On a Bike and a Prayer
day 27. down towards the sea
We watched the sun climb and pass above us another day in Amsouzart, as Andrea lay in pain, moving with the sun to stay in the shade.
She was well enough to ride the next day though, and we were on our bikes, filled with bread and coffee by 7.10am and off into the sunrise and the scarlet sky.
The track lead south to Amsouzart following the valley of the gurgling River Tifnoute splashing 100 metres below us, and suddenly next to us, as the sand and shingle track climbed, and descended and crossed the vale. The giant peaks of Toubkal and her brothers were soon masked by gentle brown flaky sandstone hills as we traversed the western Atlas foothills.
Igli had a modest souk nestling and bustling in a mayhem of bleating goats on their way to slaughter, and braying donkeys reluctantly parked on the edge in a walled compound. The walls of the souk were unlocked garage style stores and the centre a temporary affair of beige canvas limply draped on raw wooden branches enclosing spices, teas, coffees, sugar cones, fly-swamped fruits and slabs of crusty meat.
We searched out some yogurts and stuffed ourselves with warm flat breads smothered in melting soft cheese and washed down with fanta. After a few packs of biscuits we were off again, bumping down gravelly hairpin bends past bristly thorn shrubs and crumbling dry stone walls - across wide clear beach like fords and over rocky limestones pavements. The small settlements of mud and wood seemed penciled in precariously to impossible positions - sketched in a vivid imagination and then converted to reality.
Swifts and shallows swooped and spiralled low and fast
chasing invisible flies in gravity-defying acrobatics. Kestrels sawed on
treads of wind which died and dropped their cargo to the ground. The ups and
downs of the road punctuated with smiling happy children made for an enjoyable
day - made better by our miraculous progress of 75 kilometres.
The mountains dropped away unexpectedly and suddenly we were bumping along flat cobbled river beds which crossed bland flat green plains piercing and knitting together scattered communities of wild west dust bowl roaded tin-pot towns.
It was late in the afternoon when Abdelmalet beckoned us into the shade of his porch - amidst the chaos of a house building session. He was a big Pavarotti-like African man with huge biceps breathing beneath a baggy white shirt - tucked into an equally baggy pair of faded shrink-wash jeans. He had a deep booming laugh and talked quickly in French - speaking of his brother in Belgium and his friends in France and Israel. He could not believe that his niece in France had left home already, she was only 18. In his village whole generations lived together. That was why they were building a larger home here.
He poured us tea from a great height so that it frothed into the cups, and told us about his work. He sold encyclopaedias for a company in Casablanca - working a few weeks away from home and then returning to help his father or build a house.
We left the hospitality of the encyclopaedia man with the sun low in the sky and peddled the last few kilometres on dirt track. We stopped to reminisce about the hardships at the end of the dust and looked back the 65 kilometres into the misty valley from where we'd come. The giant peaks still loomed in the far distance - tumbling down to the basin we rolled through. We turned and peddled off 3 a breast in blissful comfort on our first tarmac road for over a week.
Aoulouz was four kilometres south and out of our way at the main junction. But it bought a pleasant surprise - a new slightly unfinished `plush' hotel in the centre of town, was offering triple rooms for 30Dh. We jumped at the chance of such unaccustomed luxury and tucked into a meal of beef and chips and salad and cake and thick creamy yogurts.
All that spoilt this blissful heaven was my gear sifter, which had refused to go onto my top chain ring since this morning, preventing me from using a third of my gears. Convinced that the problem lay in the sifter and not the derailleur I dismantled the former. On removing the first screw, it shot apart like a shattering porcelain plate hit with a mallet.