From a Barcelona Hostel to a Banjul Brothel

When we started planning this trip out, we really didn't know what to expect of ourselves.  Neither of us had ever cycle toured before and, of course, we hadn't been to Africa either.  Regardless, we plowed forward with the plan, crammed as much information about cycling and West Africa into our brains as we could and decided to just go for it.  We'd planned the route as far as Lagos in Nigeria, with designs to possibly push on into Cameroon.  At one point on the trip we actually wanted to push on all the way to Tanzania.  In the end, we were more than happy to finish off in Banjul.  It seemed logical.  We'd had a great trip, and at this point we felt like Africa was telling us it's time to go.

The trip, more than anything, was a learning experience.  I remember the first few miles on a Spanish highway, wobbling along, loaded down for the first time.  When trucks would pass us with a couple feet of of space we'd curse them for not moving over.  Nowadays, we don't even break conversation when a truck breezes past just inches off our elbows.  At that time too, we nervously navigated the orderly traffic of Barcelona and Valencia, often using the sidewalk because it felt so much safer.  It's funny to look back on that after thinking about the intensity of Nouakchott's mess of cars, trucks, horses, donkeys, men pushing carts and pedestrians all mashed together as one slow moving blob being pulled in all directions.  We deftly peddled between the vehicles, animals and people with intimate knowledge of our width and manoeuvring ability.  This confidence was built up in the 5400km of land we covered in just 3 months.

As our confidence on the bikes grew, we became more comfortable in our surroundings.  I remember on our very first day riding, about an hour (20 km or so) out of Barcelona, some kid walking on the side of the road hurled a rock at me for no other reason than he thought it was funny.  We were nervous enough about our trip plan, and though I had jokingly told a lot of people that we were more worried about Spain than Africa, it was totally unexpected.  If this was Spain, how would the rest of the trip unfold?  As it were, later that day, we found ourselves over-heating and hiding in the shade of an abandoned house near the side of the road.  Cars passed and the sun scorched.  From a nearby house, a door closed, a gate opened and a man appeared.  He wandered over our way, and started speaking Spanish to us.  Realizing we hadn't understood anything, he just used the English he knew: 'Water?' 'Food?' 'Place to sleep?'.  We didn't need anything, but we felt immediately reassured.

A similar thing happened in Africa.  We'd only been in Morocco for two days, and were cycling through an area known for it's hashish production.  Every person you passed tried to call you over to 'see something' or just straight up said 'hashish?'.  Most were harmless.  At one point we were stalked by a couple of mangy looking dudes in a beat up old hatchback.  Grimy and toothless, they waved us over to their car.  We knew what they wanted, and said 'no thanks', continuing on our way.  The car pulled out, followed us for a bit (it's fairly non-discrete for a car to go 12km/hr up a hill), got bored and moved on.  About an hour later, as we crested a hilltop, we saw the car again.  This time the guys were very insistent..they just wanted to 'talk'.  We stopped, hoping we could make our point and our ever-so-slow escape.  Through the gaps in his rotting teeth and the windowless car window, he explained to us that 'you're all the same (you westerners)'.  Everyone wants the hashish, and Moroccan hashish is the best.  We told them we weren't interested, he offered again, this time sweetening the deal 'you can come work for me, there's lots you can do'.  Horrified at the thought of working for a hash operation, we took off and mercifully the dudes didn't follow us.

That was the first morning in Morocco.  In the afternoon, we stumbled across what someone later referred to as a 'Marche Sauvage' or a 'Savage Market'.  People in all sorts of colourful tribal dress, riding donkeys and pulling carts, all converged on the same mud pit.  In the mud pit was a market with people hawking everything from fruits and vegetables to pots and pans to donkeys and sheep.  We decided to check it out, one at a time, so the bikes would be guarded at all times.  As we took turns, one person inside the market would be followed by strangers - Elaine in particular was stalked by young men as she wandered through - and the one watching the bikes had to fend off a 'friendly' fellow who was constantly trying to separate you from your bikes while his flock of vultures hovered close by.  Again, feeling very uncomfortable, we rode away as 'fast' as we could.

At this point we were feeling quite nervous about our surroundings.  Africa was proving to feel a bit unwelcoming and we felt like sitting ducks for a robbery.  This fear peaked out that same day when, as we passed a couple young men on the road,  one of them tried to grab Elaine's bike.  They'd asked for presents, we had nothing to give, so they decided to take something.  Elaine jumped off her bike and started screaming at the guy.  I'd passed in front but saw what happened and turned around.  The kid, already backing up because of the verbal assault Elaine was dishing out, looked quite startled when I came walking towards him yelling 'Vous voulez quelque chose?? Venez ici et je le done.' ('You want something? Come here and I'll give it to you.').  We're not sure exactly what he'd been trying to do, but at this point I think he was getting more than he wanted.  Seeing the commotion, three passing cars slammed on their brakes and seven guys hopped out, immediately backing us up.  One of them had a club with him!  The young dudes took off, and, with a gentle politeness that is the standard in Morocco, the guys who stopped apologized for the other two and asked us if we we were OK continuing.  We kept going, but took a nice hotel that night.  We had a long talk about our motivation for being there, but decided to continue anyways.  It had helped a lot knowing that the passing cars had our backs.  I've always said, 99% of the people in this world want you to be safe, it's encounters with that 1% that cause all the problems.  The nice thing is, no matter where you are in the world, that 1% is disliked by everyone and people are usually happy to help you out.

That was the extent of our problems in Africa.  From that point on, particularly the next night when we asked the owner of a farm house if we could sleep near his house, we had overwhelmingly positive experiences.  That farm house, owned by a man named Hakkim, boosted our moral in a way that he'll never know.  Morocco could be trying at times, it is possible to be too friendly, but mostly we had great interactions with everyone we met, from the shopkeepers to the policemen, the Moroccans were a lot of fun.  Mauritania held similar experiences.  They aren't quite as outgoing in Mauritania, they don't approach you simply because you're white, but they're always happy to talk and infinitely helpful when you need it.  While cycling across the desert, people would regularly stop and offer us a lift.  I imagine in their minds, a person can't possibly 'want' to be cycling through a sand storm in the middle of nowhere.  One man who offered us a ride was in a sedan which was packed to the roof with various housewares and food, so I'm not sure where he intended to put us, but I suppose he must have had a plan.  Africans are definitely skilled at maximizing the carrying capacity of their cars.

By feeling comfortable with our surroundings, we were able to just let things happen.  We made a point of just 'going with it' when it was reasonable.  If someone offered us a place to stay, we took it.  If someone wanted us to have tea with them, we stopped in.  The trip flowed nicely in this manner.  We ate tagines with local families, attended a pre-wedding party, spend a night with the Mauritanian army, had breakfast with one of the nicest families I've ever met, shared tea with teachers and merchants and shared our water with a camel herder.  We slept in forests, parks, vineyards, orchards, the veranda of an old 'slave house' (so it appeared), the porch of a unoccupied oceanfront vacation home, next to the sea in Algeciras, behind farm houses, on top of sea cliffs, beneath sand dunes, under acacia trees and one time, hidden in plain sight next to a busy road.  We dodged landmines and camels, saw monkeys leaping through the trees and crocodiles sunning themselves.  We saw flamingos, hawks, vultures, giant egrets, enormous pelicans by the thousands and hundreds of colourful birds whose names I'll never know.  We met people from all over the world, locals and expats, tourists and cycle tourists.  We chatted with a man from Libya about the Arab Spring.  We cycled 50km in a day battling a headwind and 161km in a day with a gale behind us.  I'm also happy to say that luck was on our side every single day of the trip.  In fact, I can't believe our luck, in both the people we met and the experiences we had - even if it was being on a bike in Laayoune for the first rain they'd had in three years or enduring a 'face fly' as you plod slowly up a hill.

Although, in the end, we decided it was time to leave.  We can't complain for one second about what we accomplished.  5400kms on our first ever cycle tour, 2400 of those kilometers were isolated in the Sahara Desert.  Those 2400 kilometers were done in a race, we had to get to Senegal before our visa to Mauritania expired and we did just that.  We crossed in to Senegal with just SIX hours of daylight left on our visa.  SIX.  I still can't believe that we pulled that off, with 25 days cycled out of 30.  Fate was with us.  I do wonder, if Senegal hadn't made the suggestion that it was time to leave, if we would have continued.  I say that in the nicest way, Senegal did make it clear, but not in a way that was wrong or malicious.  It showed us that our attitudes had changed.  We were tired and we missed the comforts of home, the security of knowing your surroundings.  We had lost interest in continuing and thus, the trials that were present in other countries were far more irksome here than there.  We had changed our tune and it was certainly time to go.

And so you have it, from that hostel in Barcelona, to that Brothel in Banjul (it was fully a brothel)....here it is by the numbers:

Days since leaving Canada:  99
Kilometers cycled:  5400
Km cycled as a percentage of the circumference of the earth: 13%
Avg per day - 54.5
Countries passed through: 7 (counting Gibraltar and Western Sahara - technically recognized as a country by the UN though occupied by Morocco)
Top Speed - 79.46 km/hr
Most km in one day - 161
Highest pass: 1297m
Number of ferries taken: 4
Number of km cheated: 50
Flat tires - 4
Hub replacements: 1
Brake pad replacements: 0
Stoves purchased: 3
Stoves broken: 3
Number of Engagements: 1

Senegal, The Gambia and Tough Decisions

St Louis, Senegal:  it seemed like forever since we'd been pushing to get here.  Ever since Southern Morocco, really, the goal had been to get to St Louis for Christmas. We'd be riding through the desert, dreaming of all the beer we'd drink and all the jazz we'd listen to once we got there.  Having it as a destination was a huge part of what motivated us to do our big push through Western Sahara and Mauritania, knowing that at the end of the road there was a country with beer and no visa deadlines.

Crossing the border from Mauritania was a little hectic, a little hustly, but in the end not as bad as we had been led to believe.  We jammed onto the overcrowded ferry and got off in Senegal, into what really seemed like a new world-it's crazy how the landscape changed from dusty to almost jungly just by crossing the river.  As far as border formalities, we surrendered our passports to the police officer on duty, who in turn surrendered our passports to the tourist hustlers, who in turn stamped them for us amidst some interesting back-room dealings.  I guarded the bikes while Steve schmoozed with the hustlers, and after some entertaining conversations and handing them a couple of euros for their "help", we were on our way, passports in hand, relatively certain that we were in the country legally.

We rode all the way into St Louis that night, planning to take a good week-or-so break here before continuing on. We found a guesthouse, ditched the bikes, and went out to explore and find the beer store. Initially, I really liked the city.  It has lots of neat old buildings to look at, and I'm always a little partial to any city on the water, with its fishing villages and boats and beaches and the cool sea breezes.


It wasn't long though before St Louis became a little exhausting.  We quickly realized you can't walk 2 blocks without someone stopping to talk to you... and it all starts out very friendly: "Welcome to my country, etc. etc...." but it always ended the same: "come look at my craft shop/restaurant/mothers jewellery store/djembes/whatever else one could possibly try to sell you. Which really, you can't blame them for asking... but it was the insistance that was tiresome. You'd say no, they'd keep talking.  You'd say no and walk away, they follow you and try to guide you around the city. You'd say you want to be left alone, they'd lay a guilt-trip on you because they were just trying to help and why did you come to their country if you don't want to talk to anyone there?

Even worse was the amount of able-bodied, decently dressed men asking for handouts-most often they'd want you to buy them a milk (?).  Between the artists, the milk guys, and the begger children, even a simple excursion around the corner to buy bread was pretty daunting.

St Louis wasn't all bad though.  We met some great people and had a delicious Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas day brunch with our hotel owners and some of their friends.  We even met a fellow Vancouverite and her Senegalese husband who now splits her time between Montreal and St Louis. We also hopped on a bush taxi to do a tour of the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary nearby-so many pelicans!

When boxing day rolled  around, we tried to get up to motivation to leave.  We didn't really want to stay any longer, but something had happened to our desire to get back on the bikes. We just didn't really want to.  We'd both been pretty sick while in St Louis, so put the low energy down to that combined with the stagnation of being in the same place for a week. We also wondered if the constant attempt of everyone to get money out of us was wearing us down.  We took turns pep-talking each other and forced ourselves to pack up the bikes and get back on the road, hoping we'd get back into it.

The first day out of St Louis was actually a very unfortunate string of negative experiences that did absolutely nothing to make us feel welcome.  Everyone on the road asked us for things as we passed, but it wasn't the joyful happy "cadeaux" kids we'd ridden past in Mauritania, who were just as happy to wave and smile if you didn't give them anything.  Today, people of all ages were scowling and not just asking, but demanding for things-money, presents, anything. Any attempt to reply with a 'hello' or a 'how are you today' made them repeat the initial demand, louder and more insistant. And when you didn't give, they would scold you and tell you off! We stopped at one gas station to try to fill up our water from the tap, and the attendant wanted to charge us at least double what it would have cost had we bought bottled.  We left town, relying on finding a more reasonable person down the road.

A bit further on we pulled over for a snack, and to re-assess our situation-what was wrong with the miserable people along this stretch of road? It was quite unsettling, this whole 'you're white so give me stuff now' attitude.  We sat there for awhile, eyeing a sheperd not far off, afraid that he would come over and ask us for money too. 

The last straw was a full-grown, decently dressed man, in a car, pulling over next to us, sticking his hand out and yelling, very aggressively, "where is my present?" Taken aback, we replied with a 'hello, how are you today sir..' which was ignored completely. "My Present, where is it? give me my present!". I was actually scared of how forcefully he was demanding things from us. What we had really needed right then was someone to pull over and see if we needed anything, as people had been doing for the last 3 months.  Instead, we got the opposite, which just made us feel worse about being here, and even more astounded at this expectation that we were only there to hand out money and presents.  In the end Steve demanded he give us his car.  He got out, with the car still in gear and rolling away, his kid in the backseat, and offers up the car.  A laugh and handshake ('you'd better go catch your car..') and he was gone.  It had ended well, but the damage had been done - we went to bed that night feeling unsafe, unwelcome and thinking "What the hell are we doing here?".

Thankfully, the next day was better.  We turned onto a smaller side road that was inhabited by the usual, friendly people we had come to expect-people waving and smiling and being friendly.  It was much needed reassurance that Senegal actually was the welcoming place we had been hoping for, and really it had just been this stretch of road between St. Louis and Louga that was awful.

Unfortunately, we noticed a disturbing trend over the next couple of days to the Gambian border.  Whenever we'd pass a 'hostile' village, it would also be accompanied by a large sign at each end of it indicating some type of foreign aid.  The friendly villages did not have these signs. We began to wonder what effect foreign aid actually has on the people it is meant to help.  Does it try to do good but in the end causes resentment and unreasonable expectations?  Is it presented in a way that people can still have a level of pride in their villages after someone has come along and improved it for them? And does it have something to do with the fact that we are expected to hemmorage money and presents because we're white?  I don't know enough about the politics and implementation of aid in these villages to say... but we both came away a little disillusioned about this notion of "helping Africa".

The next few days to Banjul were mostly friendly, though I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "Toubab, hey, Toubab" (It means 'white person' in Wolof). We had the easiest border crossing of our entire trip going into The Gambia, and we gunned it for the Banjul ferry, timing it perfectly to get there just as the sun was setting and the ferry was loading. As enjoyable as these days were, we still hadn't found the enthusiasm that had driven us to St. Louis.

And you know what? We never did.  That first night out of St-Louis we had a long talk about what to do. And while riding the next day.  And again the next night.  Over the 4 days it took us to get from St. Louis to Banjul, we realized that we just weren't into it any more.  As nice as the people are, as pretty as the scenery is, neither of us were really that interested in being here.  I almost felt like I'd just eaten a delicious meal and had a big slice of cake, and someone offered me another piece of cake.  And I'm sitting there thinking hmm... do I want more cake? It would taste good... but at the same time, I'm perfectly full and satisfied with the dinner and cake I've already had-any more would ruin it.  There's a line in the book I'm reading that kind of sums up how I've been feeling while riding; it's from The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Thoroux, as he's visiting the red light district in Laredo, Texas:

      " 'If  you're not interested in this' said a pretty girl hiking up her skirt with a        casually lazy gesture, 'Why are you here?'  It was a good question, and, as I      had no answer, I left."

That first day out of St Louis really hadn't helped the motivation, but there was more to it than that, because even when the villages turned friendly again, something was still missing. For one thing, we didn't really feel like we had a purpose being here.  We didn't feel like we were helping anyone, and we almost started to worry if our presence was having a detrimental effect on some of the people.  For example, when you ride through a village, and every kid in the village runs, screaming and happy, to the road, and they want you to stop, and instead you keep riding... I just don't know what to do, and I'm afraid of dissappointing anyone for not doing the right thing. And you can't stop for everyone-we'd still be in Morocco. 

I've got about 10 pages written in my journal of the thoughts and feelings about wanting to leave, wanting to stay, wavering, deciding what to do next.... I think we both just hit our expiry date on the cycling Africa adventure.  The trip up until now had been pretty much perfect-I couldn't be happier with it-but we were both ready for a change.  And in the end, we did exactly what we set out to do:  Start in Spain, ride into Africa, and keep riding until we didn't want to ride any more. 

Western Sahara and Mauritania

 The allure of the Western Sahara Desert is lost on pretty much everyone.  It's flat, full of sand, windy and isolated.  At least that's what those who've passed through saw from their car windows.  On a bike, it's a different story altogether.  Our experience in the desert is certainly one of wind and sand, but also one of rolling hills and vanishing points, ancient sea beds and tidal flats, blowing white sand and petrified reefs, smashing surf and crumbling sea cliffs.  A desert created from the remains of long-dead sea creatures and inhabited by small bushes, birds, gophers, foxes, lizards and a hardy bunch of people known as the Sahawaris.  It's a country within a country, occupied for over 50 years by the Moroccans with parts partitioned off to Mauritania, Algeria and Sahawaris supported Polisario.  It's divided by a 500km berm separating Moroccan financial interests (mainly the phosphorus mines) from the Polisario held land.  The isolation in the area is unmistakable and unexplainable.  During the day the sun scorches the land and the wind howls, at night the wind dies off, a heavy dew sets down to nourish all that lives and the silence is total.

By the numbers:

ODO Start: 3340
ODO Finish: 4192
Total Km: 852
Days with a head wind: 1
Days with a tail wind: 2
Days utterly hammered with a cross wind: 4
Nights in hotel: 2
Nights camped out: 6
Nights in the back room of a gas station on the sketchy advice of two Italians: 1
Km ridden with nothing holding my back wheel on: 16 (broken skewer)
Km hitchhiked to find a new one: 78
Hours waiting for a ride: 2
Total Checkpoints en-route: 13
Litres of water on the bikes: 22
Flats: 0
Hub rebuilds: 1
Crashes: 0
Km spent in no-mans-land surrounded by landmines: 3.5
Camels seen stepping on a landmine: 0 :(
Dirhams left in pocket at the border: 1 (about 8 cents)
Days without health coverage (due to travel warning) - 9


Mauritania is another country in the same desert.  Rolling into the first big city, Nouadhibou, the difference was obvious.  Mauritania is poor.  I thought Morocco was poor, but by comparison, Morocco was Bel-Air and Mauritania was the Bronx.  Even the desert seemed less rich in life.  Half-built cinder block buildings were the norm, encroaching sand dunes typical.  The garbage collection was left to the herds of roaming goats and cattle - they had their work cut out for them.  The place was ramshackle and total disorder was the order of things.  We never felt so comfortable in our lives.  We were, after-all, in a country with nomadic roots... which perhaps explained the semi-permanent appearance to the place.  This was a place where we were happy to just hang out.  As dirty and run-down as the place was, the food was delicious, the stores well stocked and the people seemed as happy as could be.  Conversations were happenstance - a refreshing difference from elsewhere in Africa.  The country as a whole has such a bad reputation that even our health insurance was invalid here.  We were on our own, left to the whims of all who passed us.  The ride to Nouakchott proved to be the most physically and mentally challenging thing either of us had ever done.  We spent long days in the saddle, the first day battling a fierce headwind for 9 hours, toddling along at 10km/hr, the second sailing along with the wind for 8 hours at over 20km/hr.  All the while we tried to keep the Gendarmes happy by complying with their system.  Easier said than done.  (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=2142607)

The numbers:

Odo Start: 4192
ODO Finish: 4972
Total Km: 778
Most Km in a day: 161
Wild camping: 1
Campground nights:5
Number of hotel nights: 2
Number of hotel nights spent in a tent: 2
Nights with the Gendarmes: 1
Number of checkpoints: 16
Number of gendarmes who searched for us all night: 4
Hours searching: 13  (They were very impressed with how well we had hidden!)
Km ridden with a very wobbly back wheel:  65
Hub replacements: 1
Packages of cookies eaten in one day as we ran out of food in the middle of nowhere: 4
Rides refused when the going was tough: 5
Rides taken: 1
Km in the back of a gendarmes truck: 50
Gendarms disappointed to find out Elaine wasn't 'available': 3

Morocco Round-Up

Morocco by the numbers:

ODO Start: 1460
ODO Finish: 3340
Total Km: 1880
Number of times sick: steve 1 (severe, 8 hours) elaine 2 (moderate, few days)
Bottles of water purchased: 0
Families crashed with: 3
Days of rain: 7
Days waiting for the mauritanians: 6
Families stayed with: 3
Hotel nights:17
Camping nights:13
Scorpions: 1
Number of tagines gifted: 1
Approximate weight of a tagine in pounds: 12
Number of tagines left on the side of the road: 1
Crashes: 1 (Elaine, forced off the road by a truck...scary but unhurt)
Price for 1/4 chicken with fries salad and bread: 20 dirhams (2.50)
Cheapest hotel: 80 dirhams (10.00)
Number of vehicles that stopped while Elaine and I we're preparing to kick some ass on two kids who grabbed elaine's bike while she was passing: 3
Total number of people: 7
Number brandishing clubs: 1 (the kids ran off... they got far more than they bargained for)
Beers drunk: 6
Most paid for a beer: 20 dirhams
Days Elaine spent on broken cookie rations: 3 (punishment for eating an entire pack of cookies and making herself sick)
Number of hub rebuilds: 1
Flats: 2 (1 each)
Kg of oranges eaten per day: 1

From Marrakech to Agadir, and a crazy house along the way

Riding into Marrakech is like driving in L.A.... you just have to throw yourself into the chaos and become one with it.  No hesitations and no timidness-see an empty spot and take it, because if you don't, somebody else will.

I remember merging into one roundabout between about 5 scooters, 10 cars, a donkey cart and a horse-drawn carraige, Steve right behind me shouting "Turn left here!" and my response: "I know, but I don't know how!"

We found our way into the medina and after a bit of looking, found a great little Riad with friendly staff, a gorgeously tiled room, and a rooftop terrace with a view of Jemaa el Fna square, the center of the touristy scene of Marrakech.

After already being in Morocco for 3 weeks, Jemaa el Fna was a bit of a shocker... Touts everywhere trying to seperate you from your money, prices at least double, everything sanitized and existing solely to put on a show for the tourists.It almost felt like Las Vegas, one big circus-like show.  It took us a few days and a bit of exploring outside of the square to realize that there was a normal city there that we actually enjoyed.  We ended up spending 5 days there, hanging out on the roof, getting lost in the markets, drinking tea with the guys running our hotel...we even found a bottle of Moroccan wine.  Pretty good stuff!

Leaving Marrakech, we started into what became a very trying few days.  It started the first night out, we were standing by the side of the road waiting for a gap in traffic so we could run off and hide for the night.  A guy in his early 20's pulls up on his scooter-he doesn't speak french, but its obvious he's inviting us to his place for the night. Why not? We follow him home, where he lives with his mom, dad, and 13-year old sister Malika.

It all started out very normal.  They were super excited to have us over, brought us some food and some tea, and we made an attempt at conversation with most things being translated through the daughter, who spoke a tiny bit of french.  Next thing I know Steve gets dragged off by the brother (Jamal) and I get dragged into Malika's room. She shows me photos, her school work, and then opens her closet and pulls out all her clothes.  "Do you like this?" she says, holding up a shirt. "Here, take it, present".  Oh, thankyou, that's so nice! But that was only the beginning.  By the time she was finished, I had a stack of about 15 articles of clothing in my lap, 2 pairs of shoes, and a bag of jewellery.  I tried telling her this was too much... not only do I not want to carry this many clothes, half of them don't fit me because, well, they belong to a 13 year old.  No good, she insists I take them to give to people at home: "presents from Morocco".

I try a different approach: I'm travelling by bike... it won't fit! She's not convinced-she grabs my panniers and stuffs every last thing inside. "See, it fits" she says triumphantly.  You just can't say no to a Moroccan woman, apparently the young ones are no exception.

After she was done gifting me, we were stuffed full of dinner (Mange Steve mange Elaine... mange, Mange!) and informed that there was a pre-wedding party in the village that night. So off we go to the party, where once again Steve gets dragged off with the men and I get brought to the women's room.

This time I definitely got the better end of the deal.  Steve apparently sat around in silence for the next few hours, watching TV, with the guys occasionally looking up to grunt something at each other before going back to looking at their cell phones.  My room, on the other hand, was just going off! We had drums, the women were all banging on things and singing and chanting and shaking rattles and yelling and partying.  At one point someone brought out a big drum, about 2 feet tall and 4 feet across, and plunked it down in the middle of the room. To my delight, this was the stand-on-top drum, so everyone took turns dancing and stomping on the drum to the screams and catcalls of all the other women. I was totally amazed at some of the village grandmas shaking it up there-they sure put my akward stomps to shame.

The only downside of the wedding party was that it also afforded the women an opportunity to stuff me full of more food.  "I'm full" did not seem to be part of their vocabulary. We finally escaped the food room and went back to the house we were staying at, where the mom literally uncapped a bottle of perfume and up-ended it all over both of us as we were going to bed.  Why? Not sure, but she sure got a kick out of it.  We went to bed gagging at our perfumed stench and sharing stories about how impossible it was to say no to anyone in this house.

The morning brought a bit of a nightmare-we like to call it hospitality turned harassement.  That's when someone gets so wrapped up with hosting you that they stop caring about your comfort or what you actually want.  They told us we weren't leaving and had to stay another night, so they could stuff us full of more food we didn't want and give us more things we couldn't carry on the bike.  At one point the mom and daughter decided to draw all over my hands and feet with henna, which I was initially thrilled about-it was really neat.  Though it sufficiently disabled me while waiting for it to dry that I was completely trapped.  The daughter spent the entire time peeling eggs for me and stuffing them into my mouth, ignoring any protests.  I felt like a donkey with my head in a feed bag. At one point Steve walks in carrying a tajine-it's like a giant clay pot used for cooking, weighing in at about 15 lbs. "Look, we have a tajine..." he says, with a hopeless look on his face. More gifts from the crazy house, totally inappropriate for 2 people on bikes.

That night, we lay awake, grinding our teeth from the coffee we'd been force-fed right before bed, plotting our escape.  I hate to be ungrateful, but enough is enough, we had to get out of there.  They were hospitalizing us to death!

Come morning we tried to conveniently "forget" the tajine... no luck. The mom made sure to pack it nice and snug into Steve's front pannier. We finally said our goodbyes and thankyous and took off, my panniers stuffed to bursting with clothes, Steve struggling to keep his front wheel straight against the weight of the tajine. It wasn't long before we started leaving a trail of stuff by the side of the road. Again, I hate to be ungrateful, but the alternative was to drag all this stuff we couldn't use along with us across the desert-no thanks.

The next few days to Agadir weren't much better- it started raining-hard, painful drops that drive into your face and sting and make your eyes water.  The wet road made our brakes nearly useless and at the bottom of a huge long hill, as though mocking us, we rolled, at high speed and brakeless, into a town called Amaskrewd. When it finally stopped raining the headwinds started, horrible gusty headwinds that held us to back to speeds of about 6km/hr.

It seemed like forever, but we finally reached Agadir and managed to find our cheapest hotel so far.  The next day was spent drinking much-too-expensive beer on the balcony, eating take-out burgers, and recovering from the epic few days.  The crazy house was calling us-we had unwisely left them our phone number-but we couldn't bring ourselves to answer, it was still too soon.  Definitely the most trying few days of the trip up to this point.