The dramatic finale

So, in conclusion.

We are halfway to London, according to the little plane icon on our seat-back monitors. Half way means we're probably not going to get diverted back to Cairo. Let me illuminate why I feared that might happen.

Last night was... I daren't try to capture the evening within a single adjective. Matt and I are glad, so very glad, that we're on this plane, and heading to England, and heading finally for home. I really struggle to think of anything I've wanted more.

I tried to capture yesterday in the previous post. We'd had the sandstorm of course. Something I didn't mention was that I was freaking out a little because I thought I might get a little asthma, or even an attack, as last time I got one it was dust related. There was no escaping this dust. I pulled my soccer shirt around my head and tied it behind my ears, which proved to be a pretty good filter, though occasionally I could feel the crunch of sand in my teeth, so some was getting through.

On our trip up to the border post, the taxis were stopped, so we caught a ride with a local in the tray of his ute, which was covered with a tarpaulin canopy. We were approximately half way along the journey, deep in the storm, the road disappearing into swirls of dust tens of metres from the car, when the engine died. The guy got out. The hood went up. He was tinkering around for a while. The storm raged on. Eventually Matt thought we might be able to give him a push start, so we jumped out and had a look to see what he was up to under the hood. He was hand cranking the radiator fan. The storm was whipping our clothes, pulling the shirt from my face. I did pause to think that a doctor, performing my autopsy, might have a little chuckle at the poor judgement. An asthmatic, push-starting a car in a dust-storm on the Egyptian-Libyan border. Ha ha.

The rest happened, and we got away, but like I said, the night proved uncomfortable. One of the irritating things about Egypt is that extremely few people know English to any functional level. A lot of people can say hi, anyone and everyone can and does say 'welcome' (the seemingly mandatory response to sighting a foreigner), but to find someone who could tell us why the policeman is escorting us to Cairo is a rare bird indeed. In fact, we only knew of one person in the entire country who could definitely give us a translation: Mrs Summer, from the Egyptian Auto Club, in downtown Cairo. So, without her help, we were left to dream up our own paranoid fantasies.

There were a lot of accommodating happenings to help fuel our fears. In one of the brief conversations I had with our man, I said I was going to try to get some sleep on the bus. To this he replied: 'no sleep for you'. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Following a short interview with him Matt suggested two possible scenarios. One, he's just on his way to a town called Marjoun. Two, marjoun is the Arabic world for tailing someone, namely us. A short time after this the bus driver came down asking for tickets. Our man didn't have a ticket, but most emphatically indicated that he was with us, 'hosting' us. Amusingly this wasn't on with the driver, and a mild disagreement followed. Our man seemed to get a ticket. So it was scenario two.

I tried to get some sleep, but it was fitful sleep, and I woke up as our bus was pulling off the highway towards the town of Marjoun. I was starting to freak out a little. So it was scenario one and scenario two. He's hosting us to the town of Marjoun, where we'd live out our days in a desert jail; we were still so very remote. It took a while to get to the town, and by the time we stopped at the guard post on the town's border I was on the verge of losing it. Calm down Rhys, what would Indy do? I looked around for the assembled police squad, open paddy wagon ready for the new visitors. Nothing. And our man just got off, shaking our hands before doing so, and walked off into the darkness. Maybe, there was nothing there, and he wasn't tracking us at all. On the rationale that there could still be another stop in town, I decided to withhold joy until we'd hit the road. We moved a little further on and stopped at the town's main bus station. A group of 8 guys got on, and placed themselves between us and the door. One of them introduced himself, and Matt asked him who he was. His one word reply was 'police'. The nightmare continued.

This was the worst leg. It took us another 7 hours to get to Cairo, from 2am to 9, and I slept poorly. I was trying to think how this was going to play out. Were we already under arrest? Were we going to be frogmarched to a grubby hole in the ground until 6 months later when word of our tragedy trickled to the outside world? Some things didn't make sense. Why so casual? If we weren't under arrest, what were they going to do, follow us around? We had the idea that they didn't want us leaving Egypt until we'd settled the bikes at the border. Or something. More horrifyingly, the boss of the border guards seemed like the kind of guy that would concoct a charge. We knew he wanted the bikes, demanding our keys before we left. We refused, no way was I going to let that joker near our wheels. We may have slighted the wrong man.

We got to Cairo and the gridlock traffic only heightened the sense of expectancy. Moving at 5kph when there could be a set of handcuffs at the end of it is an emotional experience. Suddenly we recognised where we were, near the Ramses Hilton, a block or two from my old hostel. We decided to get out, and potentially disrupt the pigs' welcome party at the main bus station. Our 'guard' was sound asleep. I chose to wake him up, just so he didn't look bad amongst his cohorts, 'letting the marks escape'. The first thing he did was say 'welcome', then he got up, stepped off the bus, and just walked away. I couldn't believe it.

It's hard to imagine the scale of the reversal of our apparent situation. Whereas previously I was furiously trying to work out how we might resolve the legal crisis, using the Auto Club, the Australian Embassy, and our shipping agent, while trailing a police escort or even while under arrest, now, it seemed, we were free. We agreed that this exceeded our predicted best-case scenario by a considerable margin.

The rest of the day was fine. It was steeped in the knowledge that our final test would come at the airport customs, if the border guard boss had flagged our passports, but we knew this was a little extreme. It may sound silly here, but we knew Egyptian police were corrupt, and we didn't know how far that corruption extended.

We got through, had a few ales at the airport bar, and wanted very badly to be on the plane. And eventually, when we were on that plane moving upwards through the sky, we sat and marvelled about how very nice it was. We also concluded that our journey was, finally, over, the rest being the formalities of international air travel. Matt settled in for his for his forth sleep in a row on a transport vessel, and I opened up the laptop to type up this last post.

I've quite enjoyed writing this blog. I'm pleased to know a couple of people have also enjoyed reading it (hi mum). Now that it's over I think I'll go write something else.

The end.

An arduous return to the border

And we had foolishly considered that the trip was over, with the merest loose ends to tie up.

The desert had something further to throw at us, on our last little outing to El Saloum to say goodbye to the bikes and pick up the remainder of our gear. For it is dust-storming. The keyboard on my once sparklingly new laptop is caked in an unprecedented amount of the stuff, the screen had so much dust when I wiped it away with my finger the surplus started cascading downwards. I can see the buildings across the street but not much more than that, the sea, only a couple hundred metres away, is just a darkening of the all enveloping cloud. We've been attempting to get a taxi to go the last 10km or so to the border post, but taxis have appeared to stop running, hopefully just taking a lunch break (a store person hinted at that possibility, in Arabic, so it's a bit of a guess), rather than because of the storm, because that doesn't look like it's going away in a hurry.

Our plan regarding the bikes has changed again. Turns out bringing them back to Australia is not only not possible, it's also illegal. So not only would we have the expense of sending them back to Oz (bad), we then wouldn't be able to get them (worse) and we'd also be looking at a bit of a stint in the big house (much worse). Not a great outcome. Discovering this is entirely thanks to Matt who had the thought to explore the other end of the transaction as well as the Egyptian. So they're heading back to the UK. And yes, if you're wondering, it's perfectly legal. Not for the first time Aussie customs has come out looking rather severe. We managed to find after a lot of trying what appears to be a great company, Beta Cargo, who have been everything we've needed, except their annoying habit of requesting us to extend our Egypt visit every time there's a hiccup (they say, 'oh no, you'll have to change your flight to stay another week', and we'll say 'but what if we do this?' and they will reply 'oh, that would be ok'. We're not staying any longer). It seems that the wheels are basically in motion, we just need to get up to the border post.

This storm is starting to lose its novelty. Judging from the reactions of the locals, it seems to be particularly bad. Exasperatingly it just seems to be getting worse.

I've spent the last few days in Cairo. Matt had a pleasing boat trip on the Nile, and managed to see the really good spots, Karnak and the valley of the kings, but although there was another day of the tour, Matt decided this was purely filler, and 'pulled the pin', jumping on a train back to Cairo. Perhaps he felt bad about leaving me to do the logistics while he was supping martinis on the sundeck of an super-lux cruise boat. I tried to reassure him that his enjoying of the marvels of antiquity was the priority, but eventually he was no doubt falling prey, as I am, to the perils of a long, intense, trip. We're kind of over it. Really looking forward to getting back, Matt's eyes already see Lisa, it's increasingly hard to get his attention. I'm enthusing about sitting in my room by myself staring at the wall and wondering how it came to this. Seriously though, nothing better than a couple of aleskies, at 'The Local' perhaps.

Ok, Part B. I'm waiting by the baggage in Egyptian customs while Matthew has kindly gone off to resolve the bike issue. It's taking a long time because I suspect the border guards hope to be getting something out of it. It's not complicated but these guys love the complicated transaction, the more people involved the better. In the tradition of few things passing smoothly on the trip, the dust storm has knocked out the mobile network, a rather key piece to our plan as our shipping agent had planned to talk to the customs officials to smooth things over. Matthew is currently off with an official to find a phone that works. We get the gear and then get out of here. On a positive note, the storm seems to be abating.

Part C.

Well, I can't say I'm feeling that great. We think we might have a problem with the police. When we left the border post, we felt lucky to be free, but while sitting waiting for the bus we started to think that the long arm of the border guards might extend down to El Saloum, and indeed, it did. While sitting on the bus a policeman came on board, and asked about us, checked our tickets, checked that we were going to Cairo. He then left, claiming everything was ok. So far not too bad, but we had a 50 minute wait before the bus left that wasn't comfortable. The bus was pulling away and then stopped, and the policeman got on again. This time he was staying on. So now he's still here. We're getting across the desert, ever closer to Cairo, but he ominously warned that he wasn't going as far as Cairo. I really hope we get there.

Historic Carthage

Moroccan truck stop

This is an example of the enthusiasm hoteliers had in parking our bikes in their foyers.



A great view of the incredible 'Leptis Magna' an ancient Roman settlement on the Mediterranean about an hour's drive East of Tripoli.



I'd thought I'd try to get a idea of the verdancy of the oases, amongst the palms there were little plots of brilliant green 'crops' that looked a lot like grass. In the markets we also saw them trading this 'grass'. I guess grass is hard to come by in the desert


Here's Matt and I at what we thought was the start of the desert. We saw a lot more of this

Deserts and sand and camels

We’re sitting in a cafe in El Saloum, a small port town just inside the Egyptian border. There have been some eventualities. As the sun sets on a day we were hoping to be 220kms away, in Mercer on the way to Cairo, we are waiting for a 9pm all-night bus to the capital. We were denied the entry of our bikes, so one our self-appointed helpers at the border has hatched a plan for us to go in person to a couple of agencies in Cairo to secure Egyptian insurance. Then we return, on another overnight bus, to retrieve the bikes and ride them back across Egypt. I guess it’s a bit of a sign of the particular mindset we’ve entered that we received this news with only the slightest disagreement. In truth we feel like we’ve already succeeded: We got the bikes to Egypt. Now are the negotiations first to get them in the country and then on cargo ships to Australia, which feels at the moment like tying up some loose ends, though I’m sure will prove to be exceedingly difficult in their own ways. We flew to another country, bought 2 motorcycles and arranged registration and insurance. With these bikes we travelled about 8500kms across 7 countries. It’s been a hell of a time. Matt conceded that he won’t be ready for another birthday for quite a while.

The last couple of days in Libya were good. The day before yesterday was the last big day of the trip, 650kms one some fairly isolated roads. We were making good speed and conditions were basically perfect. There wasn’t much to see, the major town we were passing, Surt, we were recommended to avoid by our guide. It is incidentally the home city of Gaddafi’s family. It was a long day, and at the end of it we were wrecked.
Yesterday while eating a chocolate syrup covered pan au chocolat for breakfast we were going over the route plan with our guide and driver and it came up that their idea of our route differed from ours. The standard tour I suppose moves up along the coast, whereas Matt and I had our eye on a short cut that travels 400kms straight through the desert, cutting off the eastern bulge of Libya and avoiding a bunch of towns that we were learning at this point were worth leaving out. It also took us through remote Sahara, and we wanted to see more of that. Initially it seemed that we would not be able to do this traverse because our guide said that it wasn’t allowed. It became apparent that the guides have to file a route plan with the police before travelling, and our route plan included the coast. So we resigned ourselves to this turn.

Before departure there was a lot more Arabic than usual being exchanged by our guide and driver. This made me suspicious, and secretly hopeful, and it turned out they were negotiating with home base to change our route plan. They succeeded. We were going through the desert.

The road was straight, in pretty good shape, and with minimal traffic. With conditions like that we were screaming through the desert like three super-powered rockets. Initially there was about 50kms of sparse scrubby landscape, but suddenly that changed into flat, featureless stony desert. Incredibly every now and then you’d see a herd of camels. There was nothing apparent to eat, but they were just standing around like it was the most natural thing in the world. I have new-found respect for the beasts. We stopped for tea at what has been dubbed the most isolated shack in existence about 120kms in. It was quite a homely place, the hostess seemed delighted to see us, was quite enthusiastic in testing out her limited English, and made us some very sweet tea. We were soaking in the isolation as the wind starting picking up. Back in the saddle, we were making good time. To add to the excitement, the sand dunes that were often lining the road occasionally stretched all the way across. As we have learnt from hard experience our bikes do not deal at all well with sand, the front tire just sort of slipping around in a very alarming and crashable way. So the dunes were concerning. Where the cars travelled there were gaps in the sand car-tire-widths wide so we aimed for those, and were mostly successful. Once though I missed, and shot over a little dune at some fast speed. It seemed ok.

For lunch we stopped at the halfway house, a cafe and refuelling point that was positioned exactly halfway along the road. It felt like the back of beyond, everything was in port-a-camps, including the petrol bowsers. We had a suspicious curry beef sandwich and the worse non-alcoholic beer I’ve ever tasted. Outside the wind was picking up. Our guide asked us if the bikes are ok in wind and we said sure, it just makes handling a little difficult. Looking outside at the world disappearing in a dust haze, with the door to the cafe getting continually pushed open by the gusting dust swirls, I hesitated in saying that the bikes should be able to handle the wind. I guess it depended on how strong it got.

The next stretch was something else. The wind was getting very strong, and I would say we were basically in a sandstorm. For about 100kms the visibility varied from 100m to around 40. Occasionally we could see very little except the guide’s car in front, the sides of the road disappearing into a blanket sandy haze. Huge arcs of sand coursed across the road, and through all this we travelled far too quickly. The sand got into the visor and into my eyes and nose. Nothing you could do about it of course, I can’t imagine what it would be like opening your visor to rub your eyes at 130kph in a sandstorm but I wouldn’t see it ending well. It was, well, great.

Eventually we got to the cleansing sea breezes of the Mediterranean, and the dust receded. It took me about 20km to realize that the dust haze I was seeing was actually just on my visor rather than the world around me, so, rubbing that off I saw the crystal blue skies above the plains heading in to Tobruk. We had made it across the desert and almost all the way across Libya. We followed this with a quiet night in watching satellite TV and eating extremely fresh bread we picked up, along with a bunch of other Libyans, from a late-night bakery straight out of the oven. I slept well.

Why don't you learn Arabic?

Misratah is not much of a town. It’s our second stop in Libya, one day’s ride on from Tripoli last, and, without wanting to sound too harsh, it’s got the ambiance of an extensive truck stop. We’re off the tourist trail. I’m not looking to debate the pros and cons of the various world religions, but I’d have to say a town suffers from the complete absence of women from the public arena. Women have a calming influence, and they’re also nice to look at. Everywhere here is just dudes, the cafes are filled with guys, the restaurants are just a bunch of bromancing couples. I have to admit that the hostility levels are responsibly low. When I compare it to late night nightclubs where all the females have evacuated, my only source of comparison, the air is remarkably clear of testosterone.

Driving here is fundamentally absurd. It’s like a race, and everyone else on the road is a competitor. When we first entered Libya, Mahmoud, our guide, said that driving here is not like in Australia. I kind of suspected that would be true, so I didn’t really consider what he meant, but driving here is done according to a different rule-set. Ostensibly they have the same road rules as any country, but almost none of these are followed. Instead, a new rule-set has emerged, similarly to the spontaneous emergence of a new creole language. I’ll give you a few examples. There are no real lanes. Vehicles will position themselves almost anywhere on the road. This facilitates the opportunistic overtaking that goes on continuously, when vehicles of any size will try to move around you any way possible, on the right or the left. Tailgating is given a greater sense of urgency when some vehicles not only tailgate but continue forward until you are effectively shunted out of the way. On single lane roads (one lane in each direction) cars will overtake at any point, forcing oncoming cars onto the shoulder. Cars will also drive into oncoming traffic when then want to cross to the other side of the road. We’ve had to slow down considerably a few times to prevent a head-on with people coming from the other direction wanting to pull into a plant nursery or hardware store on our side of the road. To clarify, they are driving towards us on our side of multi-lane highway for some distance. There is a way to deal with this. To announce that you’re not going to stop no matter what, you flash your highbeams. I’ve seen a few cars when approaching an intersection flashing their lights emphatically. They mean it, they’re going so fast there’s no way they could stop. To enter traffic from the shoulder you just speed up and slowly merge into the traffic flow. You can’t wait for gap in the traffic on the outside lane because there are no identifiable lanes.

In addition to this are the potholes, some of accident-inducing size, and the detritus occasionally strewn on the road. There was one almost Hollywood moment when Matt was riding in front of me and rode over a flattened cardboard box at speed. We were probably travelling around 130 kph, and him driving over the box picked it up and flung it into the air. From behind him I could see the box boomeranging about 3-4 metres up, and then come slicing back towards me. Very “Twister” or “Final Destination”. I turned my head in some futile attempt to avoid it, and it crashed into my knee. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.
Driving is basically a full time occupation. You can’t really sight-see, or drift off thinking about other things. You are focused on navigating the road. Enough about driving,

It feels like this trip has gone through the looking glass, so to speak. It just keeps getting harder, and we’ve gone from delirious to strange. I guess with every trip you change. Matt and I have often mused upon this, the ‘reverse model’ holiday, something so taxing that a return to normal life is a sweet and calming relief. It’s something Dad has implicitly espoused all our lives, and now we could well be permanently cast in that mould. I contemplate the tasks for our days here, and focus not on the seemingly out-of-place ‘enjoying ourselves’, but on preserving concentration, breaking down the distances and times. For Libya we’ve been required to have a guide to take us through the country, and now our trip’s a little like a standard tour: he takes us to restaurants, checks us in to hotels, and takes us to tourist venues. The last point is the most strange. Wandering around the ruins of a Roman settlement doesn’t feel like it would be on the itinerary of a relentlessly gruelling trial. Makes me think that perhaps the gruelling nature of the trip is more a matter of perspective.

It was Mohammad’s birthday yesterday, the night we were in Tripoli. They celebrated that with many amateur fireworks that made the town into a mini war-zone. We also saw a few kids playing a bit of what we used to call urban warfare, chasing through the city streets with water bombs, and the occasionally mass shootout in some side street.

A man asked us why we didn't know Arabic. After all, apparently 25 countries spoke Arabic, and only 3 countries he could think of spoke English: England, South Africa, and Australia. I felt a bit of pride thinking Australia made the top three of English speaking countries, but Matt felt obliged to remind him of the US, which he conceded was also an anglophone. I had never considered it from a numbers angle.

That’s all for today,

Me getting my wheels, start of the journey

The race to Tunis

We’re back in Africa now, time for an update with what’s been going on since Morocco. The drive out from Morocco was a little unsettling. We witnessed the remarkable transition from the green slopes of the Atlas mountains to the dry stone and dust of the beginnings of the Sahara. It began to feel extremely isolated in parts, though we were never more than a few dozen kilometres from towns. On an aside, it’s incredible to see the spread of gum trees all over the world. We passed large groves of obviously intentionally planted mature gums lining the sides of the highway in Western Morocco, where nothing else was growing. We’ve seen established gums everywhere else we’ve been, England, Spain, Italy. The line the streets leading to ancient Cusco in Peru, and fill public gardens in South Africa. Go Aussie trees! Anyway, back to the trip. We got pulled over by cops for the first time at one of the innumerable police stops, and only an hour later we got stopped again for a couple of infringements, namely overtaking on a double white line. When the cop first mentioned the infraction I was taken aback, I was honestly shocked that they would be enforcing that, considering how many times we’ve seen it so blatantly flounced. The fine was 45 Durmah, about $7 Aussie, an amount I was also shocked to hear. Matt amazingly though was reluctant to pull out the trivial sum from his wallet (I didn’t have any cash at this point), playing hardball. This paid off, they decided to waive the fine, requiring us to merely promise to be safer in the future. We sped away, but there were even more numerous police checks from then on as we were so close to the at-war Algeria, and our paranoia that we were being monitored was starting to get the better of us. We made it to the border.
The occupied town of Melilla was a bit of a saviour. We found a hostal run by a total gent who let us park our bikes in his foyer. The town that night was hosting some sort of carnivale, and had a terrific amateur street parade, apparently being put together mostly by a catholic school. The highlight was an alligator on one of the floats that was being rather egregiously provoked by his co-floatee, a man who seemed to consider his role as somewhat like a lion tamer, but with reptiles. There were salsa bands, reminding me of my time on the salsa circuit, a couple of brass bands, and a lot of Disney characters. Quite a pleasant way to spend an evening. That night we got a ferry to Malaga, scheduled to arrive at around 6am.
Our plan was to get to Barcelona within two days. This was always a bit of an ask, as it was around 1000 kms. We started by riding to Granada, and had a very pleasant catch-up with Ananth and Rachel, two friends I had made in my previous semester at uni. In the afternoon we tried to get as far as we could, but it was terribly cold, so by the time we had got to Mercia, we couldn’t go on, and got a place to stay. This committed us to 600km the next day, a big effort at the best of times. And it was a hell of an thing. I’ve got few memories of the day, just drizzle, grey skies, and bitter cold. There were periods during the day where I thought I actually wouldn’t make it. It was extremely uncomfortable.
So we made the ferry, and it was quite nice. Leaving at 10pm, continuing till 6pm the next day, to Civitavecchia, Italy. The ferry was one of the larger ones, with a couple of restaurants, cinema, lounge/nightclub, casino etc. It was quite nice.
As we were riding the bikes out of the port in Civitavecchia the first intersection had a sign post to, of all places, Rome. We stopped, and were struck with the idea that Civitavecchia was the port town for Rome. We had 24 hours here, why not spend it in Rome, so off we headed. After almost an hour driving along cold, badly lit and rainy roads Matt concluded that Rome didn’t sound nearly as good as a warm bed, so we decided to stop at the next hotel and reattempt the next day. The next day was beautiful, a pleasing development, and off we went. Rome took a while to get to, but once there we realized we had inadvertently been loaned the keys to the city, because, on motorcycles, we were unstoppable. The normal, nightmarish traffic around the Piazza Venezia, down the Via dei Fori Imperiali to the Colloseum was no problem at all, particularly after the dangerous crazy of Morocco. Parking is also a delight, we pulled up metres from the Trevi fountain for a nice cafe latte, parked immediately outside the Piazza San Pietro in front of St Peters cathedral for a bit of walk around. Rome in 3 hours.
We raced back to Civitavecchia in record time (I won’t mention the speeds involved) because we thought we were late for the ferry. Turned out the ferry was delayed because of high seas for 11 hours, now departing at 3am. According to our previous schedule this now meant that we would be arriving in Tunis 24 hours later, also at 3am. We thought that would prove to be interesting. The ferry was cool. It was a bit more utilitarian than our previous ferries. Less deck space, basically just a cafeteria –like area. And this time, when we booked “deck space” as our accommodation type, they meant it: we were sleeping on the tiles. Maybe this trip has hardened me up, but I slept like a baby, and was oblivious to the continuous Arabic music, and presence of a couple of dozen others doing their best on the furniture of the cafeteria.
The sea was beautiful, it was a pleasure to occasionally walk around on the outside deck space. Made me think I’d like to have more to do with the ocean. Soon enough we arrived in Tunis, and now I’ll Tunisia for another post.

Part 2, progress

First Vid

Fes

This has been another interesting day. We got on the road earlier than we’ve ever managed before, revving away from the curbside of Beni Mellal just before 9. The day was glum, overcast and cool, and but reasonable riding conditions. We got some good distance under our belt before stopping for a remarkably good, simple breakfast at a truckstop, and thought the day was progressing well. The rain began extremely lightly, just a fine drizzle that after some time prompted me to stop and put the plastic bag I use for waterproofing over my satchel bag. We stopped again about 60kms further on at Kenifra for coffee, and had a guy approach us asking to shine our shoes. I acquiesced mostly because this was one of the few times I was wearing shoes that wouldn’t be ruined by the procedure, and thought the guy seemed well-meaning. He did a good job, my faux-leather motorcycle boots hadn’t looked this good in the store. It felt a shame to immediately get up and motorcycle through mud. There was one thing though: for entire duration of the shining he tried to talk to us in French. Our French didn’t stand up to the interrogation, but our non-comprehension did nothing to diminish his enthusiasm to communicate. I really got to like that guy.
It was getting colder and the rain was getting heavier. It was also rather hilly, the real Atlas mountains were further to the east but we were still working through the foot hills. Visibility was starting to become an issue. I stopped a little further on to try the ‘toothpaste solution’ to stop the visor fogging up. All I can say is that they must be using a different brand of tooth paste. After applying it to my visor and glasses, as these were also fogging up, the effect ended with a view like I just wasn’t wearing my glasses. I stated I wasn’t comfortable riding like this, so I cleaned my visor and we moved on.
When we got to Azrou we were pretty cold. Matt’s lower half was saturated again, his pants and boots being all for looks with no waterproofing. As we ate chicken and chips for lunch (again. I’ve eaten about 7 chickens since I got here) the rain increased. It was 80km to Fes, our goal for the day, but it was not looking to be pleasant. It was much colder here. The moment I put down my visor, my glasses fogged up to the point I had to stop. So I was riding with my visor up in heavy-ish rain, and Matt was re-chilling his saturated pants, and we were both looking forward to other things. There was also fog, or probably low-cloud, as we were quite high, and that reduced vision considerably further. I was getting slower and slower and Matt disappeared into the mist ahead. Finally, being unsure where even the side of the road was, I decided to stop and put in some contacts. My left ring finger became completely numb from the cold. As I was flexing it to try to circulate some blood I was pondering how long frostbite takes to kick in.
Not long after that, the rain stopped, and it became sunny. The scenery was amazing, very varied rocky terrain, then changing to plains with groves of trees. My gloves dried out. I was happy. Matt I’m sure was pleased. Then we arrived at Fes, Morocco’s most amazing city.
Don’t waste your time with the other cities, Fes has it in spades. The medina is incredible. Ali Baba, 1001 nights, Alladin, exactly like that. It has the incredible dye pits where they tint the leathers used for clothes and bags, that was demonstrated, as many enthused to tell us, by Catrina Rowntree on Getaway. We won’t be staying here long enough to see it all though, we’ll be leaving early to continue our mission to the coast.

Marrakech

Marrakech does exotic well. This place has all the elements. 100m from our hotel is a wide tiled square. It is perpetually filled with fruit and spice vendors, performing monkeys and their owners, live cobras posing with their charmer unprotected from the passing crowds. Jungle rhythms from bands of drummers, Celtic traditions (weirdly) from bands of African stringed instruments, and the classic wail of the Arabian pipe (not sure of its name) rise up above the activity. The massed crowd is a mix of po-faced tourists, entrepreneurial Moroccans and local townsfolk, crisscrossed by scooters, motorcycles, hand drawn and donkey drawn carts. Over all this a low smoke from the many incense burners and a large barrel fire create a heady atmosphere. From our rooftop terrace I can see the tower of Marrakech’s largest mosque, surrounded by a stand of palm trees, and can hear from the narrow street three stories below all the activities of the innumerable tiny stalls, passing tourists and the scooters moving dangerously fast through them. Not bad, almost makes up for the violent diarrhoea I’ve been stricken with over the last couple of days, I suspect from a suspect kofte tagine. I’ve been recuperating basically, recovering from the illness and from the riding, which Matt and I have concluded is taking more out of us than we suspected.
Morocco has been great though, it’s feeling like travel proper, the occasional dirt road, navigating with Arabic signs (not going well) and of course the insane traffic. Riding from Tangier to Casablanca I lived out the one image I had coming into this whole trip, that of riding along a coastal highway with a raging sea on one side and the swirling sands of the Sahara sweeping across the road surface. Morocco’s really green at the moment, it’s probably the time of year, but most of our riding thus far has been through very green fields. Land that looks very productive, but we can’t work out what they’re growing. It looks like clover, like they’re keeping the fields fallow. Maybe it’s part of the sowing cycle.
We stayed in Casablanca for a couple of days, quite an interesting place. I’ve been told previously that the city is a bit of a hole, and I guess that’s accurate. It has an old town which is extremely authentic, a seething mess of alleyways and ramshackle buildings. It would be, and I guess is where tourists go but it certainly has an edge to it. The rest of the city is rundown, the modern centre wouldn’t look out of place in a French regional town except for its uniform dilapidation.
Tomorrow we prepare to leave Marrakech for road north to Fez. We’ve made plans now to circumvent Algeria. We weren’t getting a lot of good reports from the place, the border issue with Morocco was annoying, and more pertinently we haven’t yet got visas for the place. So now the plan is ferries from Spain to Italy and then to Tunisia. Should be good.

Ferry

We’re on the ferry to Tangiers, crossing the cusp of the Mediterranean, the rolling swell pushing out into the Atlantic. It was another connection that we barely made, setting off from Seville with what we thought was plenty of time, but arriving at the ticket office in Tarifa we were told the 3pm ferry was weighing anchor in 5 minutes, so we should get a move on. For the second time we were panicked when the ticketing agent asked for some official sounding aspect of our motorcycles, as we were confronted with the propect of our hastily prepared arrangements of motorcycle ownership and insurance being put to the acid test. This was mostly because they were asking in foreign languages. If they had merely asked for our rego number, they probably wouldn’t have provoked the surprising response of panicked and furtive looks, much sub-audible mumbling and, in the French case, a denial that we had registration numbers....

Seville, Espana

Seville. I like Seville. It’s a lot better than lots of other places, for example, Barcelona, or the labyrinthine nightmare that is Valencia, or the knife capital of the universe, Albacete. In contrast to these places, Seville is the place that people who live in Utopias aspire to. Old and new, combined so happily. Beer is cheap, tapas is plentiful, and dispite the sub 20 degree evening the streets are teeming with happy, pleasing people. Barcelona in comparison is a town where to tarry on its desperate streets but for a moment will result in you being unintentionally at the pointy end of a drug deal, thugs with one hand stuffing mounds of powder into pockets and lifting bills from your wallet with the other. This dystopia may in fact be better than the reality facing Albacete, where the number of outlets vending knives, knife-like items and accessories to knifing imply a staggering influx of said items into public circulation. Our very hotel sold ‘stabbers’ on the cheap, Matt marvelling at the range and reasonable price of the butterfly knives, an item with no decent purpose. The near vacant streets suggested ‘the knife’ reigned supreme.
I am routinely impressed with the human mind’s ability to adjust. Only days ago I mistakenly believed that driving at 130kph plus was a reckless danger. Now I treat speed as a plaything, often pretending that I’m racing at the arcade, making zooming noises in my helmet. Needless to say, the riding is starting to become a lot of fun. I’m pretty much over the fear, there’s the occasional moment where your stomach drops, say when you feel you’re not quite going to make a corner, or a truck does something unexpected. Mostly though it’s fine.
We have seen some awesome roads. Coming out of Barcelona the tollway south has an amazing array of bridges, tunnels and vistas over the Mediterranean. The road connecting Albacete to Valencia and Cordoba is the smallest one we’ve yet traversed (excluding a stretch in France) and cut through some of the beautiful fields, gorges and valleys of rural Spain. It also gave us a little practice moving the bikes around corners. We slightly mistimed our arrival in Albacete and ended our ride that day about an hour and a half after dusk. The temperature dropped quickly after dark, and the darkness coincided with our first effort at serious mountain turns. Matt’s nerves were shot, and I dropped my bike, while stationary, sadly not for the first time. My excuse is he stopped suddenly. My leg was pinioned under my bike, and if I was by myself I’d be vulture food, but an unnamed stranger, sitting in an idling car meters from where we stopped on the lonely mountain road, leaped to help the bike from my remarkably unshattered leg. He asked if I was ok, I said ‘si’, and he went back to his darkened car.
Seville is the first town we’ve arrived at that was part of the original plan, so effectively we’re back on track. Our mad dash across western Europe to make up for the inactive ferries is at an end, and our days can now be less punishing. We’re going to try for Morocco tomorrow, the ferry port being an easy hour and a half ride south.

From the catalogue

Those of you reading the blog may have noticed some period without an update. This has been because my normal method of updating, wifi at McDonalds, has been sadly hard to come by for a while now, so I´m switching to internet cafes. In the interim though, I have been writing posts, just not posting them. So now, if your schedule permits wading through some awkward prose, I´ll put up these posts, as well as some of the videos that we´ve been making,

Paris

An optometrist on Champs d'Elysees

La Basilique du Sacré Coeur

Matt sampling the party-in-a-can Amsterdam Maximator.

Ferry to Calais













Coast of France

Some picturesque elements of Bath, where we spent a few days waiting for zee insurance.

We're away!

As I write this, we’re sitting on a ferry of dimensions my younger self would describe as ‘freaking huge’ preparing to depart England for Calais and France. It’s taken longer than we’d hoped to get to this point, the delay being due to problems in arranging insurance. We found ourselves in confounding vortex of non-coverage, Aussie insurers laughed at the idea they might cover traffic accidents in Tunisia and British insurers hung up the phone when we conceded we weren’t UK residents. We were rescued however by a little known rogue insurer operating out of Rotterdam that offered to take care of all our problems for a modest pouch of gold. It took a number of days to iron out the kinks regarding payment etc. so in total it’s taken about 5 days longer than expected to get out of England’s uncomfortable chill.

Not all of our time has been spent dethawing our fingers during this interim though. We’ve had a few great nights out, including one afternoon with Rachel, and two English friends Paul and Katie supping the local English insanity juice. This beer was not your normal ale, Matt and I can’t fully explain its effects but it gave me a complete inability to control my own actions and imparted rather distressing episodic amnesia. Hours later, I realized I was in a darkened stairwell in my hostel trying to decipher an online news article on my laptop. What happened? No one can know. All I can say is that I’ve been drunk before and this was not like that.

We were facing the prospect of another night in Bath, when we got the offer to celebrate Australia Day in London with a few of the friends we’d gone out with last week. I was looking forward to getting on the road so we packed up and headed back to the City. Getting there was a bit of an ordeal, it was close to zero and we had to stop every 30 miles or so to get sensation back in our hands. Matt’s hands were looking all grey and splotchy and I said that didn’t look good and thought I was glad I wasn’t him. Getting to London we stayed with the aforementioned friends in the Bronx of London, Brixton. Every day is a new nightmare in Brixton, where your knife is your only friend... or so we’d heard. It turned out to be quite pleasant spot really, and we had a great night drinking Fosters and talking about our favourite Aussie animal grudge match, kangaroo vee wedge tailed eagle, or numbat vee sugar glider.

So England is now behind us, I can see the coast of France, and we’re preparing to attempt to ride down to Paris or even Orleans.

A haiku:

Matt’s hands
So splotchy and grey
His guitar falls silent...

I figured that it’s probably the time to start writing up some of what we’re doing. We’re basically through the establishment phase, having bought almost everything we need to have bought, and have tested the bikes on the road for a while, things are looking good. We’ve been here for just over a week and things are more-or-less proceeding to schedule.

Matt and I both got BMW f650 CS’s, not because we wanted to be the same, but because they are widely considered the best bike to do long distance touring. I have known this since 2001 when I first floated the idea of doing an overland tour from Beijing to Istanbul to a friend and one-time professional car thief. He recommended the f650 and seemed very knowledgeable on such matters.

The whole experience thus far has been rather interesting. A lot has been more like work than holidaying, but the process of getting the bikes and the gear, negotiating with the two dealers we met, trudging out to seedy industrial estates and incidentally sightseeing London has been an odd mix.

Matt got his bike just outside a little town called Aylesbury, about an hour on the train North-West of London. It was at a little dealership within a flashy new retail park, called DWR (Dave Wood Racing) Motorcycles or something. Dave Wood, we were to find out afterwards is Britain’s most distinguished motorcycle rider, and it probably should have been a mild honour just to talk to the man. It was a steal at 2000 pounds but Matt pushed him down to 1900 because of an invisible scratch on the faring. We sealed the deal on the first Saturday and told him to have it ready by Friday.

My man was a little less polished. Checking out the location it seemed to be at the end of a no-name alley branching off an inter-village thoroughfare several kilometres outside the hamlet of Shepperton, looking suggestively like the middle of nowhere. Walking there from the train station took us to the outskirts of the town, which took ages, and then trudging along the muddy embankment of the aforementioned thoroughfare for about 2 kms till we got to the set for a film where mafia men kill people in inventive ways using the facilities of semi-abandoned industrial estates. It did look a little rough: there was the junkyard dog and a number of what were presumable stolen taxi cabs up on blocks. I think there was also a concrete factory, though maybe it was just the vibe of a concrete factory. Matt impressively managed to find our man, who was tucked behind a few of the abandoned shacks and sheds and ruined cars, “out of the way” you could say. He was just about to leave but fortunately still had the two BM’s out to have a look at. He seemed nice, like to talk a lot, and was pushing rather heavily the older, slightly more worn looking silver CS for 2400 pounds. This is still a very good deal, as bikes like this would cost easily double that in Australia, so weren’t really worried. Regardless, we did want them to work, so there was some probity to our questions though we lacked the knowledge-base, and consequently his assurances were about as meaningful as those of an uniformed third party. Still, I didn’t think he was actually lying to us. We concluded we’d take the silver one, which he would have ready by Friday as well.

This was Tuesday, so we had a few days to kill in London. Getting my gear took longer than we thought, but I ended up being really satisfied with what I got. Went to the Tate modern, went out with some great people, friends of Beth who we’d met on Saturday night. Meandered around London a lot. Then came Friday.

Matt went off to get his bike first, and we arranged to then meet in Shep to finalize on my bike and head off to Chippenham, where a friend of mine, Rachel, lived and offered to have us stay. It was a destination outside the city and seemed like a nice opportunity to test the bikes while still in the UK. So... Matt picked his bike up, things were going well, but it ended up taking 3 hours for him to get to Shep, because of the fiendishly difficult to navigate English roads. This was 2 hours behind schedule. Fortunately our man was still at his shack, so Matt drove off to finalize with him while I did the trek out , again, to the estate. We noticed that my indicators weren’t working, but at this point we just wanted to go, and were in a bit of a rush. I strapped my bags to the back of my bike, and we prepared to head off. I’ve always been fond of the term ‘Hell ride’ and the following 4 hours could rightfully be described as such. I was night-time, raining off and on, pretty damn cold (think English winter, exactly like that), and gridlock traffic for about 2 hours. Visibility was shot, we hadn’t worked out how to ensure our visors don’t fog up so I alternated between having my helmet open to the rain, which really stings at 60 mph, and having it closed, with visibility that Matt described as comparative to having your eyes closed. There was trucks and buses and zillions of cars. Best not to think about it really. Anyway, eventually ended up in Chippenham, and trying to find the Red Lion pub, where my friend had relocated to, according to a text message. Asking for directions at a supermarket, no one had heard of the Lion, discouragingly, until a helpful stranger approached, recollecting that the Lion is in fact in an even smaller village a small ways up the road called Lacock (pronounced Lay-cock). We saddled up, got to Lacock, and pleasingly found Rachel enjoying the local cider at the ridiculously cosy Red Lion. We settled in, tried to defrost, and partaking many pints of cider before heading back to crash on Rachel’s couch, so very pleased that we were still alive.

Lacock turns out to be the nicest village on the planet. This was a bit of a surprise, but the town is one of the very few that was completely preserved in its pre-modern state, and looks exactly like the setting, whichever way you look, for a period drama. In fact it looks like the setting for specific period dramas that you’re probably seen, as the town’s been used in almost every period piece of cinema ever, including excitingly the upcoming Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro. I don’t really go in for those things, but I do like Harry Potter, and elements of Hogwarts (the arched hallways surrounding a courtyard), were filmed there. Also apparently one of the cottages was Harry’s parent’s place, though I don’t recall that from the films.

Rachel is a museum curator, and works at the local museum dedicated to Lacock’s most famous resident, Albot somebody, the inventor of the negative-positive process in photography, the basis for all modern photography pre-digital. He was quite a guy, also contributing to maths and physics and deciphering ancient Cuniform. Not bad at all. After wandering around Lacock, we then picked up sticks and motored to Bath, to spend the next couple of days... for no particular reason. Splendid countryside around here. I might go to the spa tomorrow, and see if I can get my indicators working. Monday should be a good day: We’re going to be attempting to get to Paris.