Cycling The Globe

Distance: 95.1 km
Ride time: 6:07:18
Average: 15.5 km/h
Max speed: 29.9 km/h
Total: 53765 km

Morocco is country number 51 by bike, and off we went into the Casablanca morning traffic. Compared to the stone throwing kids of Ethiopia and the heat and police escorts in Egypt, the first impression of Morocco is that the cycling is much more manageable here. We will be sticking to the Atlantic coast which means the temperatures should stay comfortable, and the people seem friendly although the whole atmosphere in the country is often pretty intense.

Both Manon and I should in theory speak some French (an official language here) – but it just doesn’t work so well in Morocco. The questions is if its our French that is lacking, or perhaps the locals who much prefer Arabic. I guess its a mix.

We found a busy seafood restaurant for lunch and ran into communication problems again. Luckily a guy at the next table noticed our challenges and offered to order for us. We got the whole deal: Fish, salad, bread, bottle of water, and of course mint tea with plenty of sugar which is very popular here.

The food was so good that we didn’t care too much what the whole thing would cost, thinking that we might have exceeded our budget by a fair bit. I was therefore very surprised when I went up to pay and the whole bill for the two of us was only 5 US$!

Back on the bike we were making steady progress towards Rabat, the capital city of Morocco (even though Casablanca is bigger). Not that there wasn’t people enough in Rabat. Everyday at sunset the whole country races out into the streets to go shopping, eating, or simply just hanging out. No empty streets after dark here…

Finding a cheap hotel took a couple of tries since Rabat is a fancy capital city. Or well, parts of Rabat is fancy, other parts are very much the oppesite – which is exactly what I find so fascinating about Morocco.

Our first day on the bike had gone exactly as planned – which is a very good thing considering that we are still very much figuring things out as we go. Tomorrow we will be back for more.