Gorges in the south side of the Atlas

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Kilian

Day 5 – 30^th of December – Merzouga to Ouarzazte (424km)

The sound of lots of voices outside our room woke me up just past seven, and when I stepped outside I saw a huge group of people looking very cold and attacking the breakfast buffet. Where had they come from? The riad was rather small, there were not near enough rooms for all that people. It turns out that they had spent the night in the desert to see the sunset and the sunrise among the dunes – most riads have a camp set up somewhere in the Erg Chebbi and hosts can choose to spend the night there instead of the riad. After about an hour ride on camels, people have dinner, see the sunset, spend the night in a bereber tent, see the sunrise and go back to the riad for breakfast.

On the way down here we had taken a new road that goes straight through the desert from Erfoud to Merzouga, saving us half an hour and the hassle of crossing Rissani, but at the same time missing out on the town that had been the capital of the country in the 14^th century and one of the many recommendations that our host in Errachidia had made – bereber pizza. However, the route to Ouarzazate took us back there, so at least we got a quick tour of the city from the bikes. We missed out on the pizza however, as the only place we found open so early in the morning told us that we would had to wait for almost an hour before we could get one to take away and we had a long day’s ride ahead of us, so we decided to move on.

The views we found on the road after Rissani more than made up for it, though. The landscape was amazing, the snow covered Atlas mountains were to our right, and all around us was rocky desert with beautiful rock formations and low hills.

When we reached Alnif we turned north on a smaller regional road until we reached Tinghir, and from there we rode up the river Todra and visited the Gorges du Todra. They are a narrow canyon where the road zigzags at the botom along the river, with imposing tall rock walls on both sides. We rode up the river until the canyon opened again, then stopped to see the views and check the route to our next stop – the Gorges du Dades.

When we took out the map we realised that the road continued up the river, into the mountains and then down again into the Gorges du Dades, which was bound to be a more interesting route than going back down to the national road and then up the Gorges.

The problem was that we had not counted on that, and we were all low on fuel. If we wanted to take that route we needed to go back to Tinghir to fill up the bikes, which would add well over half an hour to an almost two hour detour, and we were already running against the clock to make it to Ouarzazate before sunset, so we reluctantly decided to go on with the normal route.

We were starting to feel tired when we turned into the Gorges du Dades, so when we saw a café with a terrace overlooking the rock formations across the river we stopped for a well deserved rest.

We got back on the main road happy to see that there were only 90km to get to our hotel, but little did we know that they were going to be a hard 90km… We were riding straight into the sunset, and unlike the sunset on our first day, when we were riding across Spain, there were no hills or corners here to hide the sun from time to time, and we were not in the relative safety of a European motorway, so our eyes were exposed to unrelenting torture and we could barely see incoming traffic, potholes or what is worse, pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds and animals on our side of the road. While my bike and Esteve’s had low windscreens, Gerard had recently had a taller one fitted, meaning that he had to look through it, making it all but impossible to see the road. To make matters worse, the road went through lots of towns and villages, further slowing our progress.

Things only got better once the sun set, but that meant that we had barely half an hour of light left to reach the hotel. Luckly, we made it into Ouarzazate just in time, and we were glad to see that getting to the hotel was straightaway – no navigating through heavy traffic or narrow streets.

There was one last problem when the guy at the hotel told us that the ‘parking facilities’ mentioned in the website was an empty lot opposite the building.

We told him that we did not want to leave the bikes there and in the end they cleared some tables and chairs from the hotel café terrace right by the entrance door and let us park the bikes there, under the reception window and within view of a security camera.

Riding around the Erg Chebbi

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Kilian

Day 4 – 29^th December – Errachidia to Merzouga and tour of Erg Chebbi (239km)

After a rather cold night in our Gite d’Étape, we rose with the sun and headed for Merzouga, the place where everybody goes to get a taste of the Sahara. 4×4 expeditions, quads, motorbikes, tourists on camels, people looking to spend a night in the dunes and see the magical sunset and sunrise all converge on this small town of dusty streets and family run riads where a whole industry has flourished to cover the demand.

It took us a while to find our accommodation, but it was worth it. This one was the best place where we had stayed so far, all luxury and nice facilities, and after dropping all our stuff we planned the day.

We wanted to go for a ride in the desert and maybe get a taste of the dunes, so we removed all the cases from the bikes and headed out, while the girls booked a tour on quads. We had a track on the GPS that went around the dunes of the Erg Chebbi, a route that was supposed to be a bit under 50km, and we started heading south and then turned left into a track of hard packed sand and stone. However, after just a couple of kilometres we run into soft desert sand and the front wheels of our heavy bikes dug in.

Not being expert offroad riders, we decided to head back to the road and ride a bit further south to find harder ground that would allow us to ride all the way round the dunes, which was our original intention.

A bit further south we found another track that looked good and headed into the desert – it was easy terrain and we soon started to enjoy the amazing landscape, with some very gentle rocky hills where we came across some ruins of what seemed to have been a village in the middle of nowhere. As we rode through it we saw that there was at least one house that was still inhabited. Past the village the landscape changed into a vast open space and we could see rocky hills far in the distance and much closer, to our left, the majestic dunes of the Erg Chebbi.

We were riding north along the east side of the dunes, and having started the route further south than we had intended, we set a time and/or petrol level limit, at which point we would decide whether we could continue and complete the tour or head back the way we had come.

Some kilometres further up we ran into softer terrain, not dunes but patches of softer ground, where we had to be more careful, and we rode past a bereber tent here and there. A 4×4 also going north but travelling much faster caught up with us and we took the chance to ask them how much further it was and whether the terrain was going to get much softer, and they reassured us that it was passable on our bikes. After the 4×4 left, a bereber riding a small motorbike appeared out of nowhere and started to ride along us, showing us the best ways to avoid soft terrain and washboard.

We kept going and going for what it felt like hours, and we started finding more and more patches of soft ground, which turned into desert sand, making our progress slower. Our bereber friend stopped and in very basic French told us that he was near home – we understood that he lived in some settlement nearby – but if we wanted, he offered to show us the rest of the way to complete the tour and get back to Merzouga. We agreed that it would be better to have him around, as he knew which way to go to avoid the sand, of which there was more and more, and negotiated a price of about 6 euros.

There was quite a lot of sand now, and we were getting tired. All of us had several ‘moments’ where we were about to taste some sand, but we all managed to keep the bikes upright with more or less style. We finally reached the northernmost part of the route and started heading down southwest. The ground turned harder again as we got further away from the northern tip of the Erg Chebbi, but with just a few kilometres to go, as he reached a crest Esteve hit a soft spot, his bike slipped from the back and he ended up on the ground. I opened the gas the get to him faster and help him, but he was already up and lifting his bike on his own. He had not got hurt and the only damage on his bike was a bent brake lever which we tried to straighten as much as we could to make the bike rideable again.

After the incident we reached the road to Merzouga in a matter of minutes, said goodbye to our guide and headed into town to find a place where Esteve could get the brake lever into proper shape.

We asked in our riad and were directed to a local workshop where they repaired the lever while we cleaned and oiled the chains in our bikes, which were completely covered in dust.

The girls texted us that they had already come back from their quad tour inside the Erg Chebbi, which had been great, and had gone for a walk to visit the town, and when the lever was fixed we saw that we were still in time to see the sunset from the dunes behind Merzouga, so we started the bikes and rode a bit into the desert until we found a small dune and sat on it to see the sun go down over the town.

[video coming soon]

Crossing the Atlas Mountains

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Kilian

Day 3 – 28^th December – Fez to Errachidia (356km)

Most people think that the main drawback of travelling by motorbike in winter is the cold, and they are right, but there is another major factor at play that many forget – the hours of sunlight. While it would have been possible to make the most of the day and go directly from Fez to Merzouga in spring or summer, now we had to stop no later than 5pm because it got dark and temperatures drop very low, so we had to do the journey in two days. Because we wanted to spend most of the following day riding in the desert in Merzouga, we decided to go as far as possible today and then ride for only a couple of hours the following day. So, another early start.

Traffic had been the usual chaos in Fez when we arrived the night before, but today it was rather quiet, even though it was the morning rush hour. We left our palace and headed south through the new part of the city, and after leaving it behind, the road started climbing into the Middle Atlas mountains. We would spend most of the day well above 1,000 metres and, worried about the cold, we had put on several extra layers of warm clothes.

The next big town was Ifrane, also known as the Moroccan Swirzerland, and it was easy to see why. If you think ‘desert’ when thinking about Morocco, think twice. At over 1,600m above sea level, we found a quaint town with snow and luxurious houses that would not look out of place in the Alps, with a skiing resort past the town.

Past Ifrane, the road took us close to Azrou and then into the foret des Cèdres, a thick forest with a great mountain road where I had a great time and where this amazing country brought us yet another surprise – monkeys! The forest is full of them, and they are a big tourist attraction, together with a tree called Cèdre Gouraud, a cedar over 800 years old.

As we kept gaining altitude the forest cleared until there were no more trees and a vast expanse of snow opened in front of us. The temperature dropped gradually and reached a minimum 6 degrees Celsius as we rode over the highest point of the day, the Col du Zad, almost 2200 metres above sea level.

The snow remained part of the landscape until we started losing altitude again and the landscape turned into rocky desert plains on the way to Midelt, where we stopped to have some much needed hot tea before the last leg of the day.

With the sun already low, we descended to the river Ziz, which we followed past the tunnel du Légionnaire and into the Gorges du Ziz, an amazing canyon that opened into a big reservoir built in 1976 to prevent the flooding of the palm tree plains down along the river.

Just after sunset we reached the outskirts of Errachidia, where we turned off the main road and rode a dirt track to a small group of houses made of mud and straw – we were going to spend the night in one of them, Gite d’Étape Khettara Oasis.

A group of children, fascinated by the bikes as all children are, pointed us in the way of the house, and a small wooden door opened and man welcomed us into a beautiful inner courtyard. We were allowed to park the bikes inside for the night, and after squeezing the heavy beasts through the door, we unloaded them and were shown our room.

Before settling down we set about fixing the headlamp in Gerard’s bike, which had stopped working in the morning. Fortunately, I had had the same problem with my V-Strom a few months later and knew how to fix it – it was a faulty ignition switch contact, which needed cleaning and adjusting.

The owner of the house came shortly after and told us about the region and its history. He had been born in that same house, but after several consecutive years of unforgiving draught, his family had been forced to move to the city and try to make a living there. Fortunately for him, his father insisted that he kept going to school, and he had gone on to obtain a degree in physics. Feeling that he owed something back to his hometown, he had returned and turned his family house into a traditional guesthouse that was part of a network of sustainable tourism establishments in the Ziz river region. They employed local people and used local produce, and reinvested the money in improving water and irrigation facilities to support the local farmers.

We enjoyed an excellent dinner in front of a fire in the central room of the house and went to bed early, ready for our first desert experience the following morning.

First taste of Africa

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Kilian

Day 2 – 27^th December – Ferry from Almeria to Melilla and Melilla to Fez (317km)

Another extremely early rise did not help Gerard feel much better, and by the time we got to the port at 6am he was starting to have second thoughts about starting the trip, but we were all hoping that a good dose of drugs bought the previous evening and four hours to sleep on the crossing to Melilla would make him feel better.

The rest of us spent our time on the upper deck, the only passengers fool enough to brave the cold to contemplate the sun rise over the sea.

When we got off the ferry the temperature was much higher, and after filling the tanks to make the most of Melilla’s special tax regime, we rode across the town to the border, where we officially crossed the door into Africa.

Well, actually, we first had to try to get our bikes across a human flood trying to get across the border. Not the immigrants or refugees that you hear about in the news, trying to reach this small piece of EU territory in Northern Africa, but a mob of Moroccans that cross the border to buy things that are cheaper than in Morocco or impossible to find there and then take it to their country to sell it. To prevent the border facilities from being overrun with people carrying boxes and bags the guards only open the pedestrian crossing at given intervals and then all the people waiting make a run for it. We were riding the bike behind a van and a short distance from the vehicles entrance we saw a lot of people sitting around and waiting, Then, as luck would have it, just when the van was driving over a zebra crossing the guards must have opened the doors, because everybody suddenly stood up, grab their stuff and dashed to the gate. In a matter of seconds, we were surrounded by a human mass, and I feared that someone would bump into or be pushed against us and with such a heavy bike and a passenger I would lose balance and end up on the ground.

Once we had managed to get past the crowd and into the border compound itself the chaos continued – we had prepared the import forms for the bike, but we still had to fill in a small immigration form, get the passport stamped and get the import form signed and stamped at the border and at customs. The immigration forms we had to fill in were nowhere to be found, and the reason was that the ‘helpers’ that are found in most borders had them. The ones here were very persistent, and the attitude of the people working at the border did nothing but encourage them – there were no signs and no explanations at all.

We navigated our way through that mess with the ‘help’ of one of those guys and in a matter of minutes had all the paperwork complete and just had to wait for the rest of our group while we enjoyed a curious show – a ridiculously overloaded car was trying to carry more goods than what I imagined the import regulations allowed, and a border guard had taken the wheel and was driving the car into a separate area of customs, while some men unloaded the trunk as the car was moving and threw bags over the fence where their friends were waiting to avoid having them confiscated.

Once we were all done, we left the border compound, exchanged some money and hit the road south. There was a lot of police, but nobody stopped us, and once the worst of Nador’s traffic was left behind, we enjoyed quite good roads until we found the motorway that led to Fes.

After the rest on the ferry and some food, Gerard was feeling better and had decided to go ahead and continue the trip. We had started riding quite late because of the border crossing, and we were worried that nightfall might catch us before reaching the city and finding the place where we were staying, but we managed to get there just after sunset and ride into a maze of backstreets in a neighbourhood overlooking the medina, looking for the house where we were going to spend the night.

We had booked rooms in a property through AirBnB that was advertised as a ‘palace’, but the plain metal door we ended up in front of looked quite uninviting. The owner came out and told us that we were staying further down the road, and led us to the palace.

And what a palace it was! By now it was already dark, and after going through a metal gate we parked the bikes in the garage of a separate building and took our stuff down a street, across a patio, through a big doorway, down an alley… after few hours of sleep and lots of hours of travel, I was completely disoriented and felt I was floating from one place to another, until another big wooden door opened and we were led into a courtyard that could very well have been in the Alhambra.

After crossing it and walking up some stairs we reached our room – a cavernous space of about 100 square meters, ceilings over six meters tall decorated with elaborate carved and painted wood, thick curtains… it was unbelievable.

It seems that the owner’s grandfather had been the Pacha of Casablanca and this was his second residence, where he kept his four wives and at least 12 courtesans while he was meeting the likes of Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosvelt.

Overwhelmed by all the things we had experienced in the last 24 hours, we crashed in our beds under several layers of blankets and fell fast asleep.

Cold and boredom

Posted on January 16, 2017 by Kilian

Day 1 – 26^thDecember – Barcelona to Almeria (825km)

6 o’clock in the morning. Pitch black sky over the city. A couple of drunken tourists walking down the street singing the kind of anthem that all drunken tourists sing abroad. A security guard deeply asleep in the warmth of his booth. Suddenly, a high-pitched siren echoes in the car park, and he opens his eyes with a jolt. Some kind of weird astronaut is ringing the bell, demanding that he opens the main door. He rubs his eyes and realises it is a weirdo all dressed up in motorbike gear. ‘For fuck’s sake’, he grumbles. ‘What is this guy doing here so early? It’s a holiday today, he should be in bed, still trying to digest all the food he ate for Christmas.’

Ten minutes later the bike was loaded and we were heading out of the city to meet the first of our travelling companions, Esteve, in Vallirana. To keep things interesting and cheap we combined national road and motorway for the first hours until we left Catalonia and met the two remaining members of our expedition in a service area in Benicarló, Gerard and Raluca.

With our group complete, all that was left to do for the remainder of the day was to cover the rest of the distance to Almeria, where we were going to spend the night before taking an early morning ferry to Melilla.

800 km of motorway were not going to be interesting, and even though we were lucky and the weather was good, it was still cold for most of the day. I had been thinking about replacing my rear tire for this trip, as it had almost 12,000km on it, but had decided against it in the end, not wanting to break a new tire in with so many kilometres of motorway on a loaded bike, so we taking it easy to save fuel and preserve the knobbly tires, which meant that the journey took longer than expected. We were planning on getting to the hotel by mid-afternoon, but sunset caught us still a long way from our destination, blinding us for about half an hour.

After what felt like ages riding in the dark, and with Gerard suffering from a bad cold combined with hay fever, we finally arrived in Almeria, located our hotel and had a warm shower. Gerard called it a day and went to bed without having dinner, hoping to feel well enough the following day to be able to continue the trip, and the rest of us went out to enjoy some beer and tapas.

Coming soon… Morocco report

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Kilian

We are already back from Morocco and settling into the daily rutine. Unlike other journeys, this one has been in group, so enjoying the company at the end of the riding day, together with the poor quality of the Internet connection in most places have meant that I have not been able to post as I travelled. I am putting the final details to the stories and will publish very soon.

Morocco, here we come!

Posted on December 25, 2016 by Kilian

A new adventure begins… see you on the road!

Moroccan paperwork

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Kilian

Next step on our trip preparation – arranging the import forms for our motorbikes.

I have been told that there are long queues and general chaos at the border crossing in Melilla, and it is possible to expedite the process by having the temporary import forms for the vehicles you are travelling with ready beforehand. That way you save the hassle of finding the right window to obtain the forms, filling them in, dealing with local ‘helpers’, etc.

It is possible to fill in the temporary import form online and print out a copy to hand in directly at the crossing on this website.

Fill in all the information and print a copy. You get three copies of the same form in one A4 page, sign each of them in the ‘signature du déclarant’ section and they will fill the remaining information at the border (date and number). Customs keep the bottom form (Entrée), the second one (Apurement) will have to be handed when you leave the country and the third one (Exemplaire déclarant) is for you to keep.

If you do not speak French and need some help to fill in the online form, there is a translation/explanation in Tim Cullis’ Morocco Knowledge Base.

The new sarcophagus moves into place at Chernobyl

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Kilian

The new sarcophagus, or New Safe Confinement, to use its official name, has finally been completed and moved into place.

24 years after Ukraine called for the need of a new structure to replace the hastily built original sarcophagus, designed only as a temporary containment solution, and 9 years after construction finally began, yesterday the colossal structure sled into its final location.

The 36,000+ tonnes structure was build 180 metres away from reactor 4 to keep workers at a safe distance from radiation, and it started slowly moving into position a couple of weeks ago.

This is not the end of the project, though. Two walls have to be built to cover the ends of the structure, and then work will start inside to demolish the unstable structures of the old sarcophagus.

My visit to Chernobyl and Prypyat

Back in Black

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Kilian

Almost 20,000km in 8 months. That has been the result of commuting daily, going away at weekends and one long summer trip since I took delivery of my AT at the end of March.

It hasn’t taken me long to work out that, at this rate, I will have put 100,000km on it in four years, and I can’t afford to change bikes so fast (I still don’t have a YouTube channel popular enough for BMW to give me free bikes…), so I have decided to use the AT at weekends and for adventure trips and put the V-Strom back in daily commuting service.

The bike had been stored for the 8 months I had had the AT, and this time I didn’t even bother unplugging the battery because I wanted to take it out every now and then at weekends to keep it running, but didn’t really have the time. In spite of this, the engine started first time and the bike went straight back into daily use a couple of weeks ago.

This weekend I finally had some time, so I gave it a major service to keep it running smoothly. I changed the oil and filter and the spark plugs, and poured some Metal Lube into the tank. Maybe it’s just psychological, but I would swear the bike is already running smoother. I also lubricated the clutch cable with this contraption I had bought for 4€ and some WD40.

I didn’t know how effective it would be, but I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised – the clutch is now much easier to operate, which makes a welcome difference in everyday traffic.

Here’s a video (not mine) showing how it works.

Having clocked over 150,000km, I am now just curious to see how many more this bike can take with daily use and regular servicing.

Stroming The World

Adventure riding

Author Archives: Kilian