Before I could say “oh shit,” I went over
the front handlebars of the motorcycle, rolled a few times downhill and landed opposite a Berber woman who sat on the stoop of her mud-brick
home. With my full-face helmet and protective gear, I must have looked like an
alien. She stood up and disappeared into her home. Maybe she wanted to save me the embarrassment. Maybe she wanted to pretend I wasn't there. Or maybe I was the third infidel this week to catch my wheel in a rut on this steep, gravelly turn and land at her doorstep.
A quick assessment of my body and bike:
no major injuries, which was good because despite being in a village, we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. Jim helped me lift the bike, for the third time that day, and sadly not the
last. I was getting tired of dropping my bike, but these steep
descents with hairpin turns on loose gravel were hard to manage. I tried to
remember techniques from our off-road riding course at BMW in Germany. Don’t
grip the bike with your knees, slow down to a crawl on steep descents to avoid
losing control, and of course the most popular advice for motorcycle riding: The bike follows your eyes.
Typical Moroccan road hazard
Had I really been looking
at that rut? Probably. Not looking at potential obstacles when riding
is like being told to not to think about pink elephants. And there are lots of
potential obstacles in Morocco: sheep grazing along the verge of the road,
tiny children running to give you a high-five as you ride
through their village, skittish donkeys carrying huge loads on mountain roads,
and even hashish peddlers in taxis dangling
their products out the window as they drive by. We managed to avoid the obvious obstacles and enjoy the rich culture, beautiful scenery, and friendly people of Morocco.
Imperial Cities and Smooth Talking Berbers
"But I'm not interested in buying a carpet."
Our arrival in Morocco coincided with a
cold front that dumped snow in the mountains and brought wet, windy weather to
the lowlands. We hunkered down in Meknes for three days and waited out the bad
weather. Meknes, and nearby Fes, weren’t on our list of places to visit, but we
ended up liking these Imperial Cities much more than Marrakesh, which we found
to be less authentic and a bit overrun. Moulay Ismael, who claimed to be a
descendent of Mohammed, ruled Morocco from 1672 – 1727 and made Meknes his
capital. He left some beautiful cultural sites, including his mausoleum.
But we’ll remember Meknes mostly for its friendly people. On our first night,
we asked a traffic cop where a particular restaurant was. He left his post,
walked us to the restaurant, and when we found it closed, he walked us to another
restaurant and made sure the owner knew we needed to be taken care of. We also bought a carpet in Meknes. We weren't planning on buying a carpet, and we are sure that we paid too much, but the Berbers are skillful and friendly, and we enjoyed being outwitted by them in every transaction we made.
Getting lost in the medina quarter.
With the rainy weather keeping us from
riding, we took a train to Fes for a day. We are still wondering whether we
were picked up by faux guides or befriended by a nice Berber family. At
the train station in Meknes, we met a father and son returning to their home in
Fes. When the son, who was in his 20s and spoke perfect English, found out that
we were living in Italy, he was on the phone to his uncle, Larbi, who had lived in
Milan for 13 years and would meet us at the train station. At the train station
we were whisked into the uncles van and driven to an overlook of Fes where he
espoused on his view that all religions have the same goal: to provide a manual (Koran, Bible, Talmud), or a set of instructions, for leading a good life. We found
the Berbers to be fairly open-minded except when they talked about “the Arabs,”
who are still considered to be the new kids on the block, only arriving in Morocco 1300 years ago.
Larbi then took us on
an all-day tour of the city.We didn't seem to have a choice, and it didn’t dawn on us that this was possibly a con until we
were taken to a carpet shop in a riad, under the auspices of looking at the beautiful, traditional Moroccan home. But if this was a con, we were happy to fall for it. In addition to the standard tourist sites
and shops, we visited a weaving works with 500-year-old, 2-person looms slowly
cranking out gorgeous silk brocade, and we visited one of the city’s public
ovens where people bring their leavened dough to be baked as they've done for
centuries. We visited an herbal shop where Larbi bought cigarette-sized sticks and then proceeded to use them to scrape his pearly white teeth.
Larbi never rushed or pressured us, provided us with an
umbrella for the rain, and seemed to know everyone in town. He took us to a
mosque where another tour group of infidels was taking turns peeping through a
small hole in the grand entrance. He knocked on the door and the two guards inside
the mosque, recognizing him, opened the gates widely for everyone to see inside. At the end of the day, not knowing if we
had been on a tour and not wanting to insult our new friend, Jim asked him if 150
dirham ($17) was a “sufficient amount for renting the umbrella for the day?” Larbi said “yes” and then drove us back to the train station, the three of us in the
front seat of his van, chatting and scraping our teeth with sticks.
Motorcycle Paradise
The Atlas mountain scenery was dramatic.
Although we enjoyed our time seeing the
cultural sights of Morocco, the highlight of our trip was the off-road riding. The tortured,
multi-hued rock formations reminded us of the American Southwest. The colorfully
dressed locals walking or riding donkeys along the roads reminded us of Mexico. The
kids gathering around us at nearly every stop, well, they reminded us of every
developing country we've ever visited. But when we dropped out of the arid mountains
into the verdant oases filled with graceful date palms, barley fields studded
with red poppies, and houses made of mud-brick, we felt like we were uniquely in
Moroccan.
Our riad in Nekob.
Jim and I criss-crossed the Atlas
Mountains four times, riding about 2,500 miles in three weeks. We had planned
to spend more time in the desert, but my fear of riding in sand and the beauty
of the mountains kept drawing us back to the Atlas. We camped in campgrounds,
camped in the wild, stayed in crappy little hotels, and stayed in a beautifully
restored riad. We ate great food (mostly at local establishments) and
so-so food (mostly at tourist restaurants). We searched high and low for places
to buy a drink (the downside of traveling in a Muslim country), and we wrestled
with how to handle the inevitable begging.
Caroline surveying our descent.
We met up with our friends from Italy,
John and Caroline, for four days. They flew into Marrakesh and rented two
off-road bikes. With John and Caroline, we did some of the most scenic and toughest riding
on our trip, including getting caught in a thunderstorm that pelted us with hail and sent a bolt of lightning
close enough to our group that Jim and I saw it hit the ground and send up a small plume of smoke, and John felt the electricity course through his
arm. It was fun to
spend a few days riding and enjoying the scenery together.
Our route
We had heard many warnings about Morocco:
Don’t drink the water, don’t drive at night, don’t camp in the wild, don’t pass
through the Rif Mountains (Europe’s biggest source of marijuana). We, of course, did all those things and found Morocco to be surprisingly safe, relatively clean, and super friendly. The current king, Mohammed VI, who has been in power since 1999 is making a big effort to modernize this country of 35
million people with new transportation services, schools, and industries. Most of
Morocco’s economy has been based on agriculture, phosphates, and tourism. The king
hopes to diversify so that Morocco continues to grow and prosper. We hope they
can do this without losing too much of the charm, friendliness,
and great off-road riding that we found on our trip.
