Around the world with The Bear – Part 22

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

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

We didn’t – quite – make it to the middle of the Sahara. But we did find the world’s biggest mosquitos with the bluntest stings!

Algeria

Then the ‘route rapide’ of the map turned out to be the ‘road lente’, because it was less than half finished and we got to Tlemcen tired and dirty.

Algeria saw the gang split up with The Bear and Annie setting off on their own

It took ages to find the campground; none of the locals seemed to know it existed, but when we did find it, it was comfortable and free – the only real drawback was a watchdog that delighted in untying people’s shoelaces and chewing through tent ropes.

I collapsed again as soon as the tents were up, still feeling ill, and things started getting heated again. Neil insisted that we split up right there and then. He was right, too – if it isn’t working, don’t drag out the agony. We slept on it, and I think he was a little surprised when I started sorting out the gear in the morning. We divided the equipment and Annie and I, on a rather overloaded Yamaha, set off down into the Sahara. By ourselves.

Feeling very much at peace with the world we buzzed across northern Algeria, with a short stop for coffee, and on into the greening countryside. Spring was in the air, people waved to us and we swept around the tolerably well-surfaced twisting roads in a thoroughly good mood.

Then half the gear we had balanced precariously on the back of the bike fell off – we lost our spare visors, Annie’s shoes and some food, but we weren’t particularly perturbed. Even the obstinacy of the police in Tiaret and Songeur didn’t bother us much.

The tourist office had assured us that these worthies would point out places to camp where there were no official sites, but all they would do was direct us to a hotel. ‘You are rich Europeans, you can afford it.’ Pleas of antipodean motorcycling poverty fell on deaf ears.

Camping ended up being provided by a kind local farmer

But it was all for the best. A farmer just outside Songeur was considerably more helpful; not only was he glad to offer us a place to pitch our tent, but he supplied us with milk and eggs and refused to take any payment. The whole family cheered us as we rode away in the morning. Algeria was turning out to be a much more hospitable place than it had been painted in Morocco.

It was getting noticeably drier now, and as we neared Laghouat we entered the desert proper. Vegetation, which had been scarce for a hundred miles or so, disappeared completely and so did the few flocks of goats and sheep; only the camels remained.

Shops became scarce, too, in the few towns we saw and we found it difficult to buy bread. On this day Annie finally got some in a restaurant in Laghouat.

The Saharan roads weren’t bad, but roadworks meant frequent detours through deep sand which were rather trying. The bike handled them well considering it was now loaded up with all our camping gear, food reserves and 30 litres of fuel and water, but the sand was still a strain.

Ghardaia proved a welcome reprieve from the desert

We were glad to see Ghardaia, our first real oasis, and its jolly but expensive campsite. We even popped up to the Big Hotel and had a drink. Considering how much wine Algeria produces it is damn hard to get any in the country itself.

One French traveler had a copy of the Fabulous Michelin 135 – the map of the Sahara crossing that’s been out of print and totally unobtainable for years – so I borrowed it and made a few notes in my diary; then it was on to El Golea.

The desert scenery, which was flat, without hills or dunes, and with rock-covered sand to the horizon was rapidly becoming boring. The one bit of relief on this leg was an enormous golfball on an even more enormous tee just before El Golea – it turned into a microwave repeater when we got close.

There was more flatness the next day on the way down to Ain Salah. I was a bit worried about the road surface before lunch, but a meal made all the difference and I relaxed in the afternoon. Food is an excellent medicine for the jitters.

The expanse of the Sahara

The truckies down in the desert were painfully polite, and would pull off the narrow tar when they saw us coming. The only problem was that once on the dirt they would then throw up an impenetrable screen of dust, which hid the road, so you never knew if there was another truck behind the first. If there had been we would have been decorating his radiator.

‘Where did you get the flat motorbike motif, Abdul?’ ‘It just came to me one day….’

The bike returned nearly 49mpg (imp) on this leg, the best it did on the entire trip, which was a testament to the flatness of the Sahara. Short of hills it might have been but the road was bumpy with shallow potholes, no more than an inch deep, which I learnt to ignore.

Ain Salah was a strange town; built of mud, or concrete covered with mud, it sat in the desert like a low rock outcrop. Where did they get the water to make mud? Aside from a half dozen lackadaisical cafes, it seemed to lack shops, even the markets selling only oranges and carrots.

Despite its isolation – it must be just about in the exact middle of the desert – Ain Salah is a cosmopolitan place; I guess they get all types coming through. We were warned not to camp in the ‘palmeries’, the palm plantations, because of the mosquitoes. They got us anyway, despite the fact that we sought out a little stand of palms way out in the middle of the sands; Annie returned to the tent badly bitten after answering the call of nature.

We held a council of war the next morning, and decided that enough Sahara was enough. There is only one road down through the desert and you must return the way you came. That would have meant looking at the same flat nothingness for an extra three or four days, and we decided we’d rather spend the time somewhere more exciting.

Then we tried to ride out. The back wheel of the Yamaha simply dropped through the crust and spun uselessly. We unpacked the bike, removing everything we could including the panniers, and then Annie pushed while I revved the bike as hard as I could. Slowly it began to move, and then it almost jumped back up onto the crust and I rode like blazes for the sealed roadway.

The road, seen behind Annie, offered mixed surfaces, with the win a real issue at times

On the way back the little palm-lined campsite in El Golea sheltered us for a while, and we explored this huge oasis and its surroundings – Annie even tried out the bathhouse, but wasn’t impressed. One afternoon, a Land-Rover with two Australian women aboard rolled up. One of them got out and said, ‘Geez, I’d give my soul for a cold beer.’ We directed them to the one ‘good’ hotel in town which had stocks of this foreign substance.

Our return to Ghardaia was uneventful – more sand and rocks – and we had a look around this “second Mecca”, so called because parts of the valley are still closed to non-Muslims.

Then we set off for El Oued and the Tunisian border, and rode straight into the teeth of a sandstorm. By the time we had turned east it had become a crosswind and was throwing the fully laden bike all over the road – on one memorable occasion, even into the deep roadside sand. Coupled with the limited visibility of about 20ft it was too much for me and we turned around.

The most excruciatingly boring day followed as we sat in the tent and listened to the wind howling outside. After the third game of Scrabble and a couple of Mastermind we just sat there and stared at the canvas. But it had settled down the next morning and we made good time across – you guessed it – more flat desert.

But near El Oued the country changed and soon we were riding through, and sometimes over, enormous sand dunes. This was the Great Western Erg, the sandy desert you see in the movies.

By the side of the road, the telegraph wires often disappeared into the tops of dunes, only to reappear on the other side. Communications must be dire. We also saw date palms and herds of camels, and decided that this was much more like it. Why couldn’t the whole Sahara look like this?

Our troubles were not over with the end of the sandstorm. The bureaucratic calm was about to engulf us on the Tunisian border.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Motorcycls touring the Tichka Pass into the Atlas Mountains and the western margins of the Sahara at Taddert and into Ourzazate, Fes and into Algeria.

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

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

The Bear’s journey continues in Morocco. Now Marrakesh might have five-year-old extortionists, but you can swap old bras for new blankets.

Our most spectacular coup came in the campsite. An old bloke was selling warm, fuzzy, striped blankets, and he had one that was really lovely. His starting price was 350 dirhams, and he assured us that this was not his ‘rich tourist price’. After an entire evening of dedicated haggling, he settled for 35 dirhams, a t-shirt, two pairs of socks, a shirt, a tie (no, I don’t know either) and . . . one of Annie’s bras.

He had a little trouble figuring out what this wispy nylon thing was, but he got the idea when we held it onto his chest. Then he was hugely amused. ‘Ah, pour madame!’ he beamed, blushing madly.

In town, we found warm showers, in a hamam (bathhouse) next to the Regent Cinema. The first warm showers for a month, and you could stay under them for as long as you liked. Ah, luxury.

The Mols, Annie and I spent one evening on a cafe balcony overlooking the Djeema el Fna, watching the trading and performing going on below us by the light of pressure lanterns.

When we got back to the bikes, we were overwhelmed by a crowd of little boys, perhaps five years old on average, who, like a locust swarm, proceeded to pick our pockets and climb all over us and the bikes. They disappeared like smoke when a soldier came along. It was just as well that he came by, for how do you defend yourself against five-year-olds?

Taking the mountain pass to Ourzazate

Annie and I took the Yamaha up to the snowy pass leading inland over the Atlas, to see if it was possible to get across to Ourzazate. The road was mostly clear, and where there was snow or ice on the surface the truck drivers had been spreading gravel. So the caravan of bikes moved on over Tichka Pass and down into the western margins of the Sahara.

The Atlas is quite lovely here, with sheer rock flanks and tiny stone villages, all shrouded in snow. We stopped in Taddert for tea and were bombarded with demands that we buy handfuls of the sparkling crystals found around there, but we managed to resist the temptation. Just over the pass there was a bus lying by the side of the road.

It had taken a corner too wide and rolled three times. Although the casualties had been taken away, we could still see the rust-brown stains of blood on the broken window glass, a chilling reminder to ride carefully.

Refuelling and getting some directions

Ourzazate boasted a basic but comfortable campsite – it had running water and a helpful caretaker-cum-guard, who looked after us to the extent of making a fire off palm fronds in a tin and preparing tea for everyone on it. There was also a good market and a much-detested Club Mediterranee. The local people all resented the place because it bought nothing from them.

We pushed on north along the flanks of the Atlas, over narrow and often broken desert roads. This felt like the real desert, with very little vegetation and occasional small herds of camels or goats.

At El Kelaa an old man in a torn djellaba came up to us and started extolling the virtues of sidecars in a mixture of French, German and Arabic (or maybe Berber; it was hard to tell).

The sidecar outfit drew a bit of attention at times…

He had fought in the Second World War on the side of the Germans and they, he told us, had had sidecars with machine guns on them! And the British had come over in aeroplanes, shooting, and the French had shot him in this leg right here. Oh dear, what a lot of fun the war had been… he sounded just like some of the old soldiers back home.

The Ksar es Souk campsite had deep grass and trees but very little water. We had also run out of gas for our stove and small bottles were unobtainable, so we ate sandwiches. Later, someone told us that there was a spring just outside town where there was plenty of water and free camping, as well as palm leaves to make a fire. Ah, well.

On the way back up into the mountains we had almost alpine scenery up to the Col du Zad where we had a snowball fight. After that it looked more like the end of the world. A high plateau, bare and windswept, with snowdrifts huddling against black rock piles, this was one of the grimmest places I’d ever seen after the Anatolian Highlands.

It went on for quite a few miles, the road snow-ploughed clear to one car’s width, and we felt the cold creeping in even under our excellent Britax Alaskan suits. The plateau ended very abruptly and the road dropped through pine forests to the red tile roofs of the very French resort town of Ifrane.

The real desert… complete with camels

A few miles later, over good roads, we were in Fes, the new part of which looked very French too. The old town was straight out of the Dark Ages, with its narrow, convoluted, noisy passageways. We actually employed a guide – the first time I’d ever done that – and it was just as well, even though he was more interested in taking us to his friend’s shops than showing us the town.

We would never have found our way out alone. The next day was my birthday, and I was presented with a cake. Then sixteen buses loaded with 600 Danish schoolchildren invaded the camp. They came in the morning and left in the evening without ever looking at the town. A mystery.

We took advantage of the ridiculously low postage charges to send our souvenirs home and had the parcel wrapped very professionally by the semi-official parcel wrapper at the post office. He had a folder full of letters of appreciation from past customers, which he insisted we peruse while he wrapped.

After arranging to meet us again in Athens, the Mols took their leave to return to England and we turned towards the Algerian border. After an oil and filter change by the side of the road we rode past Taza, pretty on its hilltop, up to a famous cave in the mountains.

The steps leading down were in woeful condition and when, months later in London, I saw a photo I’d taken of it, it revealed ‘Bon courage’ scribbled on the wall near the bottom. It had been too dark to see this cheerful note while we were down there. We camped in the showground at Taza, watched by a cute and inquisitive donkey which then tried to steal our food and threatened to bite when we tried to chase it off.

The desolate but picturesque landscape

There was no problem about obtaining Algerian visas at Oujda, near the border, except that we had arrived on one of the innumerable Muslim holidays. So it was off to the border and the only campsite, to wait for three days and, in the cafe, watch the worst TV programs we’d ever been subjected to. Egyptian soap operas seem to have the lowest budgets, for sets anyway, of any shows I’ve ever seen. Every time someone closed a door the walls shook.

I had a nasty bout of ‘flu, and lay in the tent drugged to the eyeballs while tempers again deteriorated around me. I didn’t help by snapping at anyone who came near me. In the end I got fed up with it all and suggested we split up as soon as we were out of the desert.

When the consulate finally reopened, one of the questions on the visa application form was ‘Will you be sufficient during your stay in Algeria?’ The bloke opposite me, filling out his own form, grinned and said, ‘I guess the only answer to that is “Quite”,’ so that’s what we both put down. Insurance was much cheaper than it had been at the Moroccan border and we were processed quite quickly.

A dilapidated Honda spotted along the journey

Algeria is terrific – as long as you like bread, tinned sardines and oranges… read all about it next week.

Source: MCNews.com.au

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

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!

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

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

Source: MCNews.com.au