TrailFlix – Blog

Peering through dust–caked sunnies, struggling for oxygen, screeching brakes, piercing my eardrums.

I’m steering a 10-year-old GT hardtail rust-bucket with slightly buckled wheels and 3 barely-operating gears down an ancient & slippery 4WD track….

All this without a helmet.

Mountain biking at it’s worst, perhaps?

No way! I’m in the High Atlas Mountains at the top of Africa[1], experiencing one of those unforgettable times when you ignore the negatives, put your bike handling skills on auto-pilot and immerse yourself in the art of life on two off-road wheels. (In this case, somewhat old wheels…)

Why in hell a Kiwi is here in the midst of the World Cup Rugby tournament, I don’t know….well, I guess I do…. Daughter #2 emailed earlier in the year, “Come over to England, Dad, and take a holiday before my work visa runs out….”. Adding, “Could you come at the end of September as I’m only allowed to take a week then…?”

Leaving Sydney in spring for London’s autumnal 15 degrees? Appealing, it wasn’t. But with a two-week break, I realized I could do a week in London and a week somewhere exotic.

…Morocco!

I fell in love with the idea of Morocco while taking the kids through Disney’s EPCOT, some 10 years ago. We’d walked into the artificial medina that passes for a facsimile of the country and I was sold on… I dunno, something ‘mysterious’. At the time, the kids were soon bored, but it was one of those places that soaked into my traveller’s soul and remained there, waiting for the opportunity. In truth I figured that I would never get there.

And from Australia, Morocco’s not easy to get to, but in the age of UK low-cost airlines it was just a £39 each-way hop from London on a flight to foreignness. The Brits have it so easy…

So it was done. An email to a tour agency in Marrakech to seek a MTB trip while there and it was full steam ahead…

And the holiday started well. After 24-hours crammed into the strait-jacket known as Economy Class, my buddy Mic & I arrived at 5:30am on a Saturday, got whisked down to London’s famous Aussie Walkabout Pub and by 9:30am were sat on the floor, downing Guinness and watching the Kiwis trouncing the French.

 

It was made even better with hundreds of Aussie & Kiwi expats whooping at every Kiwi achievement. (At least we Trans-Tasman rugby fans can agree on a couple of things: we all love to hate the French…and the South Africans, and the Brits… oh yes, and each other…)

Just 5 days later, in a record-setting London heatwave that had the locals going topless in Regents Park, we flew off to even hotter but somehow more bearable 37-degree Marrakech, within spitting distance of the Atlas Mountains, bargaining for tee-shirts and trying to source that one-day MTB trip… which was a mite confusing for the locals.

“Sir, you looking to rent a motor bicycle?” (They are very polite in Morocco. But I’d seen the way they drive and no way would subject myself to that.)

“No, a bicycle that goes up and down mountains.”

“Ah oui, we have 6-day mountain bike expedition”.

“No, we’re only here for 4 days. I need a one-day trip.”

2 hours of wandering round the old city and four tour operators later, my schoolboy French[2] and I were exhausted. The Internet inquiry I’d made back in Oz for a 1-day-MTB tour got an initial positive response but the company had stopped emailing after that. I thought it would be easy booking it in Marrakech…. But in Morocco, nothing’s that easy. While most things are negotiable, the rules are different. Like when you’re studying a map trying to decide which street to head down to get to a particular restaurant featured in the Lonely Planet guide (one with beer…this is a Muslim country; alcohol is hard to find). One of the locals, seeing your confusion, will step up to help, but then always, ALWAYS, there is a polite but demanding hand outstretched at the end. Plenty of cheap stuff here but precious little you can get for free.

Finally one place – Mami Tours  – called around and found a Berber guide who was between hiking expeditions. Cost would be 1300 Dirham – about $A160 – per person. Ouch. When you compare that with a 6-day MTB trip for $A500, it was bloody expensive, but it included a hotel pickup, a driver, the bikes, helmets, water, breakfast, lunch, out at 6 and back by 7… Mic, checked his funds, thought twice about his lack of fitness but in the end agreed.

“I guess,” he said, “it’s only 27 km and mostly downhill; so….”.  Maybe he should have read the fine print. Except for the fact that there was none: No liability page to sign; just a receipt and a command to be, “…outside your hotel at 6 or the driver may leave without you”. (Not sure where else the driver would go as, to that point, we two would be the only two on the custom-designed tour!)

But as these things go… the day before the tour we were waiting outside the hotel at 7:30am for another tour – a cheap bus ride across the desert to Essaouira – a huge fishing Port 150Km westward where you can buy fish fresh off the boats – and met a fellow traveller – Antonio Abanades from Valencia in Spain – who was on a different day trip. We got chatting and the topic got round to MTB and surprise, surprise, he too was an avid biker and keen when he heard about the trip. He was equally put off by the price but the next day there he was at 5:55am, ready to ride.

By 6:30am the driver hadn’t arrived (the marvels of ‘Moroccan time’) but the tour facilitator – a guy who was there at the front of the hotel to make sure we got on the trip and, more importantly, paid the balance of the money – was by that time yelling into a phone, presumably at the lost driver. Plenty of hands participate in the running of these tours; there was an old Muslim guy, dressed like an Imam, who travelled up front of the van, there and back, with us. Nice guy, just 3 or 4 words of English – I guess the trip might have been a convenient way of visiting the rellies in the mountains…

By  6:45 the driver turned up; yelling was put to one side and we plunged into the maelstrom that is early morning Marrakech traffic. This is just like Bangkok: As a passenger, take-your-life-into your-hands-and-hold-onto-whatever-you-can. In just 4 days in Marrakech I’d witnessed 2 minor accidents, been knocked into by – luckily – an unusually slow cyclist, narrowly escaped being bowled by a car dashing through the markets and – my mistake for once – stepped into the path of a moped who did a great job swerving to avoid me when I was looking the wrong way. In all, I escaped relatively unscathed, but it reflected the frenetic pace & perhaps the low value of life here… and the need for travel insurance!

We picked up the guide from an outer suburb and headed off to the village of Imlil in the High Atlas Mountains. The High Atlas contains the tallest mountain in North Africa – Toubkal – at 4167M), from where the ride would start.

Along the drive the sparely planted olive tree groves slowly gave way to more and more green. Antonio & I talked bikes and riding. He too runs a website domiciled on http://cuvalbikers.blogspot.com/ (you may want to get Google to translate the page from Spanish).  With his mates he rides local Valencia (Spain) coastal trails and like me he’s a half marathon runner having completed 5 races in the last year.

An hour and a half later with one stop due to roadworks, we arrived at a B&B style tourist hotel. After the bustle of Marrakech, Imlil was dead quiet. Chooks & goats wandered about, under the trees. Breakfast was served up to us in the lounge; bread, butter, local cheese, jams, fruit & water. Bread here is really good.

About an hour after we’d finished breakfast – more extended Moroccan time – the bikes turned up, looking like escapees from a junkyard: an average age of 8-10 years old, dusty & beaten up. None looked like they’d seen a drop of oil since they’d been bought and parts that were steel had rust or if aluminium, then oxide… Spruced up they might have been OK. As it was I could only reliably use the large ring and 3 rings on the rear. As for sizing; well let’s say we were lucky who’d ever owned them was a reasonable size. At 6’3”, Antonio looked like his was at least 1 size too small.

And Helmets? Bottles of water? Seemed something had been lost in translation and none were to be supplied so it was good luck or good planning then that 2 of us had brought caps & 2 1.5L water.

I have not ridden helmet-less for years but after the first 15 minutes I rarely thought about it.

We’d been promised the route was mostly downhill, on dirt, but after 45 minutes of steep ascent on tarseal roads rising up to 2800M above sea level (higher than Mt Kosciusko – 2228M – and almost triple the height of Katoomba, so definitely less oxygen) we tourists were all feeling it and Mic, who hadn’t been on a bike much over winter, was flagging, stopping every 8-10 minutes in the 32 degree dry heat.

It was a relentless climb but with magnificent views of deep, erosion-carved valleys. On one of his ‘stops’, Mic happened to be walking around a steep hairpin when 3 pint-sized ragamuffin kids (can’t have been more than 8 years of age) who’d been playing off the road ran over and started to physically push his bike (ala Tour de France) which was more of a nuisance than a help. Riding ahead I turned round, laughed, then yelled back, “Just ride off!” and they turned their attention to me and suddenly I had the 3 ‘helpers’.

It was at the same time a hoot and a bloody nuisance! I didn’t want their fingers to get caught in the wheels or the mech and they literally had their hands all over the back of the bike, pushing, while I was moving… Eventually I got off the bike and ran with it which only encouraged them, but it gave me a chance to get far enough away to ride off in safety (but almost breathless). So they went back and picked on Mic.

Antonio, further up, turned round and he too had a laugh, but the guide who was a couple of bends further on didn’t see any of it and I caught up to him and we all waited about 10 minutes until Mic turned the corner, now looking shattered.

At the very top of the climb is a pass with a steep descent into the next valley. I recently watched the documentary ‘Restrepo’, about a group of soldiers guarding a valley in Afghanistan: bush-free mountain slopes, clay-coloured, dry and rocky: a place you wouldn’t want to get lost in, and the landscape here was almost the same. Incredibly there was a ‘shop’ – a mud-brick but solid little building – atop this narrow pass with 2 French hikers and their guide enjoying mountain tea provided by 3 or 4 older kids (there were no lights in the hut but there could have been even more inside. The only bottled drink they had was Fanta…! (no water) so I bought one and downed that in seconds. It cost about 50c. The guide said these kids walk up from their village every day to service parties like ours who hike (or much more rarely bike) the mountains. What a hard business…

The tar seal had ended and there were two routes down on narrow 4WD dirt roads. One that the hikers took zig-zagged down below us towards a slither of green bush that traced a river along the valley floor. We took the alternative longer and less steep road which would take us through one of the 6 or 7 villages we would pass that day.

My bike’s caliper brakes, untested ’til now, showed their true colours and shuddered, shrieked and moaned as I headed downhill. One false move and any one of us could be over the side down a shale-y slope, and apart from the fall, any damage to us and the bikes would have gotten little support: our guide was carrying no first aid kit. He didn’t even have a set of tools let alone a spare tube or a tyre patch kit! We were ignorant of the facts but would learn that sometime later.

At the top of Africa on a dusty track more traversed by mule & cart than motorized transport, we were pretty much on our own. But I wasn’t thinking of that as I descended, last of 4, enjoying the spectacular view and fresh mountain air.

We turned off the main road and it became a little more treacherous and true-MTB on bikes that would – in Australia – have been laughed off an MTBA-approved start-line.

After 3 or 4 Km descent, our guide, who’d remained in front most of the journey, slowed the pace and when we caught up to him in the small village – of maybe 20 houses – he was talking to a shop-owner about getting his own brakes fixed. (The shop was a hole in the side of a barn.) They played around with the bike for a while and both seemed to be satisfied with the result and after that we took the opportunity to buy some bottled water to replenish supplies.

Meanwhile, a small group of kids (who popped up all over the mountains making me wonder what they do for schooling) came up the hill from a creek, laughing and pointing. Maybe we were today’s entertainment. The placing of hands on the bike (this seemed to be a ploy) and hands out had me reaching for a roll of Mentos I had in my pack. Giving it to the most senior (had to be no more than 6 or 7) it seemed to distract them although the smaller ones looked back at me longingly as if to say, “Well, where’s mine..?”. But the guide said something to them in Moroccan that saw the hands let the bikes go and we headed off.

Being last to mount the bike I was enjoying the sights and sounds of the place and, camera in hand, taking it slow as I was deciding what to photograph on the way. I had to pocket the camera quickly when I came to rocky but barely moist creek when – about 150 metres up the next hill – I was suddenly assailed by yet more kids. Appearing from nowhere, 3 older boys (maybe 10-12) again grabbed the bike with one hand and had their other hand out, this time more determined. I was apparently seeing the evolution of bandidos in the days journey as I had no choice but to stop the bike, get out yet another pack of Mentos and hand over. It wasn’t as well received as the other group and two of the hands stayed out. Was this to be highway robbery?

I fished out a pack of gum and it distracted them long enough for me to take off, though with barely enough speed to get away…. I spent the rest of the tour keeping an eye out for the next level of crims  – perhaps 15-year-old knife handlers? From then on I rode closer to the guide. Meandering along at the rear looking for photo opps made it more likely I’d end the ride with more carbos and potentially fewer puncture wounds!

The ride levelled out for a while as we passed through the upper levels of this second hillside village. What a life. The guide told us that about 40% of the locals are engaged in tourism; you can stay in some of the huts and there are heaps of guides and drivers; 20% are involved in handcrafts which are sold in the bigger towns; and the rest farming; walnuts, apples and cherries.

Stopping for a meal at the side of the road we got close up and personal into the agricultural side of life. Halfway through lunch (a tin of tuna and a large bun – sounds plain but was downed quickly and no-one had leftovers) 2 adults and 2 younger boys came along with sticks, 8-10 metres long, climbed a couple of huge trees overhanging the village and began to beat the branches, resulting in a mass of green (still wrapped in their covering) walnuts raining down the slope into the streets below. Precariously balanced along the branches, they thwacked and shook the nuts free. A couple of goats wandered along beneath the fray and started eating the nuts until they were first yelled at then were hit by falling walnuts and moved on. An old local strolled over to us, picked up a few of the drier nuts and brought them over, swapping with the guide for some of his fruit. The nuts tasted a bit young and bitter but amazing to eat off the tree.

From then we passed another 5 or so villages on rolling mountainsides; sometimes ascents but more often the longed for extended descents. Apart from the brakes I was loving it but then the guides lack of preparation came home to roost. His own brakes became loose again and he needed a hex key to reset then tighten the cable and it was then we learned he had absolutely no tools.

And in the few village stores he stopped at they too had nothing, so he tried to use front brakes only but on steep slopes he had to skid and nearly went over the edge – I was just behind him a couple of times and was sure he was going to lose it and it got so bad I was working out how we’d get down to rescue him! It never happened but boy it was close. About 7Km on he’d scared himself enough to walk or run the bike down the steeper parts and we all rode on more happily.

By this time we’d been on the journey for 6 hours – with a few stops where he would try and try again to adjust the brakes without tools for 15 minutes  or so and then take off again. No more bandidos though, and a lot of silence so we got some good shots but by this time the temperature started dropping as the sun fell below the peaks and we were wondering if we’d get back before it got cold. Tee shirts and shirts wouldn’t have been enough.

One great thing about Morocco – they have extensive phone coverage in the mountains (Optus & Vodafone take note!) and he managed to call our driver and we met him 3 km above the village of Asni where he’d planned  to pick us up.

By this time Mic was suffering as we’d actually ridden 37 km not 27, had ascended 40% of the time (not 10%) and now his brakes were giving out, plus we were all somewhat dehydrated. I was about to throw the bike up on the van but then Antonio asked if the final stretch was up or downhill. It was the latter, and as he said, “you can’t miss a downhill” and we agreed with the guide to ride down and was it ever worth it. The tarseal roads were mostly empty, we got some of the last sun and the brakes held out and even seemed to quiet down as we descended.

After stopping I bought and downed a large coke and put head down in the van and tried to get some shut eye, which, despite the noise & vibration, was fairly easily attained.

 

Postscript. Got no MTB in the UK, but London has a great self-rental bike scheme (20,000 bikes in clumps of 20 or 30 round the city, sponsored by Barclays Bank) and a fantastic bike network part of which I rode pre-dawn on a couple of mornings during the heatwave. Easy to use; credit card access, helmet free, low-cost (free under 30 minutes or a quid for less than 1 hour), the bikes are naff girls ones with baskets but at least they are sturdy and reliable (unlike the Parisian ones which are poorly maintained, though we did manage to find 3 that worked to ride to the Eiffel Tower at 10pm one balmy evening). It was a great way of riding the well-lit, Thames Path that goes from Westminster to Greenwich in the City of London. Better than running every day… Gets expensive if you ride for longer than 2 hours… Good thing is I think it turned my daughter onto biking… hey, just one step away from MTB!