9 - 13 May 2017

These last few days I have cycled as most as possible along the coast and I have seen a lot of campings and one disappointing hostel.

After saying goodbye to Patrick and Valérie in Casablanca, I weighed all my bags for the flight to Marrakesh in a couple weeks. 27,7 kg, without food, that's about 10 kg less as when I had weighed it in 's Gravenmoer. Nice! After that I went on the road to El Jadida. It was a nice road with nice views, but the car drivers here are really crazy. Maybe it's a good idea to wear my orange jacket....

Packing my stuff back in is getting more easy and after a small visit to the medina I went to Oualidia. The headwind was very strong, but after pumping some more air in my tires it was a little bit easier. The sun started to set and when I arrived in Oualidia I saw a nice hostel (there was no camping). I went inside and the host showed me a room. It looked really nice, but when he told me the price of 500 dirham (about 50 euro) for one night, I started crying on the inside. He told me there was another, cheaper hostel not far away, so I went there. It was not a really clean room, but better than nothing. I cooked secretly on the balcony and when I went for a shower there was no light and the shower was cold!

When I left the next day I told the owner about the lights and the cold shower. He went to check the water and suddenly he came back with hot water in no time, while I had waited at least 5 minutes last night. Really strange. So I refused to pay the 100 dirham, what had upset the owner a little bit and after negotiating I left without paying anything. The wind was still strong when I cycled to Safi, but in the end I met Elhassan, who was cycling with friends and we had some nice conversations. He even took me up a hill, what I didn't liked, but when we were on the top, we had a great view over the city. We went down again to the point where Mustafa picked me up and I said goodbye to Elhassan. After we had put my bike and stuff inside we had a lovely time with Moroccan tea and some snacks. Then we went for a walk through the medina and we drank coffee with his friends. I enjoyed it!

The next day, Friday, I didn't want to cycle through the strong wind again, so I took the bus to Essaouira. That saved me a lot of time and my knees. In Essaouira I walked along the beach to the old medina and the streets where some parts of Game of Thrones was filmed. It is a really beautiful city with all it's tiny, little streets. When I was cooking that evening, I ran out of gas, but luckily for me there was a nice French couple, who let me cook the rest of my meal in their Camper van. We talked about travelling and after the dishes I went back to my tent to sleep.

When I woke up, the wind had turned 180 degrees, as predicted, so I had it in my back now! That felt a lot better, although there were still some big hills to take. Halfway I heard a bell ringing and when I looked back, I saw another fully loaded cyclist. It was Christoph, who had cycled all the way to here from his country Austria. He had a lot of the same stuff and accessories on his bike as me, so that was fun. We had a good time together. I wanted to cycle at least to Tamanar and when we arrived there, Christoph was to tired to cycle on, so we tried to find a place to sleep. That was more difficult than it sounds. There was no camping or hostel and at the local cafe were only dirty rooms. We asked some people and in the end we found a nice teacher at the primary school. Abdul and Chalid had a spare room and when they came back from an appointment, we ate tajine. That is really easy to prepare and very tasteful. After a long evening full with conversations, we went to sleep.

Tomorrow to Taghazout to surf!