of laughter and calls of `too
much wine'.
On a Bike and a Prayer
day 20. up...up...up
It was still dark when the alarm in my bag bleeped its contribution to the pre-dawn chorus outside. We lay motionless using the darkness as an excuse not to start. Six a.m. bought a glow which allowed us to sit up and breakfast on our egg, bread and jam. We had packed, had a coffee and were peddling out of town by 7.00am.
The stakes marking the edge of the pass rose above us on the shadowy ascent like vast organ pipes in a roofless Cathedral. We stopped and starred as a passing Shell tanker began its monotonous climb of the passs. It was still in sight twenty minutes later, it's wheezing engine ebbing and flowing with every bend in the track.
We began the climb at 7.30am and were soon strung out chromatogram style Stephane's bobbing black and white helmet above his shocking pink frame padding in the lead, me in the middle with red scarf tied around my forehead, and Andrea bringing up the rear - white blazing helmet and rainbow mirror glasses hiding any expression of agony.
One hour later we were all at the refuge, sipping coffee and chatting to an English couple who had been invited to a wedding the night before; but which turned out to be a circumcision party.
We pressed on before 9.00am chimed on Andrea's watch and after another short climb found ourselves at the rock-sellers mecca at the summit. After the inevitable photos and fighting off the rock sellers we pressed on free-wheeling round the bends, from sun to shade - the sun still low and calm in the pastel sky.
By 11.00am we were in Igherm, after a 16km climb and an 11km descent. It was another one street town - with traders selling their meagre rations. The plan was to find a hotel, check the bikes and bags in and hitch to Ouarzazate, the large old French Foreign Legion settlement 80km further south. We would return tomorrow to resume the ride on day twenty-two.
The hotel part was easy, the hitching wasn't. The town had a resident road block check - Laurel and Hardy police double act just outside town. No one would pick us up leaving town, before the check point. With his in mind we installed ourselves further out of town. No one however would pick us up the other side of the check point after the `friendly' police had a word with all the drivers.
For almost two hours we sat in the mid-day sun eating bread and laughing cow cheese, and lazily thumbing anything that moved past us. In the whole afternoon we only had one offer from a passing taxi - for 100Dh. We declined this politely and ambled angrily back into town.
That night, we dined with a policeman from the road block and a lawyer. The lawyer was concerned mainly with divorces and water rights. He was fat and balding, with a sadly typical bigoted view of women and Berbers. The policeman re-enforced my thoughts that they were all just monkeys in uniforms. He regurgitated his brain-washed ideas that the Berber language didn't exist - it was simply a slang bastardisation of Arabic. `Argot' he repeated. He was unbending in his views as indeed he had to be to hold his limited position of authority.
I tried to explain in my limited French that Berber was the first language in the region and in fact it had been found in writing on tablets to the south. He seemed unconvinced and I left abruptly with growing stomach pains.
With an ominous sickness was brewing in my stomach - I took
two Biscopan and lay down on the large sagging double bed. In the darkness the
others came in and went to bed. After one and a half hours of abdominal agony
I could stand it no longer and leapt out of bed to dash outside and throw up the
potato omelette all over the patio. A group of soldiers sitting at a table in
the far corner echoed my wretchings with hoots
of laughter and calls of `too
much wine'.
Savouring the few minutes of relief in my stomach I took another Biscopan and went back to bed. One hour later the same happened again. All in the bar gathered around insisting that it was too much alcohol. This was the first place we had seen it for sale - and it was not a pretty sight with policeman and soldiers propping up the bar from early in the morning to late at night. It was like handing over the key for the ammunition room to the village idiot. The bubble had burst in this town and soured the Islamic hospitality.
I crawled back to bed and left Stephane to explain it was food poisoning - something no one in the bar could comprehend. On Stephane's insistence of medical help - a doctor was summoned and trooped in with his nurse in tow. In candle light the two worked to give me two thigh injections - a painless one to stop the vomiting and an excruciating one to settle the stomach and which numbed my left leg from toe to neck like a jarring bruise.
listen to audio diary