Mountains

Agdz was a nice pace to relax and just enjoy the good wheater. From there I cycled over the High Atlas mountains to Imi N Ifri. The passes (or tizi's in arabic) were quite tough. On most of the climbs you first reach a nice altitude of about 1900m, then dip down again to about 1500 and then all the way up to 2200m twice! On the last pass I was pretty exhousted but the views and especially the valley near Toufrine were wonderful! The way the berber people are living there reminded me of the Himalaya's. All very basic. Only short distance to Marakech. Will be back in  Holland in less than a week...

Time's flying....

Washboard roads to Zagora

After Tata I cycled to Foum Zguid. From there I did a piste to Zagora. The things I will remember the most are the silence of the dessert or actually hamada as this piece of rock infested land is called. The road was bad and some parts I had to walk but so far the best part of the tour. I camped in the middle of nowhere offcourse but the beatiful stars in the sky kept me company... how romantic. In Zagora I met Michael from Germany where I have been riding with towards Agdz... This has to be one of my easiest going cycle trips, I take a lot of days off.. People are nice but kids can be frustrating. More on that in the next post! 

Going East

The dessert is a new experience for me and I had to be a little more prepared. I'm bringing a lot of water and food with me on the bike because there are not many shops along the way. The first two days were quite hard because of a strong headwind but I tried to keep the good spirit. There were lots of animals on the route, mainly camels and goats. A couple of dogs weren't to friendly but a kind "fuck you" made them go away. It's chilly in the morning (about 5 degrees) but way better than in Europe.

I've met very friendly Moroccans and I even spoke dutch a couple of times. I also met weird shouting teenagers with dumb voices. Why would you shout at me like that? But most Moroccans are very kind. Thing I really noticed is that you don't have a lot of contact with women, it's really a male dominated country.

The scenery is really special and I'll spend some more time in the dessert...