Morocco Madness Day 13

Sleeping with the windows open and heating the sea crashing on the rocks left to a very good sleep. Breakfast was omelette and flat bread with rolls and jams; decent filter coffee too.

Packed and ready for the trek to the covered parking shed with our heavy bags and we're sweating already. 

30 dirhams to the parking guy, a bargain for overnight storage. We load up and wave goodbye. 

There's desert nearby and I intend to find it. We go through the back streets of Essaouira and frankly it's a dump, filled with rubbish and badly neglected. Industrial units and ramshackle slums next to the sea it looks like. Then a road off towards the sea and sand. It's deep and we struggle, especially Christopher on his beast with road oriented tyres. He goes over and once again I forget to take a picture - that's three I've missed! Righted and helped along the way we stop on the land side of some large dunes. We both bury our back wheels into the sand and the bikes stay upright without a stand. 

Then we pose for pictures and almost creating our very own Dune movie - Dune: Bat Shit Crazies perhaps?

Then it's the long hard work of extracting the bikes from the sand, that once again leaves us sweating. 🥵

Freed and we find a car wash to spray off the worst of the sand from the chain and surroundings. Later we spray then with lube that they desperately need, we feel the difference while spinning the rear wheels.

Then we have our first close-up experience with the Gendarmerie Royale, fortunately it was a friendly one. There we are, cruising along quite comfortably for the open road conditions - actually very gently compared to other faster roads we've travelled - and in the distance three figures. Before we know it, we're ushered to stop. It's a 60kph zone: 400 dirhams each please. We produce our papers and get into a good natured conversation; there's a battered R1200RT standing by after all, and bikers are bikers, plus we're the 'bat shit crazies' back from two marathons and also MDS veterans. The fine is reduced to 400 for the both of us. As we get ready to leave the chief gives me back 200 dirhams 'for coffee'! 

As we sit with our coffees admiring the view of the Atlantic coast, we still don't quite understand Morocco!

Understandable the police did not want their pictures taken, but were fine taking pictures of us with our own cameras - they even deleted pictures Christopher had taken of identifying marks, and they deleted the deleted pictures; there's a man that knows his way attend an iPhone!

The views from the cafe over the flat land leading to the sea are impressive and the waves can be seen in the distance.

Then a long, fast - but not too fast - ride, filling up once and and battling a strong side wind over the relatively flat, now increasingly agricultural land, that sees us leaning over into it. It's not fun, but we get through. 

Eventually we reach the outskirts of Casablanca, which has an edgy feel and the traffic is more intense, kids are wheelieing mopeds and T-Maxs are the top dog two wheelers. I pose for pictures outside the Hassan II Mosque and shortly after we pass by  Rick's Place (from the film "Casablanca").

But Rick's is too posh for us and so we find a pizza place a shirt ride down the road... "We'll always have P... izza". Good pizza and then onto our hotel on Mohammedia the primary oil city in Morocco.

Recovery then ice cream seeking. We find a place labelled gelato, but they don't have any. They point around the corner where we find a place, and despite my ridiculously poor French, we actually manage to get some one cream to enjoy.

Big Kms planned tomorrow, heading back to Tangier Med port, so we decide to be up and ready by 10am... Good luck with that!