Around the world with The Bear – Part 20

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Last time The Bear travelled from Lisbon into Meknes, arriving in Morroco. And there are worse ways of spending a winter than lazing about the beach in Morocco – except that hot showers are so rare!

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Morocco

Meknes has a most attractive campsite, with lush grass, gum trees, flower beds and stands of banana plants, all surrounded by the walls of the old sultan’s palace.

The German girl with the 400/4 whom we’d met in France was here; she had teamed up with a chap on an XS750 which was currently a 500 twin. One cylinder stubbornly refused to fire. The army kept us awake that night with band and choir practice until the early hours. They were pretty good, though.

The Meknes medina, or old town, isn’t particularly exciting, but there’s a good, versatile bazaar and most of the fruit and vegetables had marked prices. After a while that comes as a relief, trust me. We indulged in a glass of the delicious mint tea that was to become our standard beverage in Morocco, and luckily didn’t catch anything unpleasant from the grubby hole-in-the-wall tea house.

Just after our return to camp it snowed. The guards were delighted and told us that this was their first snow for 15 years. A lot of good that was to us, camped out in it! We’d had enough of the cold, and headed for the coast and then south.

Marked prices at the markets were a welcome reprieve

Rabat was a very European and not particularly interesting sort of city, and at Casablanca we struck the only bit of motorway in the country. Everyone really liked it – you could see that by the traffic, which consisted of everything from pedestrians through buggies to loaded camels, ambling every which way. There was very little motorised traffic, which was just as well as it would probably have disturbed the people living under the bridges. We didn’t stop in at Rick’s for a drink.

After a night in a nasty campsite at Mohammedia, which seemed to be inhabited solely by rapacious cats – one slept in my helmet and one chewed its way into most of our dried soups – we pushed on to Essaouira. As we were rolling south through the rather dull countryside, I plotted a way in which I could attend my own wake.

I would organize it when I got back to Australia… amazing what idle minds will turn to. The campground was pleasant and run by a bloke who looked like an ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organization) spook in his shades and jungle jacket.

Farther south it became noticeably drier, and the goats had to climb trees to get at edible bits of greenery. We stopped to photograph some of them and became embroiled in an elaborate arrangement as to how much to pay which of the herd boys who clustered around for the right to take photos of the goats. ‘Whose goats are those?’ – ‘Yes, yes!’ – ‘No, whose goats are those?’—’Yes, one dirham, yes!’

There is an abrupt rocky drop to sea level along this road that reminded me of Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain. We stopped to chat with a group of surfies, who reported some tent slashing and stealing in their impromptu beach camp, but who were much more interested in how the swell was farther north. Disappointing, we told them. Flat.

Camping conditions proved varied, but weather improved

We stayed at the tourist campsite in Agadir, mostly because it had hot showers, and spent Christmas Day sitting around the pool, drinking beer and wondering what the poor people were doing. Agadir is a tourist resort like any other, with the same hotels and conducted tours, and didn’t hold much for us. Except those hot showers.

We went south to the edge of the desert at Tiznit and then out along the dirt road ‘piste’ to Sidi Moussa. Along this stretch there was a bridge with a prominent ‘detour’ sign pointing down into the sandy river bed. Being good law-abiding citizens, we toiled through the deep sand with the bikes only to see a loaded truck go past on the bridge. Such is life.

Sidi Moussa turned out to be a grimy, derelict place with one campsite covered in rocks and another deep in sand, all inhabited by dubious-looking Europeans drawing on funny cigarettes.

As the war had closed all the roads, we could go no farther south, so it was unanimously decided to go back and spend some time in Essaouira. On the way, we were pulled over by police, who just wanted to have a look at the bikes.

One of them allowed that he wouldn’t mind an XS 1100 himself, but his BMW was so simple to repair that it was more sensible in Morocco. His friend looked familiar, and I soon realised that he could have been a rather slimmer Idi Amin. Lo! How the mighty are fallen….

The XS 1100 also developed some starting issues, having been used as a battery pack for lights while camping

Rolling into the Essaouira campsite, we were just behind another Australian couple, Michel and Cathy Mol, aboard a BMW R100S. They camped with us and we all employed ourselves lazing about in the sun. They joined us for the New Year’s Eve fire on the beach, too, and Cathy absorbed a little too much of the local rough red wine.

Being a gentleman, I won’t go into details, but Michel had his hands full for a while. We had had to ride all the way down to Agadir to buy the wine, so it was a bit of a waste really….

Time passed quickly, as it often does when you’re doing nothing, and we spent a lot of time just wandering around the harbour and fortifications of the town, which had once been a Portuguese trading post and had the cannons to prove it. The gates to the medina were still defended by bulky bronze mortars, now serving as never-emptied rubbish bins.

Freshly grilled sardines straight off the fishing boats

Freshly grilled sardines, straight from the boats, were an attraction on the wharf. One group of campers was permanently stoned, and it took them four hours to collect their meagre belongings when they left. They then wandered vaguely off in different directions. I guess they got a lift, because we didn’t see them again.

The campsite, ‘defended’ by seven dogs augmented by four pups, became a home from home to us. One evening, a little fat-tyred 125 Suzuki fun bike rolled in. The occupants eyed the XS 1100, R100S and GS 750 outfit parked near our tents and the female pillion, whose motorcycle clothing was a ragged-looking fur coat, asked diffidently, ‘Do any of you know anything about motorbikes?’ We allowed that we might, just a little, and asked what was wrong.

Looking out over the water in Morocco

It turned out that the tiny bike would only rev out to twenty-two hundred, and then died. My first suspicion was the sparkplug, because I’d had similar problems with my XL. But it wasn’t that, as we found out when we unbolted the carburettor float bowl.

This was filled with what looked like fat white worms. The rider then remembered that he’d had a petrol leak from the lip of the bowl, and put sealing compound on it and bolted it back in place. He must have used a whole tube, because the stuff had squeezed out and set in the bowl, forming the worms and stopping the float from moving. The bike had been like this for a thousand miles, they told us.

I hope they made it home to Switzerland.

Annie got an abscess on a tooth and had to go to the local dentist. Although she claimed afterwards that he had been quite good, her heartrending screams under treatment suggested differently. The chap was so concerned about hurting her that he waived most of his fee. There’s a tip there…

The Yamaha’s battery ran flat, too. Mind you, we had been tapping it for our fluorescent camping light for a couple of weeks without running the engine – not entirely recommended. I was grateful for the accessory kickstarter, because push starting didn’t work and this way we could run some improvised jump leads from the BMW while I kicked – the leads wouldn’t carry enough current by themselves to use the electric starter. They nearly melted as it was.

A boat under construction, with fishing a major activity in the region

The fine weather broke towards the middle of January and we moved on to Marrakesh and more blue skies. The Mols came with us, and it felt like a bike club run with the three machines. Camp was made in the larger and cheaper of the two rocky Marrakesh sites and although hygiene left something to be desired, it was a relaxed sort of place and we settled in well.

Marrakesh was like something out of the Thousand and One Nights. The old main square, the Djeema el Fna, was filled with conjurers, fire-eaters, snake charmers, dentists, acrobats, musicians and traders at all hours of the day.

The intricate passageways of the souks, the markets, held fascinating workshops and good bargains – if you haggled carefully. We left the bikes outside in the care of the human parking meters, attendants with large brass plaques which they wore proudly and ostentatiously. You had to bargain with them, too, over the parking fees, but they were conscientious.

Bargaining was a must, with amazing markets

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It might have been winter, but the mountains with their wonderful roads called us. So off we went…

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 19

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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We last left The Bear in Portugal in Part 18, he now continues on towards Meknes in Part 19. Turns out crossing to Africa is easy. Dealing with the traffic can be a little harder.

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We toured the old town, the Alfama, on the outfit and had trouble fitting through some of the narrow, steep streets. There are excellent, cheap restaurants here, specialising once again in seafood, and we had marinated fried tuna and grilled sardines.

The people gave us good-natured advice – don’t park there, traffic comes around the corner so fast! There was so much gesticulating that I understood Portuguese quite easily.

Trams run through the alleyways, and on blind corners there are men with table tennis bats – one side red, the other green. When a tram comes along, they show you the red side of the bat and you stop. Portuguese policemen are rather more fortunate than the Spaniards and get BMWs on which to ride around.

Local drink was easy to find with a local pear brandy sampled on one occasion, with plenty of history behind what was available

It was Millie’s birthday, and we bought her a cake, which was much appreciated. We also found a laundromat and did some long-overdue washing, and I invested in a litre of the cheap and delicious local pear brandy.

Going south again, we took the coast road through Simbales. It must have been a sleepy fishing village not too long ago, but has been caught up in the tourist trade now. A castle overlooks the town, looking suspiciously like a dozen other castles we’d seen in this country.

I have a theory that they’re mass-produced in cardboard and erected anywhere there are tourists, for atmosphere. Possibly they soak them in the kind of resin the East Germans were using for the Trabant cars, to make them rain-resistant.

Over lunch we were serenaded by a great flock of goats with bells around their necks. Shortly afterwards, I pulled out to overtake a truck and suddenly found a car coming the other way. I opened the throttle of the XS a little too far and we went past the truck on the back wheel. A rather unexpected bonus, considering the load we were carrying…

Our map showed a bridge across the river mouth here, but that turned out to be a misprint and we had to brave the Setubal one-way system again. Then we did something very naughty—an oil change by the side of the road, running the waste oil into a pit and covering it up. Considering that everyone else does the same thing, without covering it up, we didn’t feel as guilty as we might have.

Castles were suspiciously similar in this region of the world, with maps often unreliable

In the Sines campsite we watched the Magic Roundabout on TV, dubbed into Portuguese; it didn’t seem to lose anything in the translation, and Zebedee was as cute as ever.

A German engineer we met suggested we take the mountain road rather than the coastal highway down to the Algarve. We were glad we’d followed his advice when we found a well surfaced, twisting road lined with enormous gum trees and pine forests. We did have one heart-stopper along here, however.

I had just paid at a service station when I turned around and saw the Yamaha wreathed in smoke. By the time I was half-way to the sidecar for the fire extinguisher, I realised that it was just steam. The attendant had washed some spilt petrol off the tank and the water had vaporized on the hot engine. Quite a relief.

We had organised the catering so that one couple bought the food and cooked for a week and then handed over to the others. When Neil and Millie handed over to us down on the coast, they had overspent badly and we had another argument.

The goodwill of Biarritz was wearing thin. Then Millie was cheated of £14 of the kitty, changing money at the border, and didn’t notice until we’d crossed to Spain on the rickety old ferry. It wore even thinner. Regrettably, things that don’t really seem to matter very much in normal life can take on great importance in the hothouse conditions of a long tour.

Our map showed a motorway from the border to Seville, but this turned out to exist only on paper, so we took longer to cover this stretch than anticipated. By the time we got onto the motorway to Cadiz, we were riding into the setting sun; and the last stage down to Algeciras was done in the dark. But it was a remarkably good road; we stopped for a roadside dinner with coffee and arrived at the campsite in good shape.

Neil and Millie took the XS to Granada to pick up the mail and Annie and I did some shopping for Africa, mostly packet soups and a bit of booze. We also chatted to a chopper-riding Swede in the campsite who had just returned from Morocco. He made it sound just like every other Muslim country I’d been to.

We were at the wharf quite early the next day to catch the ferry, and Annie went off to mail some letters while we were waiting. Neil and Millie decided to get the outfit on board to make sure it was out of harm’s way, and disappeared down the dock. Then, ten minutes before time, our ferry cast off and sailed! Annie returned and we stood watching our companions disappearing around the mole. Or so we thought.

Just then, an elderly French chap I’d been talking with earlier came over and asked us if we weren’t going to Ceuta. Of course we were, but – regardez, la bateau marche. Oh, non, he said. The Ceuta boat was farther down the wharf, but we’d better get there toute suit or it would go without us…

We made it onto the Virgin of Africa – the right ship!

Annie and I were on the bike, down the other end of the wharf and aboard the good ship Virgin of Africa in a time that would have made Graeme Crosby proud. I always did have a habit of jumping to conclusions.

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Morocco

Going from Spain to to Ceuta is pretty much just like crossing the English Channel; even the ferries are similar—the main differences are that you get a view of the Rock of Gibraltar on this one, the crossing only takes two hours and you stay in the same country.

Ceuta is rather like a dusty, grubby Singapore with all the atmosphere of excitement that free ports get. The mailing slot in the post office is the mouth of an enormous brass lion’s head, which impressed me no end. The story goes that if you tell a lie while your hand is in the lion’s mouth, it will close and crush it. Not true. Heh.

The border was slow, but fairly relaxed. We were apprehensive, having heard horror stories, but the only horrible thing that happened was that we had to lay out a fortune for insurance. Customs seemed very keen on guns and radio transmitters, but we assured them the bikes held neither and they let us go.

We were stopped for papers twice before reaching our camp at Martil, but weren’t delayed much. Over dinner we discussed the financial situation, for once without acrimony, and Annie took over the management of our funds from Millie. The Martil campground was quite reasonable, with a reassuring wall and trees.

The amenities block, however, had a broken tank on the roof, which led to cascades of water pouring down the walls and over the door. It was rather like walking under a waterfall into a river cave to brush your teeth.

Tetouan, which we reached the next day, is the main tourist trap in the north and catches all the day-trippers from Spain. We parked in the main square while Annie went to change some money, and were handed all the usual lines: ‘I am from the tourist office. You are very fortunate, today there is the annual market, just one day….’ We had been told about this line, and assured that the market was not only on every day of the year, it also had prices especially inflated for the suckers.

‘You want some dope? My father grows best quality….’ I get rid of these guys by quoting, with a straight face, a Reader’s Digest story I once read on the horrors of ‘the weed’. We had a bit of fun there in the square.

A closer look at some of the hospitality along the way

The road south through the Rif is lovely, with steep, scrubby hillsides reaching up to snowy peaks on both sides as it winds up to the plateau. After a stop to buy lunch at Chechaouen, a pretty little hill village, we pushed on towards Meknes – pushed on rather carefully, too, as the road was lined with some unpleasant car wrecks and we weren’t keen to add a bike.

The light was failing when we reached Meknes, and the politeness of a Moroccan bus driver nearly killed Annie and me. A lot of vehicles have a small green courtesy light affixed to the back, which they flash when the road ahead is clear. I took this bloke’s word – or rather light – for it, but he was wrong. I made it back into the line of traffic with inches to spare.

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We bring the first snow for 15 years to Meknes, next instalment. Who says motorcyclists can’t affect the weather?

Source: MCNews.com.au