My first trip to Morocco, and also my first travel to Africa and to any of these typical hot countries. Usually I prefer to travel around in cooler climate zones, but becaouse work has put some restrictions on my travelling plans, two weeks of holidays in early spring fell off. And as the north is too unpredictable at that season I started looking for an alternative destination. I wanted to make a bicycle tour once again, if possible with tent and on rough tracks. After some research on the pages of other cyclists, my choice therefore fell onto Morocco, in the beginning of April.
For the first tour I almostexpected everything to come differently than expected. The first days I had to get acclimated from the 10 degree Celsius cold Germany to a heat-wave with more than 40 degree Celsius in Agadir. I could not possibly think of cycling, not to mention leaving an air-conditioned building for more than one hour without getting a serious headache. As I still wanted to see something of the country and at least get a bit of an overview, I then decided to take a one-day-bus-journey into the mountains and to Ouarzarzarte. From there I cycled with more moderate temperatures via Ait-Benhaddou, Telouet and Tizi n Tichka to Marrakech, where I had to take a day of rest of course. Back across the high atlas I came by Lalla Takerkoust and across Tizi n Test to Taroudante, and as I had one more day left and not enough pistes yet I added a detour via Ameskroud and Immouzzer before going to Agadir and the airport. The route is also shown in this map.
Altogether it was a fascinating new experience, although I definitelly did not like everything on my tour. I also made a lot of photos on the way, altogether 325 of them:
06-m0-00-bike.jpg(81631 bytes): My bicycle at the first crossroads in Sous
06-m0-01-stop.jpg(66493 bytes): My bicycle and a marrocanian stop sign
