Thursday, 30 January 2014
The Nearest Far Away Place
The choice of Morocco for a destination was the easiest part
.... in the biking and overland adventure world it's known as the "nearest
far away place". The hardest part was deciding where in Morocco to ride
to.
Having visited as a package tourist, I have only stayed in
Marrakech and find the city utterly fascinating .... spending time in the
Djemaa el Fna, the centre of the Medina in Marrakech itself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jemaa_el-Fnaa),
watching the snake charmers, henna tattoo ladies, the monkey wallopers (a bit
like the snake charmers but they use spaced out monkies in a cash for photo's
way) and a hundred other type of sales / scam / hustle merchant ply their trade,
it's amazing to watch how a passerby can be taken in by the merchants and then
encouraged to part with their money.
The best one I have seen yet is the guy who walks around
with a old style SLR film camera and offers to take your picture in the square
.... he then takes your email address and promises to send the photo onto you
... and all for only 15dh (£1.25). It takes a special kind of person to accept
this offer .... but many do. :-)
Having looked at Marrakech as a bikers destination there's
lots of places to stay but very little secure parking. When you're travelling
with your pride and joy you have to make sure it is safe at night. You can pay
someone as little as £2.00 for them to look after the bikes overnight and they
will sleep next to them as security but there's an ever present risk of them
finding it more profitable to strip the bike of some of it's parts or to "dispose"
of it to someone so they can sell it on the black market so I decided that for
this reason we needed somewhere a little quieter with a garage.
I found such a place at Imlil. A small village approximately 40
miles south east of Marrakech that is used as a jumping off point for people
trekking into the High Atlas mountains to the highest point in North Africa,
Toubkal, some 4165m in height.
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Why Marrakech
I was only 7 when my father took my then 14 year old brother and joined 10 of his ex-army buddies on a Boys own trip to Morocco and I have been fascinated with the place ever since.
They travelled in a rented Ford Transit minibus down through France and Spain then into Gibraltar to catch the ferry to Tangiers.
My own travels in the past 3 years have seen me visit Marrakech twice but I took the more accepted route of a package holiday and flying there.
Many times I have thought about recreating the drive down through France and into Spain but not until last year did I think about riding my motorcycle down to Marrakech.
Having organised and taken part in a few motorcycle based charity rides in the past I knew of a couple of friends who would be up for the challenge. I contacted them and sounded them out and "The Marrakech Express" was born.
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