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
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
Ahem... "number of engagements"?!?! :)
ReplyDeleteSo Steve: Who is this new woman you met?
ReplyDeleteCongratulations guys - on 2 points it would seem!! Maybe a honeymoon trip through NZ next year?
ReplyDeleteglad you made it to senegal in time. I read your comments on africa with alot of interest.....and would be interested to read more if you get around to it some day. I have alot of theories about the link between bikes and ´romance´ and you guys seem to have confirmed that suspicion again! Best wishes. Ben Hopkins (aussie cyclista you met near Tarfaya).
ReplyDelete