MO2W #50 - THE RIF MOUNTAINS OF MOROCCO

Welcome back to another Monkey on 2 Wheels episode. I'm in Malaga, close to the airport, and I'm going to pick up my friends now because we are going to cycle through Morocco together. Okay... 14, 16... So, and off we go. We just left Malaga now, and we're heading along the coast down to Tarifa and take the ferry from there to Morocco. Weather is perfect. Let's see how it goes. The two dudes here are Dr. Thomas and Christoph, some of my oldest and best friends. Thomas is a mathematician with a PhD, and Christoph is a wood sculptor and artist. The first day we followed the little paths on the beach in hope to find somewhere a spot to camp. Since that stretch of the coast is an endless urban area, this was the best we could find. The problem was that there was just either an endless network of small paths near the beach or a highway, which in this area was quite busy and not really an option for us. Or there was just no other option than following that little space next to the highway, which also had its own challenges. Tricky! Eventually, we decided to pull the joker code. So we decided now to go on the beach and try to cycle on the sand, just where the kind of water touches the sand but doesn't really, you know, that place here. It kind of works. It feels like cycling up here constantly, but if we can avoid the traffic, have a really nice sunset at the beach, it's awesome. Thomas, how would you describe our trip so far? Chaotic. It's quite hard to find a road here. It's really difficult here because it's like a whole long stretch of touristic villages, towns, cities, whatever you want to call it. It's crazy. Eventually, we managed to get out of the Costa del Hotel and get a first glimpse onto Morocco, which is now visible here just on the horizon. What was your preparation for the cycling trip? Nothing. I cycled twice this year. We don't have any mountains yet. Not yet? No. Christoph, how much did you cycle this year? Well, about 10 kilometers. What do we have in November now? It's going to be packed. You have to do it all in one month. That's the key. Wet. But good. Hot. We're heading now towards Tarifa, but first I gotta go to a post office to send my drone to a friend because Morocco is quite strict on drones, so I don't want to take it. Somewhere, I found a cardboard box, which I resized to a more compact version, and from now on, I was half a kiloliter. We're getting close to Algeciras now, and because there's a huge port here, the traffic is getting way more busy than before. Initially, we planned to take a ferry from Tarifa, but we figured out that there's an alternative route here from Algeciras to Ceuta, and spontaneously decided to make use from that option. Okay, we're kind of near the port, but I just gotta find the right service provider. We're going to the maritime station to get our ticket for the FAS ferry. We have to be here as soon as possible, because the ferry is about to leave, and then we're going to Ceuta. Okay. Awesome. So, €25 per person, and bringing the bicycle on board is for free. After a short ticket check, we could enter the ferry and begin now the real adventure. The first night on Moroccan soil, we had a quite pragmatic camp spot not far from the border, and with the next day, we started heading more south. So, it's our first day in Morocco, and we're following a road N16 towards Tetouan. Hey. Where are you from? Germany. So, we're just leaving now Tetouan, heading to a lake towards Chefchaouen. And, man, that looks beautiful. Look at this. We're getting closer to the lake, which I've spotted on the map, but we need food before. So, in theory, there should be some sort of fruit or vegetable market soon. Let's go there first, get some veggies, and then go to this lake and camp there. Our third day here in Morocco starts at this beautiful lake, and today, we want to go to the Tala Samtane National Park near Chefchaouen. So, first, we have to push our bikes back up to the road, and from there, we continue cycling on the route National 2 for the next 30 kilometers. Hello. Tomato. Potato. Courgette. And a carrot. Hey. Oh, yes. So, slowly, we're entering the mountains into this Tala Samtane National Park here. It goes a lot of up and down now, but the mountains and the scenery, the green mountains, that's beautiful. The village that sits at the entrance of the National Park is Aqchoua, but when we arrived, we got told that we can't enter the National Park with the bicycles because apparently, it's too difficult or dangerous, I don't know. So, that meant we had to go back and adjust our route. We just decided to take an alternative route to Chefchaouen. So, there's like the big road, and then there's this small mountain road, which we're taking now, but man, this is hard. But eventually, the climb had an end, and on the other side, a downhill to Chefchaouen was waiting for us. Here, we decided to stay in a hostel for two nights to explore the city, wash and dry our laundry with a great view, recharge electronics, and practice body hygiene. In the last evening, we went out with Vinou, a dude from the UK who stayed in the same hostel, to see some shops and ended up in this soap shop, where they had like all sorts of stuff, from crystal menthol to refreshing oils and soaps in all possible flavors and colors. Before we could continue cycling, Thomas had to change his brake pads, which were wearing out quite fast, and I had to replace a shifting cable that was broken. So, we're leaving Chefchaouen now, heading now southeast towards a big lake. I think we won't reach it today because we started now quite late, but let's see how it goes. It's gonna be 1300 meters up, 1500 meters down on a distance of 58 kilometers. I'm actually very surprised how green it is here. I mean, you can see in the background, it's more green than in Spain, actually. It's impressive. I don't know how. I wonder. If you know, let me know in the comments. 10 kilometers downhill now. That's awesome. Whoo! I guess I found the solution for the mystery why everything is so green. So, as it seems, there are a lot of kind of pipes in the ground, probably distribute water from the top of a mountain down to the valley, and by this, everything gets green. Yeah. We just left the province of Chefchaouen and went into the next one, and immediately, the road is different. Different quality, definitely. It's more bumpy now. So, because we're trying to reach this lake during the daytime, I increased a little bit my speed and hope to pull the group a little bit faster up here, these hills. I think it's working. Usually, we take quite a lot of breaks because we just enjoy hanging out and chilling, but today, we've got this goal of reaching the lake. So, yeah, let's keep pushing. I think we can do it. But it's really hard, man. Oh, come on. I've got clean legs. I can't get my pants over it. These are my steel calves. It's doubled. Beautiful. We just found a little kind of surprise. We found a hemp field with female buds, and there were plenty of buds on those hemp. Yeah, we took some. Hello, donkey. It should be a little warmer, guys. And because there's no headwind, it's a bit stressful, to be honest. Pull! Man, these landscapes here. Look at this. Holy shit. Self-sufficient. I have to add, actually, Morocco to one of my favorite countries for cycle touring. The landscape is just really, really nice. The people are awesome, and the food. There's just nothing to complain about when every downhill looks like this, every sunset is golden, and you have a little pouch with local herbs from the side of the road. As the night arrived, we managed to find a decent spot to camp, and the conditions were perfect for an experiment for dinner. Because that green stuff was still too moist to smoke it, we decided to make a milk chai with space- and time-altering effects. And there's just nothing better than playing music together, baked like three German breads while camping somewhere under the stars in Morocco. On the next day, we woke up surrounded by sheep, and the wind today gave us a nice little push from behind, which guaranteed for a nice day's cycling here in the Rif Mountains. Hello! Hello, hello! So we are heading more east towards a national park called Tadzeka, near Sidi Taza, and you see behind me, all what you see is olive trees. That's amazing. There are so many of them, they are all like perfectly lined up. It's so beautiful. Anyways, it's getting more dry, more arid, so we are looking forward to maybe get into some sort of a desert. So, today we are going to enter a national park, but it's going to be exceptionally challenging, because we've got suddenly a really strong headwind. It's coming from east, heading to the west. We are doing, of course, the opposite direction, so it's going to be tricky. Let's see how that goes. We are slowly entering the Tadzeka National Park, and just the entrance is already super spectacular with this gorge or valley or whatever you want to call it, canyon. I'm not sure if you can see it on the small camera, but there are like caves in the rock. Only people used to live there, of course. I mean, it's like a perfect shelter. It's getting really nice here. Of course, we couldn't miss out the opportunity to go and explore the area more in detail. So, there are plenty of those caves here. Up there is one which is kind of easily accessible for us. So, let's check it out. After a few minutes, the two young boys that were running a few minutes before with us spotted us, and despite the language barrier, we could understand that they wanted to show us a bigger cave. Wow, look at that. Guys, there's a hole. Be careful, be careful. No, no, no, no, no, man. Be careful. Dangerous. Shit, man, dude. You are crazy. After that fun exploring session with these guys, we now cycled more up and at some point entered the actual Tadzika National Park. All right, so it's getting dark now. We keep climbing. I think in about 10 km is a recreational area where we hope to find a spot to camp because here it's very steep on this side and on the other side it's very bushy and steep actually too. And as well, it's getting cold. We've got now 10 degrees Celsius, which is pretty much the coldest we've ever had so far in Morocco. So, tonight will be chilly, I guess. So, last night, the only place we found was this here, which is like near this, I don't know, it's this tower actually. But it was pretty decent cold, but now in the morning a dude came and told us it's not allowed to sleep here. So, now we decided to pack our stuff quickly and have breakfast and leave then. So, back on the road we keep climbing. Not sure how far it actually is to get all the way to the top, but I think it can't be that far anymore. Well, let's see. Maybe 20 km, which is kind of far, but also not. It looks like there was a fire here. I mean, look at the trees. They look pretty damn empty. No leaves on them and quite dark. But apparently that's cork oak. I don't know what it's in English. Cork oak? I don't know. But it's what you use for your pinboard. And maybe that skin outside helps to kind of keep the tree alive during a fire. A little pressure point, but you can still eat them. It's still possible. You don't notice it in the soup anyway. Quite interesting here is that this place is actually very green, but once you look behind the mountains towards the horizon, it looks like desert again. I wonder why this place is so green. And the temperature fluctuates quite a lot between shade and sun. In the sun it's like fucking 25 degrees, maybe even more. In the shade we've got like just above 10. Anyways, I think five kilometers more up and then we should have reached the highest point. And from there it's downhill for the next, I don't know, 40 kilometers. That's got to be nice. I think I've pretty much reached the top now. Man, that was tough. Okay, from now on it's downhill, but I want to show you something before going down. Look at this. That's the fucking biggest. That's the biggest pine cone I've ever seen, man. It's heavy. Crazy. Okay, let's get some food down there. Let's roll. Oh, it's fresh. Oui, oui, oui. Yeah. It's a crazy change between the landscape. I mean, there are like pine trees all around us. Then we left this one forest and suddenly it looks like this. Very dry. Desert-ish. But really beautiful again with the sunset. Man. So we're just in front of the city Taza. We're heading now on this gravel road into town. We need to get some money and something else, which I forgot. We are leaving now the city Taza and keep heading east, kind of. I think it will be pretty much like desert out there. So it's going to be landscape change. And just out of the city we started to search for a nice spot to camp. It's a nice place, I think. It's a nice place, yes. It looks pretty epic here. I'm in for it. The rest has to be compensated over the next few days, but it won't be that bad. We're going downhill, good wind actually. That's going to be the spot for tonight. I mean, look down here. It's going to be awesome. Oh, yeah. Easy. Not bad, my friend, not bad. You have to hit it in the right direction. Just out of sight from the road, we pitched our tents at the bottom of this mini canyon and ended the day with a jam accompanied by the full moon. So it's the next morning. We slept here and it was really cold. I went out to pee. At some point it was minus one degree according to my bike computer. But now the sun is coming up, we're warming up, and that's the place here. It's awesome. To be honest, I didn't expect to have such cold mornings in Morocco at the end of November. But I guess that's quite normal for a place that's almost a desert. As soon as the sun was up, the temperatures went back to normal. From now on, the landscape is very much more like a desert. The desert-like landscape pays a high price because all the dust ends up on my socks. So it's getting dark now and we're just trying to find this spot here in the desert, which is super easy, actually. But the main key is to be kind of invisible, to avoid unwanted attention. So we keep going a little bit more and try to hide somewhere. This place is unreal. It's so awesome here. I love the moon. So we are back in reality, back on tarmac, and we are heading towards Tauriert. And we have a nice tailwind, which is actually really good because we need to make some kilometer to make it in time back to Spain. With the wind in the back, we have an easy time pacing through the open landscape with seemingly endless roads. But in Tauriert, we run into a police check, which wasn't unusual. Usually it's just a quick look into the passport, but this time I had to give them a phone number and later they called us. I asked just to find some safety place. Yeah, it's very safe here. This place is safe. Okay, and to stay with you all night over there. You're coming here to us now? Yes, yes, yes, we are going to come. If you need something, you have all what I need. We have everything. We have food. We have water. We are fine. You have all? Yes. You don't need anything? No. We are totally perfect. Okay, okay. Thank you very much. Eventually the police was really coming and stayed the whole night with us. How long are they going to follow us? Maybe they are just friends now. But yeah, two cars. One Citroen Berlingo and one police car. Weird. So, and from now on we were under observation, which meant every now and then I would have to send them our location and they would come and check if everything is good. We are back on the bike, leaving the camp spot and we are heading now more towards Nador. Police are staying behind, I think. Or maybe they are going to follow us a little bit more. At least that's what they told us. But as much as I understand, the reason is just for our safety and we assume it is because a couple of years ago tourists got kidnapped, killed and yeah, the government wants to make sure that things like this won't happen again. So, we get like supreme guarding kind of. Difficult. asking for our location but first we had to fix a bike problem. We haven't found a camp spot yet, but another 10 km there should be something really nice, we hope. So, and yeah, we are going to send them our location again and probably someone is coming again over to just guard us through the night. The police car just appeared but I am not allowed to film or take photos of them, they told us. So, yeah, that's why I film like this. A little bit weird, but yeah. They follow us now at the same speed as we cycle. It feels a little bit like pressure. As we found a spot to camp for the night, the guys from the police left us alone this time but still told us someone would come and check if everything was fine. Hola! Good morning. How are you? Good, good, good. Hi. Speak English? Arabic no? Number, number. WhatsApp? WhatsApp, yeah. One second, one second. Number you ask? Yes. Any problem I call you? Yes, thank you. Good night. So, we are back on the bike. Heading now to Nador and then to Melilla. I just got another call from the police, they asked again for our location. Anyway, so it's going to be our last kilometers here in Morocco. And now, slowly, this amazing little adventure through the Rift Mountains of Morocco is coming to an end. One thing is for sure, I will come back to see more. But for now, the end is near and we will be heading very soon back to Spain. And the ferry will be departuring at around midnight, so now it's five-ish, so we've got plenty of time, but first we've got to cross the water back to Spain, because Melilla is part of Spain, not Morocco. So, and here this very special episode in double length is coming to an end. My friends Christoph and Thomas unfortunately have to return back to their homes, and for me the next adventure is waiting. Stay tuned, cheers and goodbye.