On a Bike and a Prayer
day 2. south to the sand.
It was the Koran that woke us at 4.00am crooning cockerel-like, but we lay in the twilight for another hour before making for the train station. The second class carriage was clean, comfortable and cool. We found a compartment and settled down to watch the flat brown plains slide rhythmically by. A man already installed in the cabin, and cocooned in a turban and robe assured us the train was going to Casablanca. This was a shock as 'Cassa' was no where near our starting point on the fringes of the Sahara. It took all our powers of guessing and pointing at maps to confirm that we had to change trains at a town called Sidi Kacem, about one hour down the line. We wondered just how our bikes would magically change trains as well.
Sidi Kacem bought a bustling change and Stephane strutted around like a brooding chicken trying to establish where our bikes were. He wasn't given much chance as our train sped off towards Cassablanca. The new train was brimming with bodies and bags, and we stood swaying in the corridor until Meknes.
With over-zealous glee at the end of the line, we pilled off at the first sign of the metropolis. It was with mounting pessimism that we learnt the bikes would arrive at Meknes central, over a mile away. It took the rest of the morning to transfer the luggage and ourselves to the other station, in a vain hope that our bikes would arrive sometime in the future. We dozed the afternoon away on some thick grass beneath an avenue of palm trees. The 4.30pm train arrived at 5.30pm and we paced up and down the waiting room like expectant fathers. The baggage handlers had been watching us all afternoon and now took great pride in playing the part of midwifes, delivering the precious babies still in one piece and with everything intact.
Feeling complete again, the next step was to catch a night bus to Midelt, some two hundred kilometres further south. Stephane had already enquired about taking our bikes on the bus and had been refused outright. A different approach was needed. The baggage attendant had no objections, and so we used his consent to persuade the ticket seller to take us. Everyone seemed happier when we dismantled the bikes and taped the front wheels onto the frames, but now the porters fought out who should carry them to the bus. It was the oldest and most withered leaf-like man that won. He immediately came to life and discarding his drooping fag he sped wildly round the bus depot, Ben Hur style wheeling each bike on it's rear wheel.
Zelda broke our journey at 1.00am - a one street place as
anonymous as a motorway service station, with twenty-four hour stalls of rancid
fruit and festering meat. It was cold and moist air prickled my skin. Jolly
hashish smokers plied their vice - with hash hazed grins and starring eyes as
blank as the sheep's heads in the butcher's doors.
Midelt an hour later reunited us with the bikes again. We installed ourselves in a pleasant green cobweb strewn stable style room - spacious enough to take both us and the bikes. It boasted a working basin and even a bidet. Sleep was sound and the noisy fiesta across town just washed us into unconsciousness.
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