Fun in the Sun

Just kidding. He was still there. And we were still there. And Rachid was there. And Ismael came back and unlocked the door. As we were packing up, we asked the gang what we owed them. They shrugged. We said, no really. They said, pay us whatever. We ended up paying them what we paid for the hotel the night before.

And then, after we paid, Danny’s bike wouldn’t start.

So Tyler and Rahim went to work on it. They tinkered away while Danny “helped” by looking on and holding the bike up (his kickstand also did not work). Eventually, Tyler got it to start. And also smoke. But Tyler laughed and shrugged, and the engine ran, so that felt like it was good enough.

The whole experience was a lesson I’ve taken with me since – that despite what it looks like, most people are good and kind and happy to help.

But enough of that.. It was time to ride.

We retraced our steps, passed back through Izkal/ifegh/Izerkane, and found, against all odds, the piste that would take us to Tinghir.

We pointed our bikes southwest and followed the patches of dirt that looked most like paths, and we drove. It was barren and rocky and for the first twenty minutes or so, I thought my tire was going to explode with every bounce and jostle. But eventually, I just learned to enjoy the ride. We flew down the piste, kicking up dust, bouncing over rocks, not a car, house, or other human in sight.

And then Danny went down.

He was in front of us, and his front tire caught a patch of soft sand that had blew onto the path. I saw him do the “wiggle”, his bike swerving left and right, trying in vain to save it before inevitably hitting the ground in a puff of dirt. Danny stood up, dusted himself off, swore at the path, swore at us for laughing at him instead of helping, and then pulled his bike out of the dirt. Danny was fine. And his bike was too.

We continued down the road for fifteen more minutes, and then Danny fell again. This time his head cracked on the hard pack as his bike went right out from underneath him. Fortunately, our forty dollar, Chinese helmets from Ebay did the job, and he only suffered a minor concussion. But the levity from the earlier tumble was gone, and we took the last ten minutes into town a bit slower.

We finally pulled up to a cafe in the town that we arrived at on purpose. This was an accomplishment to be celebrated, given the events of the day. So we sat down with some coffee, a snack, and  assessed the sorry state of our party. We definitely made the right choice the night before. It took us an hour to get to the path, and then another hour and a half or so to cross the desert to get to the town. If we would’ve left instead of staying the night, we definitely would’ve been driving through the desert at night, and considering we had trouble finding the piste and had two accidents in broad daylight, we would’ve probably ended up in Algeria. 

But we weren’t in Algeria. We, for the first time in twenty four hours knew exactly where we were on the map, and knew where we wanted to go. We were sitting in Ait Aissa Ou Brahim. We wanted to get to Tinghir, and then there were apparently some beautiful gorges we wanted to drive through, before turning around and seeing if we could push down the highway to a white circle town of Boumaine Dades.

It was incredible. It was like when Danny bumped his head we’d all woken up in Zion National Park. There were red sandstone rock formations towering above us as we drove, peaks and outcroppings and stunning vistas galore as we rode down the highway that took us through the Gorges Toughra, as they’re called.

We could’ve kept going up into the mountains. But we had a plan, and wanted to stick to it. So we turned around. As we drove back through the gorges, we heard the familiar whine of tiny, poorly made motorcycles up ahead. It was a group of Australian Monkey Riders. There were lots of cheers and horn honking as we passed. It felt good to see our people again.

We stopped for petrol in Tinghir before pressing on toward Boumaine Dades. It was a slog. After a day off roading in the desert, the highway was brutal. It wasn’t difficult, it was just slow. You simply kicked it into fourth gear, pulled back on the throttle, and held the pose.

And to make matters worse, Danny’s bike, now named Granny, had a top speed that was about half of ours. So we’d take turns speeding ahead and then waiting around for Danny and the other one of us to loop back. Like I said. A slog.

About ten kilometers outside of Boumaine Dades, the Aussies caught up to us. They were about eight strong, and were riding in groups of two or three. They slowed up to match us though, and we rode into town together, a gang of idiots buzzing into a place that had no idea what they were in store for.

Neither did we. For the first two days, we’d been the ones struggling to figure things out, but now that we had an entire crew with us, we could sort of take a back seat and give someone else the reins. The Aussies took them, poured alcohol on them, and lit a match.