Starting the Carrettera Austral

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As we’re running a little early it’s still really cold further south, so there’s absolutely no hurry to get anywhere soon.

This does not suit our personalities at all but we’re trying.

So we kicked around Pucon a couple of days, paid too much for an oil change and debated where to go next.

We have a little road map that has a mark on a town called Valdivia and the word ‘bohemian’ written next to it.

So Valdivia it is.

The ride there took us through an area called the Siete Lagos route, (Seven Lakes). Lots of lush scenery, really nice riding.

Other than a university district, the town itself was not all that bohemian, but there was a colony of seals living on the river bank in the middle of town.

An enormous one took a lunge at Sally when she got too close trying to take a pic, causing her to trip over and land on her ass, I think that was my highlight of Valdivia. Oh and the brewery.

From Valdivia our route took us back to the lakes where we did a lap of Lago Ranco and then Lago Llanquihue complete with 3 (or 4?) volcanoes surrounding it. Amazing.

We got our first bit of rain late in the day, and decided to call it at Frutillar baho, another cute town on a lake where we found a cool little bnb without too much hassle.

From here we debated whether to spend another couple of days on a detour to see a peninsula sw of Puerto Montt (the start of the Carreterra Austral) or just get moving onto the Carreterra A.

Surprisingly we chose the detour. Loaded up, fueled up, and travelled 60km before getting the shits with riding around in circles, changed our minds and detoured to Puerto Varas.

As a side note, there are a lot of well cared for dogs in Chile. Never seen so many people walking dogs, and one such dog has just tried to join Sal and I in the Cabana we’re in for the night…

He was quite insistent, and almost pushed Sal over trying to get in :-). Two falls in one week… Now that would have been worth blogging about.

Back at Puerto Varas… we went through a check list of stuff we wanted to get done before embarking on the C. Australis.

Get more Chilean pesos and spread out the various bits of cash we have between our riding suits, no small task. But done.

Recharge the phone (fail).

Replace a headlight (fail x 2)

Find a bag to store the smelly fuel bladders in (fail)

Get a bit of hose to syphon fuel if needed (done) and…

Find some antacid medication for me (done) thanks pm.

Pay an etag bill (fail)

Get insurance for Argentina (fail)

Do some housekeeping for life back home (win).

I realize all of this is somewhat boring, and the extremely strange hotel we stayed in, with it’s cast of equally strange residents, burning smells wafting thru at all hours and pillows full of critters would make better reading, but life on the road is not all roses (or weird hotels).

(inside Sally’s pillow, there’s critters in there!).

Stay with me though, I’m almost done. Now it’s today.

Back to not being in a hurry and waiting for the weather to warm up a bit… So next destination we chose was just 60km away at the foot of a Nat Park called Alerce, which contains among other things an Alerce tree that’s 3000 years old. That’s not a typo. 3000.

Todays forecast was for rain, so we reasoned it would be better to walk in the rain than ride in it, so we did the short stint to this cabana where the same black dog still wants to get in…

… unloaded all our stuff and went hiking in the rain.

Good thing our rain suits are in good nick because it rained solid for the three hours we were walking…

(Sals hood isn’t waterproof so she put a plastic bag on her head to stay dry. Bag head.)

There was a nice waterfall at the end, and the 3000 year old tree too… Did I mention it’s 3000 years old. Holy shit! That tree was here 1000 years before Jesus!

Tonight we’re staying in a cool little cabana (small holiday house), that looks over the Reloncavi Estuary. A lot of the accommodation along here is in tiny self contained houses so we’re making the most of the kitchenette.

We have a bottle of wine, 2 beers, some locally smoked salmon, a pack of pasta, an onion, a few small tomatoes, some salami and cheese, peanuts, and a bunch of saggy asparagus to turn into dinner.

Should be a wild night!

(our view)

xoxo

Into the Andes

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After a couple of nights at Viracay national Park, we decided to head up to the frontier with Argentina at the Pechuente pass, with a yet to be decided plan thereafter.

The options were to cross into Argentina, ride a bit of the route 40 and return to Chile, or just turn around at the border and come back down the same way.

There were a few things at play… We had no mandatory Argentinian third-party insurance, but could possibly buy it at the border (cost penalty unknown). We also had no Argentinian pesos, which would usually not be any sort of problem. However, there’s a currency crisis in Argentina which means it’s actually quite hard to get cash. You can withdraw cash from an ATM but the maximum withdrawal is $50 and the ATM fee for doing this is $10. Not really the way we roll.

Alternatively, we have some US dollars on us which we could have possibly changed on the black market, and the last option was to do what all the other travelers here do and transfer money to ourselves via Western Union and go pick it up in a Western Union office, which surprisingly ends up being one of the most cost-effective ways of doing it.

You just need to find a Western Union office. In the Andes. That has cash. Seems easy enough.

The last problem was that our new bikes only have 11 lt fuel tanks and we weren’t really sure where the next petrol station was going to be….

On the way up to the pass I was feeling quite nervous. It’s been 7 or 8 years since we last did this stuff, would we still remember the ins and outs?

The road wound its way up higher and higher from forest Forest into open mountains, snow covered peaks around us, mountain lakes and snow melt rivers coursing down along the roadside.

We only got as high as 2,500 m, which is moderate for the Andes, further north we saw 4,900 m on Betsy! But the scenery was magnificent nonetheless. Just the scale of the view is like nothing else, it’s vast.

And a bit scary when you’re alone and unsure about fuel range. Predictably we arrived at the border and decided to cross over and work the rest out as we went. The insurance was a non-event, no one asked for it, and there was a guy selling fuel at the back of a restaurant behind the Argentinian customs post. This time I filled a fuel bladder as well just in case.

Then I got talking to some Argentinian bikers at the same restaurant to get the lowdown on the currency rates, and managed to change 100 USD with one of them!

Win 3

Killing it babe, we have fuel, food, dodged the insurance, and now have cash. It’s no longer no cash here.

Next was to get to a town with a Western Union office and get loaded up on pesos. This part of the Andes is extremely remote, road conditions very wildly and you can’t really trust anything anyone tells you about the road, including the info on the maps we have.

We suspected the road to the next town included some non-paved sections, which from what people had told us we guessed might be about 70 or 170 km worth, but the description of that section varied from, it’s excellent dirt, it’s volcanic rock, to its deep sand the whole way.

Okay, let’s head out for a look, if it turns to snot, we can just go back to Chile. Sally seemed good with this plan.

In the end it was just a normal gravel road, with some sections of vaguely loose small stones, which on Betsy would have been comfortable at 120 km an hour with my eyes closed, but on these Chinese bikes was not so comfy even at 80. Anyway, we got there.

The bikes are actually not horrible, particularly for what they cost, we’re just used to something better. It’s going to take some adjustment.

We made our destination late in the day and quickly (Not really) found a nice Posada to sleep in, with a little restaurant just next door. Perfect.

Next days mission was to get pesos. This was an important task for us because we think that the further south we go the towns will get smaller and the task of getting cash might get harder and harder. Compounded by most places not taking credit card payment.

We had two waypoints for Western Union agents in subsequent towns 100 km apart or so. The first was a no-go, a place selling knick-knacks with no cash here. But the next looked more promising, there was a line of locals with bundles of cash in hand paying their bills.

Is there any cash here? (This is not even a joke)

Yes we have a lot, really a lot.

We connect to their Wi-Fi, download the Western Union app, register, go through the two-factor authentification which is a total pain in the ass, transfer myself 1000 AUD, show the girl behind the counter the code and get the cash. F*** yeah. Mission accomplished.

It’s not Cuba but still… I now have significantly more stuff in my jacket pockets. AUD 1000 is 10 bills. The Argentinian equivalent is a wad 2 in thick! Geez.

With that, we rode another 100 km to the final destination for the day, filled with fuel and decided to go another 100 km to a town higher up by a lake, it was only 4:00 p.m. so this seemed reasonable..

30 km into this section we turn into a small dirt road and a storm comes to meet us. Balls.

This was a terrible idea

Cue sheltering in a border post for a few minutes to get our wets on and off we went.

Apart from the rain and cold at 4°, it was a spectacular ride that took us through high mountain Forest with weird shaped pine trees, rivers and long valleys in succession.

Most significantly though it was incident free!

Sal had found an apartment that was hugely discounted for off season, so we avoided the riding around and looking endlessly for a place to stay, went straight to a supermarket to buy dinner and wine, and settled into a warm clean room, put on some music, cooked some dinner and defragged.

That takes me to yesterday…. Time dilation… So hard to believe yesterday was only yesterday and last week was only last week, so much has happened.

Got to run now, bikes are getting their first oil change to maintain the warranty which will be finished in a bit so I have to go

Xoxo

And off we go!

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It was always going to happen.

After years and thousands of kilometres as a pillion, much to the disappointment of pretty much everyone around me, the time has come for me to go it alone on my own two wheels… under the very stressed and watchful eye of Dean, protected by Roger the dog from my Mum and guided by Mighty Boosh from my sister Natalie.

We made the break a couple of days ago from from Santiago, after spending 5 days hanging out at a hostel that attracts bikers from all over the world who are Ushuaia bound. Suddenly what we were about to do, was not that out of the ordinary anymore. It’s nice to be around other travellers again.

I was a little apprehensive to take my new bike for a first ride and had some difficulties with the positioning of the gear lever with my big stiff tech 3 boots, but dean managed to alter the gear lever so I’m not finding myself in neural in the middle of a busy intersection.

Riding on the ‘wrong’ side of the road takes a little time to get your head around however what makes things harder is one way streets that change direction at certain times of the day. 

Upon leaving Santiago Dean checked he had the correct route and we knew the direction we were heading, taking into account the one way streets. ‘so, two blocks and we turn left?’ I confirmed with Dean in the intercom. ‘yes babe, we turn left and then right’. So off we go…me wobbling out of the driveway, too focused to wave goodbye to the guys seeing us off, and fighting with the gears to get from first to second. We get to the one way road to turn left and we see a car going the wrong way. ‘what an idiot’ Dean’s says as he makes a left turn, ‘as if he’s going to wrong way down a one way road!’ I then make the left turn and notice another car coming towards us…and then realise 3 lanes of traffic are coming towards us. It was the time of the day where all the traffic went in the opposite direction to all the signs. Perfect. Not a great start.

After spending a night in Curico, we got off the highway and found ourselves in wine country, or at least there were some vines. With the Andes as a back drop it was really pretty. We made our way to Altos de Lircay National park with the vague thought that we may find a cheap place to stay and go on one of the hikes.

It was starting to look like we may be out of luck finding a cheap place so we stopped for a coffee and empanada to work out our next move. Luckily for us the lady running the cafe had a cabin available for around $35 USD. It had a fire, a kitchen and our own bathroom. Perfect!

We spent the next two days hiking in the national park which took us to some amazing view points of the Andes. Yesterday we walked 12 kms and today we walked around 30 and up to over 2000 metres.  We kept our record of never being overtaken and did it in record time. Poor Dean. We are shagged.

It’s cold and we are sitting by the fire. It’s still light outside which feels a bit odd but I guess we will get used to this as we head further south.  We are on to our 20th round of cards and listening to Dire Straits for the second time (no wifi and only limited albums downloaded). We will sleep very well tonight.

Leaving is…

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always conflicting, looking forward to new experiences but back at home, family and friends we’ll miss. It’s a weird sort of inbetween trip we’re on this time though, not long enough to feel really away, but it’s not a two week holiday either.

Here’s what leaving for a few months on a bike trip looks like…

(Not sure how much of this I’m going to write, typing on a phone screen is one of my least favourite things so this could be brief.)

Sitting on the plane as I wrote this and feeling nostalgic, the morning went without a hiccup, and we had the most gorgeous sunrise coming over the hills to see us off.

The last time we flew to South America we were on a mission to smuggle Betsy out of Peru and then somehow ride home. It’s a shame we weren’t blogging back then because some of the most crazy shit we’ve been involved in went down in those following weeks.

I still remember the conversation I had with Keith (who I barely knew at the time) about our ‘plan’.

“so you’re going to just get to a border and try to cross illegally? Is that really your plan?”

“umm… yes pretty much”

“hmmm”

I was still limping from the broken leg then. Geez.

Anyhow, that was all 14 years ago and so much has changed in the world, but some things are the same too, the Andes are still there, so is Pisco, can’t wait to see them again!

Mmmm Sausage burrito for breakfast…

“oh yuk, I’m gonna see if they have something vegetarian”

Thanks to everyone who came to see us off this past few days, we’ll miss you all.

Busy few days ahead, get over the jet lag, consume Pisco sours, pick up/work on bikes and get everything ready for the trip south, wish us luck!

xxoo

Diving in Raja Ampat

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We’re a long way from Morocco (the last post), and while quite a lot has happened in the interval, not much of it has warranted a travel blog post, until now 🙂

Our front garden

Diving in Raja Ampat has been on our bucket list since forever, and was one of the things we thought might happen in this latest episode of “Waiting for the Bike”

This is now Season 4, Episode 3 of Waiting for the Bike.

(The series history is as follows… S4 Ep 1: Flying to Johannesburg, S4 Ep 2: The RORO boat to Italy, S4 Ep 3: Container to Melbourne)

But now I digress, so… Diving in Raja Ampat, what’s it all about? Most people have never even heard of Raja Ampat, where is it, why do you go there, is it really the “greatest diving in the world??”

Raja Ampat is a marine park located in Western Papua, Indonesia (which is the western bit of the big Island to the north of Australia which includes Papua, and Papua New Guinea too). It’s about 1500km directly north of Darwin. The closest city to Raja Ampat is Sorong, and people visit the area for the diving, snorkelling and beautiful undiscovered beaches.

Since about 2012 I’ve been hearing scuba divers mention Raja Ampat, usually in the phrase “we want to go to Raja Ampat next”, and the websites and dive shops all call it the “most amazing diving in the world”, which to be fair, is also said about the Phillipines, Thailand, Malaysia etc, so i was a little sceptical.

After about 4 weeks of S4Ep3 Waiting for the Bike, we had been to Thailand (Koh Chang), Vietnam (the Da Nang area), Thailand again (Chiang Mai), the Philippines (Coron), and now find ourselves in Indonesia for a month en route home.

So we added up the flights to Raja Ampat ($1000), the accomodation ($360 for 6 nights including food), and the diving ($1400 total for 12 dives each), and decided that spending AUD$3000 between us for a week away (when we’ve already been away for 9 months and this is supposed to be the cheap bit!!) was a bad idea and disappointedly decided to stay in Bali and save money.

The following day we wandered around Kuta, Legian and Seminyak, looked at what we could do in Ubud or Nusa Lembongan for a few weeks, scratched our heads a bit, surfed the net for a few hours, and then we booked the flights to Raja Ampat 🙂

Most people dive Raja Ampat from a liveaboard boat, but the boat prices START at $1500 USD per person so we ruled that out pretty quickly and decided to stay in one of the many homestays on the Islands.

We got lucky and somehow came across a little dive shop called Soul Divers, recently opened on the Island Kri, run by a young couple Tibo and Carrie from France and the US respectively. Usually we’d prefer to dive with local guides, but a lot of the reviews we read about the local homestay diveshops in Raja Ampat were less than encouraging, and after speaking to Carrie on the phone, we were convinced. (They’re also more reasonably priced than a lot of the other operators in Raja Ampat).

We also found beachfront accommodation at Warasnus Homestay, only 5 mins walk from the diveshop, so it all fell into place.

Warasnus homestay

Arriving at Sorong Airport we were greeted by the usual shouting touts selling taxi rides to the ferry terminal, but we had lots of time and it was only a few km so we decided to walk there instead. The Indonesian word for ‘going for a walk’ is “jalan jalan” and it’s always fun telling Indonesians that we dont need a taxi because “jalan jalan”. In some bizarre twist of linguistics and culture, the words “jalan jalan” miraculously melt the resolve of the most hardened touts and we pass the sea of men like Moses!

The walk to the harbour was made a little disillusioning by the volume of plastic rubbish being thrown into drains in Sorong, sitting there waiting for the next big rains to wash it into the ocean… sigh.

A gutter of plastic waiting to be flushed out to sea

Anyway, from the ferry terminal we took the $10 ferry to Waisai (2hrs), where we hooked up with a couple of Aussie girls going to Kri Island and split the $70 boat ride there between the 4 of us.

Arriving at Warasnus we were shown to our bungalow on the beach, a simple bamboo and wood structure on stilts, with a foam mattress, mosquito net and shared toilet and wash rooms a few metres away. We usually had rats in our bungalow at night time, but this seems to be normal for the all the homestays in Raja Ampat, and you get used to it. They only have electricity in the evenings.

Our bungalow

The toilets were cleanish (by Indonesian standards), and the wash rooms pretty basic (big plastic container usually full of water, with a scoop to throw water over yourself).

Meals were quite simple: rice, tempe, fish or chicken, and some vegetables, the usual suspects in Indonesian warungs. Not overly impressive, but not bad either. Breakfast for the first couple of days was our only real complaint, (sponge cake or white bread and chocolate syrup), but we had a chat with the ladies in the kitchen and they switched it to fried rice or noodles which was much better.

That afternoon we walked the steep ‘path’ over the hill to the Soul Divers shop and met Tibo and Carrie, tried on our dive equipment and started to get excited for the next days diving.

So… is Raja Ampat the “best diving in the world”? Well, in our experience it’s pretty close 🙂 In any single dive we would usually see reef sharks, wobbegong sharks, turtles, barracuda, giant trevally, shrimp, nudies, sting rays, and all manner of reef fish. Several dives also have oceanic mantas which are pretty awesome, octopus, giant napoleons, sea horses, dugong, sweet lips… the list goes on.

My new favourite underwater animal, a Wobbegong shark

Until now our favourite diving has been Komodo National Park, and Raja Ampat comes pretty close to it. The reef in Mexico and Belize was next best, and everything else is grouped into “nice diving”, with the exception of Sipadan which was really nice, but everything else about Sipadan was a bit shit. To put it into perspective for the Scuba divers reading this, we both have 100+ dives, in some of the more well known sites in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Belize, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Zanzibar etc.

Lots of little islands in crystal clear water

Anyway, we had an amazing time! Soul divers usually came right to the pier at our homestay to pick us up in the morning, we’d do a couple of dives, return for lunch, then were picked up again for the afternoon dive. The dive briefings were super professional, and Tibo and Rocky were great dive guides, who really care about the reef. So if you’re thinking about diving in Raja Ampat we’d definately recommend Soul Divers. (and no we didn’t get a discount, and usually never recommend anyone!)

After 3 days diving we’d initially planned to move to another island, but were having such a good time that we extended our stay in Warasnus and dived 2 extra days with Soul Divers. After the diving we’d usually spend a few hours with the other divers and the staff at Soul Divers, watching the sun set and drinking a few almost cold Bintangs. Pretty cool.

Another beautiful sunset

Diving aside, the nicest part of Raja Ampat was the beautiful little island, with no cars or moto’s, not much electricity, patchy phone signal, and no running water, it really felt like we were a world away from anywhere.

If someone is considering diving Raja Ampat we’d recommend avoiding the liveaboards… you can dive the same divesites for less money, and spend your nights sitting on a beach watching the sun set instead of being stuck on a boat with 20 other divers. The other advantage is that Soul Divers was able to organise visits to the more challenging divesites for experienced divers only, which many of the liveaboards skip altogether as they need to please the masses. We also witnessed liveaboard boats throwing waste into the ocean, (which we’re told is commonplace), when we reported the issue to the owners of the boat, their response was “everyone does it”. Not cool.

Snow in the High Atlas Mountains

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It’s been an interesting week, we’ve had rain, a sand storm, incredibly strong winds, and now the last two days in the snow!

hard to believe we were in sand dunes two days ago!

Yesterday we’d planned to ride back north via a similar path we came south on, but right at the top of the High Atlas range we passed a town overflowing with taxis and mini vans, which usually means the road is blocked ahead, and this was no exception.

The long way around took us about 100km out of our way, and landed us into a little known town last night, where 2 of the 4 hotels were full, and the other two were hell holes even by our lowly standards.

we’ve been colder before, but not by much!

The worst one was not really a functioning hotel, the ground floor was a long abandoned renovation site, with walls broken and exposed wiring and bits of rubble and wood debris everywhere, the tiny  rooms had really small single beds too short for adults to stretch out in, and there was no water in the bathroom (which incidentally was on the roof).

Of course we wound up in that one – it had somewhere to park the bike! But only after I asked three times if they actually had hot water.  After a day at between 0 and 9 degress you really want a hot shower!  The manager promised me he did, but when we went out for dinner we saw him in the construction site (reception) arguing with another guy over a gas bottle… not a good sign.

it looks a bit like Siberia up here

Later on he softly knocked on the door and then ran away, but I opened faster than he’d hoped and called him back.  He explained that there was a problem, and there was no water.  Shock!!  I suggested that he should compromise on the price as a result and he refunded me 15 dihrams out of the original 60 ($6).

He did bring us extra blankets though as it was bloody cold last night – always entertaining watching Sal try to sleep without actually touching the fetid blankets 🙂

we passed this lake that was almost totally frozen over

Never mind, I went to bed half dressed and rolled out of bed straight back into my riding suit for today’s final 250km in the mountains.

We’re not really prepared for such low temperatures on the bike, and even wearing everything we have, we still suffer on cold days.  We stop now and then to restore feeling in our hands, and are praying continuously for rain to hold off, and the mountains to end.

lucky for us, our detour had just been snow ploughed the afternoon before!

We were lucky today and just beat the stormy weather into a city called Mekes, and are holed up in a lovely little room with a steaming hot shower 🙂  More rain is forecast for tomorrow so we may take a down day before the last day of riding back to Algericas for the ferry to Spain.

Love to all xoxo

 

 

 

Sal gets her own wheels

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After our Fury road day, we’d planned to stay a couple of days in Merzouga, but it turns out that unless you want to book in for an “authentic Sahara experience” (ride a camel for ten minutes into a pre-prepared sand camp and let some poor Moroccans do everything for you), there’s not actually that much to do there.

So we packed the bike in the morning planning to go see the largest sand dunes and possibly stop in the next town where there was a date festival going on…. Yeah I know, pretty cool huh! Date Festival! It’s Party time!!

We stopped just short of the dunes and I unloaded all the luggage to enjoy the ride a bit more.

“Do you want to come babe”

“Are you serious?! NO!!”

Riding around in the sand on my own wasn’t much fun, so 10 mins later I came back, we loaded up again and headed off. I was a bit bummed out for Sal not to experience the sea of bigger sand dunes, so I suggested we hire a quad bike so Sal could go too…

Half an hour of negotiation and we settled on hiring one bike and the mandatory guide took me on the back.

en route to the sand dunes from Merzouga

I’m not sure if Sal had more fun than me watching her, but it was really cool. We rode for half an hour into the dunes, stopped for some pics and then headed back just as a nasty sand Storm was brewing.

riding like a pro!

i got to try the quad too, it’s much more relaxing on 4 wheels!!

Southern Morocco, Fury Road.

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“so are you guys joining us on the dirt, or taking the highway?”
“Babe?”
“We’re joining you on the dirt rd” Sal responded tersely…
“Are you sure Sal?”
“This is your time babe, just take the dirt road…”

It’s not all sunshine and roses but I do consider myself to be the luckiest guy on earth for being with Sally.  We’d been doing 8 to 10hr days on mountain passes, some good going but mostly rocky, bumpy roads.  Heaven for me, but not so much fun on the back.

one of the many oasis we passed yesterday

The morning of this particular day of off-road riding started out at 2000m altitude, 8 degrees and raining. Not horrible stormy rain, but on the back of the last few days it wasn’t really what we wanted.

At breakfast we talked about my planned route through the mountains…

“We’re taking the highway today aren’t we Dean” it wasn’t a question.
“Um… Yeah I guess so.”

After an hour in the rain, the storm broke and we stopped for a cup of tea and to take some layers off.  Two other guys on bikes who were in the same small town stopped too, and we sat and chatted over the worst cup of tea that’s ever been made.

They were headed towards the bit of piste (french for dirt road) that I had pencilled in before the rain started (and before our earlier agreement to take the highway), which just happened to start about 800m from where we were sitting, and end at the town we were headed towards.

It was just a bit too tempting.

Before we headed off Sal put her wet weather gear back on muttering something about the storm on the horizon, while I expressed positive thoughts about our chances of staying dry.

It’s very rare that we set off in some direction that Sal doesn’t want to go in. I’m not usually brave enough, but it wasn’t actually raining – and we’re in Morocco!!

I’m not religious, but on these rare moments I find myself fervently praying for a good outcome.

No rain and a nice track = happy Sally.
Rain and sandy track = Fury Road.

In the end it was somewhere in between, a bit of rain, but mostly beautiful piste that criss crossed a wide dried up river for the afternoon.  There was also a point where we literally rode into a large open cut mine (Erzberg rodeo style!), complete with enormous trucks and yellow bunting, at the same time as it was raining, that bit wasn’t so great, but it wasn’t Fury Road either 😉  We spent that night in a cheap hotel (surprise surprise!) and the 2 Czech guys decided to join us for today’s ride too.

We’re now in the south of Morocco, the desert bit, and desert means sand, and (if you’ve been paying attention you’d know that) sand means Fury Road.

Tricky.

Yesterday it took us about 4 minutes to overtake our new friends and then we spent most of the day waiting for them, especially in anything that had the slightest bit of sand to cross, so we weren’t surprised when they decided that the route we were taking today was too difficult, and after 70km they took the highway north instead.

Sweet Irony.

We spent the rest of today following a 170km gps track that didn’t really have an actual track matching it, more like a hundred different wheel tracks spread across a few hundred metres in the desert, that all went roughly in the same direction.

one section took us through a dried up flood plain between mountain ranges

Sometimes the tracks diverged and then came back together and other times they kept going in different directions, and we had to double back or ride through the dunes to get back to the ones going in our direction.

The track followed a riverbed at first, then it was stony desert, then it wound its way between separate sand dunes, and yes, (you’ve been waiting for it!), eventually the track crossed dunes, and then we were continuously in rolling dunes.

the only signpost we saw all day

Not big bad horrible Dakar style dunes, but still Fury Road worthy.

“Babe I want to walk this bit!” Sal demanded as we were looking at sand dunes as far as we could see into the distance.
“We’ll be here for a week if you want to walk all the sand” I replied and kept the throttle wide open.

Now I started this post by emphasising how lucky I am to have such an amazing adventurous woman in my life, and I’ll go back there now.  We must have ridden almost 150km of sand today, 2up, with luggage.

Most people won’t understand how difficult that is.  But anyway, there aren’t many bikes you’d try it on, and even fewer passengers who would contemplate the idea.

Sand requires speed, a bit like water skiing, too slow and you sink, the faster you go the easier it gets, but if you fall off at high speed it’s going to be ugly.

So we’re going reasonably fast, the motor is wide open to maintain that speed so the rear wheel is continuously sliding, and I’m standing up, trying to get all of my weight as far back as possible to let the front wheel steer instead of ploughing.

This means Sal is leaned back at a horrible angle over the rear bag with my bum pushed into her face so she can’t actually see anything at all.

The other difficult part of sand riding is that you can’t really steer very precisely, you just point the bike in a vague direction, keep it wide open and don’t stop for anything.

This means that we quite often end up going in undesired directions before I can coax it back on track, like into even bigger dunes, into deep ravines, over big rocks or across deep ruts in the sand.  And to top it off we frequently veer off into unexpected directions when the front wheel buries in a deep patch…

Sounds like fun huh! Even more so for Sal as she can’t actually see what’s coming, so she gets totally slammed by every impact.

But even with all this excitement today, there was only just the smallest hint of Fury Road, coming after the twentieth demand for “walking this bit” was ignored, where I had to actually stop because things got a bit too hairy in some deep ruts.

“I’m not doing this bit!!” Sal stormed off across the sand dune, finally in control of her own destiny.

waiting for Sally after she jumped ship in the previous patch of sand

Love that woman.

I made my way to a firmer patch of ground so Sal could get back on, and we roared away again, in the middle of the vast nothingness of the desert, just us three snaking our way towards the next oasis town.

A desert is an amazing but also intimidating place, and more than once I found myself wondering what on earth we were doing there? We have friends, family and a nice home in Australia, we have a garden and nice places to hang out… But here we are surrounded by mountains of sand and rock in northern Africa.

Why??

As we covered the last few km into town, tired but now back on the safety of a tar road, a deep feeling of awesomeness crept into my mind, We did it!

I reached back and hugged Sal.

“good work babe, I’m exhausted”

“Me too”

“Great ride huh!” 😉

Morocco

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1

So much has happened since I was last here, but in a nutshell… Sal returned to Australia to sadly farewell a very special lady, meanwhile I did two weeks (of predominantly donkey time) in Spain, Sal came back, I crashed Betsy in the rain in Lisbon (no injuries), and then we came to Morocco.

Also in there was a day of maintenance on Betsy in Lisbon, where I finally cured a persistent chatter in the clutch and can now proudly say that we have complete Bike Zen.  Can you feel the excitement?  I’m excited.  Really excited.

putting the new (second hand) clutch in Betsy, thanks KTM Lisbon for the workshop space!

Armed with new found Bike Zen we decided to skip the Algarve in Portugal (it was getting too cold to spend time on the beach), and make tracks for Morocco.  After a couple of months kicking around Europe (e.g. hanging out in brightly lit bars frequented mostly by old ladies) this was an exciting prospect.

We took a couple of days to ride to the coast, camped close to the ferry terminal in Tarifa and then found ourselves looking at Africa again with more than a bit of enthusiasm.  Well… I was enthused and Sally was doing her usual routine of appearing not very excited, but deep down, really deep down, where no one could actually see, somewhere below the sub cockle area, Sal was excited too.


looking at Africa again

We bought tickets that landed us around midday and then headed straight to a town called Chefchaouen, famous for it’s blue buildings and centuries old medina (an old walled city, full of people selling junk).


Chefchaoen, blue town full of old men dressed like wizards.

From there we did a short riding day to Fes where we stayed a couple of days in the medina (another old walled city, full of even more people selling even more junk), trying to avoid being overcharged for basically everything.

After Fes my enthusiasm level for Morocco was waning.  Too many rude touts trying to get us into restaurants or convince us to come to some tannery for free, and then asking us for money.  Too much junk for sale at hundreds of stalls all selling the same cheap crap that’s probably made in China anyway, and too much overpriced, bland tasting food.

Then we went to Agoudal in the High Atlas mountains and things started to improve.  We ate lunch in a tiny town on the way up and were impressed with the flavours in the tajine, and more impressed with the price.   This was followed by a night in a Kasbah looking hotel at 2400m altitude, where we further sharpened our Moroccan negotiation skills.

Turns out that everything here, literally everything, is up for negotiation.  Even a cup of coffee.  There is the inflated tourist price on a menu ($3), the haggled tourist price ($1) and then the actual price ($0.50).  Understanding this has been helpful.

typical small town in the High Atlas mountains, they really like brown here.


the minaret (place where old men scream verses from the Koran into megaphones 5x per day)

It was so cold overnight in Agoudal that in the morning the bike was covered in a thin layer of ice.  Fortunately the sunny morning took the chill out of the air and we set off, leaving the sealed roads behind for what would be 3 days of brilliant off road riding in some amazing mountain scenery.

As this is a motorcycle trip, I’m going to indulge in some boring motorcycle related commentary… The 90/10 situation.  90% of the time the SuperEnduro (Betsy) is not the best bike to be riding…  She is not a great touring bike.  She is a terrible city bike.  She isn’t much of a single track bike, although we give it a nudge from time to time.  And with offroad tyres, she isnt much of a road bike either… But for 10% of the time, on mountain or desert tracks, Betsy is totally sublime.  Morocco has overwhelmingly been full of that 10% of the riding roads that are so much fun, so rewarding to ride, that it makes the other 90% of the time not matter at all.  I think you get the idea, I’m having a ball over here :)))

As I’ve written here more times than I recall, the pictures don’t do it justice, but you get the gist…

donkeys bringing wild thyme down from the mountains

the donkeys here are adorable

 

typical farming plot in the Atlas

So bring it on Morocco! This could be our last big offroad hurrah on Betsy, I’m going to make it one to remember 🙂

Love to all back home xxoo

Portugal

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Braga, Portugal

After an emotional, short, unexpected trip back to Australia to say goodbye to one of my favourite people on this earth, I returned to meet Dean in Madrid where he’d been staying with a friend.

Nonna Felicetta 💕

As Dean had been left with little to do whilst waiting for me he took it upon himself to arrange the following few days of travel and accommodation. This is usually my job so it was nice to come back and not have to work out what we were doing for a while.

It was also nice as Dean had booked actual hotel rooms with double beds. The quality of the accommodation subtly diminished as the nights wore on however… we started with a room with a private bathroom for the first two nights….then it was a room with a shared bathroom….and now we are camping again! It was good while it lasted 😉

Our campsite in a pine forest in Lisbon

Feeling the last of the good weather had only a week or two left we made tracks back to Portugal, stopping for a night in Salamanca, Spain on the way.

Salamanca was beautiful with way too many old Roman churches and plazas and obviously, being Spain, way too many bars.

After spending lots of time frequenting Spanish bars, as one may have picked up (mum 😉), Dean and I came to the agreement the best bars are those where the lights shine brightly (the more fluros the better) and where all the old ladies go (and preferably old men serve).

At these bars the drinks and food are cheap, the service is genuine and there are no tourists. These rules go completely against the rules we apply at home or anywhere else (where we have a choice) however here it seems to work best – Portugal too it seems.

We spent a couple of nights in Braga, Portugal where there happened to be a wine festival on, so for 3 euro in many of the cities restaurants you got a glass of local wine and a small tapa. Perfect!

We visited the Bom Jesus, a church built on top of a hill with stairs named ‘stairway to heaven’ leading to it and walked around the beautiful old city.

BOM Jesus, stariway to heaven

Porto was next. Another beautiful hilly city with the river Duomo running through it, and lots of tiny cobbled streets with medieval buildings.

We’d read that the restaurants in Porto were amazing so we thought we’d spend a little more money than usual and try one that didn’t look TOO touristy and had kind of bright lights.

We were given four mussels and some bread as we sat down.

Having been stung years ago in Portugal I asked how much these items were.

‘The bread 1 euro and the mussels 4″

No problem. This is something that touristy restaurants do in Portugal. Tourists assume they are free and get a suprise when the bill arrives. The waiter insists it’s a Portuguese traditional however this tradition doesn’t seem to be followed in non touristy restaurants!

Despite the long wait (service here leaves a lot to be desired) and very bad reviews (read after we’d ordered) the food was ok. Not great, not worth the money and definitely a reminder to stick to our old people bars.

When the bill came we’d each been charged 4 euros for the mussels (as much as a main course)….my blood started boiling…

‘Excuse me, when I asked you how much the mussels were, you said 4 euro, you didn’t say 4 euro each, that’s very dishonest”

“Sorry sorry I must have slipped on the computer, I’ll change it”

Yeah right.

They didn’t know who they were dealing with 😉

Im telling you, bright lights. Old people. It’s the only way!

We spent a night camping in Coimbra, another beautiful medieval university city and then headed to Lisbon where Dean is currently fixing the clutch on Betsy.

Coimbra

Portugal so far has been really beautiful and the people some of the nicest in Europe. We haven’t come across a single person who has been rude or given us attitude. They all go our of their way to help us and always try their best to communicate. Most people here speak at least a little English so this is rarely a problem.

Like Spain, Portugal is about the cities…the in between is pretty dry and flat but has lots of Eucalyptus trees which makes it look and smell a lot like Australia.

Portugal also feels a lot like eastern Europe to me as they seem a few steps behind the rest of western Europe. Some places allow you to smoke inside, the newspapers have a page of almost naked women and they still have corner stores and bric a brac shops occupying prime real estate in historic city centres.

Next we head back to Spain. We’ve decided against going to the Algarve due to cooler weather so will head directly to Jerez before getting a boat to Morocco in a few days 🙂