. When we arrived in M'rit the city was packed with demonstrations about the general election on Friday. I'm voting for the far left party with the women in power.  Unfortunately it's not looking good for them.

PICTURES NOT WORKING SOZ x