Those first 2 months were quite intense. I didn’t maintain a terrific average, at 75 km / day, much below my estimation of 100 km / day. An estimation made on my previous trips, very flat compared to what Switzerland, France and Spain brought to me. It seems I picked up every day the hilliest roads on my way. This was not made on purpose, except for the Port d’Envalira, ピレネーの最高.しかし、それぞれの日が美しかったし、バレンシアに入り口を忘れた場合は、私のすべての道路楽しんだ。山の風景を = = 良い 1 日。私はそれを説明するために小さなグラフを作った：

モロッコの当然の休みを取った。だけでなく私の足はもちろん、その恒久的な痛みの状態から回復するようがまた精神的疲労から回復します。毎日、私の家で私のバイクの荷を移動すると無料で感じながら明白ではないですが、常に/毎日の考える必要があるは非常に面倒です：
– packing the tent and gear neatly in the morning
– making sure I have enough food and water at any time of the day (water doesn’t last long on hot or hilly days)
– taking the “right” road, and re-evaluating my decision almost at every road crossing, with the impacts in short and longer term.I know what is my direction, but I only have a rough idea of the roads I can take. As I want to take the most scenic and least busy road each time, pieces of information gathered in real-time, I never know in the morning on which roads I am going and where I will sleep
– making sure wet items dry during the day (becomes problematic on successive rainy days)
– finding a suitable and safe sleeping spot every evening, inspecting the surroundings, mounting the tent (easy to imagine, but harder to do with sore legs and diminishing light)
– cooking, or eating cold food if I carry enough (the food not needing cooking takes significantly more volume than rice and pasta)
– making sure I have enough electricity in my batteries (phone, laptop, spare batteries, battery deck), with the dynamo (for batteries under 7.4 V) and bars/restaurants in the evenings (for laptop battery), and that the GPS is always up (to record the trace)
– to a less important extent, making sure I have enough cash and phone credit
– to a less frequent extent, making sure the bike is always running well (weekly chain and general cleaning and oiling, weekly check of screws)
– to an extent reducing with the size of the local population (which is why I feel better away from big towns), making sure that my bike and gear are in sight or secured
– processing the information gathered during the day: pictures and stories. I knew that deciding to maintain a blog means sparing enough time for it, but it is taking more time than I thought. At least 1 hour every evening. Plus more time (requiring to find wifi) to upload the pictures and to publish a blog post. When I am tired and just want to sleep, I know that postponing this 1 hour job will make it a 1.5 hour job the next day (penalty due to limited information freshness), and so on …

すべてのこの「から後半日の出」少なくとも退屈な活動である日没までサイクリング中。

それはかなりよく、これまで撮影した道路で非常に満足と仕事と経験。穿刺 3500 km (シュワルベ タイヤを見える 6000 km punctureless の合計で、彼らの評判に値すること) 自転車に関連する問題ではない、ない傷害、何も紛失や盗難、すべてではなかった写真撮影を公開しました。

今すぐ上から、それよりもヨーロッパでは、だから、サイクリングの数量ダウン減速するかもしれない、写真をアップロード私は確かに少ない/より悪いインフラストラクチャを見つけるだろうもっとやりがいとなります。

During 2 weeks, turned into the tourist mode, I could rest my brain from thinking and visit the main cities of the north of Morocco, from Tangier to Rabat through the beautiful Chefchaouen, Fès and the nice medina, Marrakesh where people have no shame in using the most irrational rip-off tricks, and a bit of the desert where I could learn to spot Orion with Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Rigel, Taurus with Aldebaran, Sirius, Gemini with Castor and Pollux, Procyon, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Aries, Hydra, etc … the sky navigation may be useful in the future.

I also drank tap water little by little. Although it’s not recommended for tourists in Morocco, it is drinkable. So far I didn’t visit the toilets more than once a day, so I’m ready to drink and sweat a lot. With the quantities of food I ate, I think recovered well on the weight that I might have lost during the past two months, and maybe took an advance on what I’ll lose in the Moroccan hills (it’s a promising hilly country for the northern half). I had also a great time at Najib’s place, with delicious food, hammam, teas, etc, near Rabat.

モロッコの私の最初の時間の私は肯定的な印象があります。Chouia、bezef、flouze は、実際にアラビア語の単語が、よくスペイン各地を提供して、私のスペイン語が、モロッコの北の先端で動作することを実現しました。また、他のどの国よりもよりメルセデスを発見しました。メルセデス 240 どこでも、グランド タクシーまたは個人の車としてです。

Thanks to Natasha and Paul, I fetched spare hooks for my Vaude panniers, the parts of my gear the most likely to break. That’s the only part of my equipment where I didn’t pick the N°1 brand. For this kind of trip, where trust in years-lasting equipment is essential, most of the travelers seem to have the exact same gear: a CrMo-steel frame, Schwalbe tyres, Magura hydraulic brakes, Ortlieb panniers, a Brooks saddle, a B&M light, and so many Rohloff hubs. There’s competition for each of the parts, but one brand is always clearly above the others, and seemingly the only one to trust.

I also applied for the Mauritanian visa. It is the next country on my trip. It has to be requested in Rabat, before doing the 2000 km ride towards the border in the south. With the delicate situation in the neighboring countries turning into a disaster just recently, I am not sure what I will decide at the bottom of Morocco, but I have 2 more months to think about it and to observe the conditions.

I was aware that I have to get up early to queue at the embassy of Mauritania so as to increase my chances of applying for the visa. The internet has plenty of information about what to do, or actually about what could happen. About what to submit, about the queuing system, about how the visa validity dates are given randomly, etc. After missing the Friday (January 11th is a national holiday in Morocco), I set my alarm clock at 6 am on Sunday evening. But after reading a bit more on the internet, people writing about sleeping in front of the gate and tricky numbering systems, I advance it to 5:30.

I can’t sleep anyway, and get up on time and prepared. Thanks to Najib’s details on how to move quickly, I take 2 shared taxis, 1 other taxi, and am by the embassy gate at 6:30 am. There are already about 40 people queuing on the pavement. There is nothing but a small door and a sign in Arabic on the wall. There is no numbering system to tell who arrived first, and the line doesn’t look like a line for everyone.

The day slightly comes to warm us up and the door opens at 8 am. There is only one small room with one tiny window inside, where people drop their documents and money. The people queuing argue with the people not queuing, no one really know what’s going on and why the line has always more people ahead. It seems the only way to get the application form is from a man across the street, selling photocopies for 10 dh (and helping to fill it for non French/Arabic speakers for another 10 dh). At least, it’s how most people do.

So here we are queuing watching people arguing and helping others to bypass the line, wondering how much we would want to pay to pass earlier. I know that the embassy will close the gate at some point of the morning, and all the people still outside will be ignored, and probably have to come back tomorrow, even earlier.

10 周りそれ最後にそれを作った救済との小さな部屋を入力する私の番になります。いつでもともドアを閉めて可能性が私の前に。その瞬間、ゲート キーパー右私の後に、ドアをシャット ダウンすることを決定私はすぐに、小さな窓から私のパスポート、書類とお金をドロップし、ドアをすぐに離れる注文します。すべてが順序でまたはそれらを教えて場合私依頼する時間がないときに私のパスポート戻すか。

私は後で私の後、キューに到着したすべての人を失っているので彼らの朝、ドアを決して再ことを学ぶ。我々 はどうやら戻って 15 で同じ日の午後は、来ています。

In the meantime, I went shopping for some of my missing items. The medinas of the Moroccan towns are great, a heaven for shopping without cars and with zillions of items for cheap. But actually, they all sell the same crap, sadly mostly from China, and it’s super hard to find something of quality or original (anywhere in town). I got relatively good connectors and cables for cheap, but had to go with a fake Michelin map for Morocco (a copy from the 2010 edition, I hope not too many changes occurred since then), and I doubt there is any outdoor shop in here selling original or trustable items. Except carpets, but they’re not flying so it’s not really what I need.

At 3 am, I am there, back at the Mauritanian embassy for fetching the visa. The same people of the morning are present too. As in the morning, no one knows what’s happening. The door opens and they call in the people who applied on the 9th, five days ago. It lasts for a while. Some wonder if we too, the 14th-crew, will have to come back another day. Finally we can line up and enter with our receipt. It goes much faster and smoother than in the morning.

I receive my passport and the visa inside. Unfortunately the dates are not what I asked for. I am given a 30-day visa, but the start of the validity is 20 days earlier than my request. I had specifically requested them late, at the end of the validity of my stay in Morocco, so I can fully visit the country and take it easy to rest when I want. So now, they already have eaten my buffer time. I balance between the happiness of having gotten this visa in a day, avoiding the traps and potential consequences of the action in Mali, and the pressure that those wrong dates puts on me to reach the southern border of Morocco. Of the European travelers I chatted with, no one made any reference to safety, but only about the improved road quality.

I ended this shopping day with mixed feelings, maybe slightly positive if I consider a good buy the air gun I got for 30 dh with plenty of plastic bullets, as a defense system against dogs raised to bite me. Still, it will be tricky to pick and use while cycling.

今不足している唯一のものは （私は出発前に私のクレジット カードをリニューアルしていたが債務カードはまた、有効期限を持っていることを忘れてしまった） 私の新たなデビット カードです。私はまた私のテントと 1 つのパニエにマイナーな穴を修正しなければなりません。時間を見つける場合は、かかるの GBs のも私もフランス、スペイン、ビデオを作ることに見ることができます。

最後でモロッコの仮のルートは私を更新、 ルート計画ページ.