I've never been so happy to sleep before midnight and wake up the day after rejuvenated. Red is made of something else and has the training and the endurance needed for these trips, so he went for a night out alone and run amok in town... while I rested after our adventure in the dark the day/night before.
Hotel Tahiti had pictures of French Polynesia on the walls which... killed me. But that's another story...
It's a National Holiday in Morocco but we were lucky to find shops open to fix the lights and buy the necessary rations in case we get stuck in no man's land that spreads out til the Mauritanian border. The only bummer was that the banks were closed so we had no chance in getting Euros or Dollars. Note that Western Union only buys but they don't sell..
It took us til 11am to finally get the lights fixed because no one sold the right bulb and when we actually bought a pair, they were the right size but with and odd fit that made them fall out anyway. Red crazy glued everything and we went on our way.
Dakhla lays on the point of a peninsula of sand and seas on the East and West. Just 10 km from the city you see this view of golden sands and blue horizons. The SH50 had a slow start, as though those 15 Lt of fuel in the tank and the constant strong wind that blew against us slowed it down. We didn't care for the troubles and just enjoyed the spectacle given by this peninsula.
And here, after starting-stopping-starting again, the Aprilia started to choke one more time.
It took us more than an hour to arrive at a gas station at the fork for El Aargoub then Red worked on the Aprilia until 3pm. We still had 310 km to go. The Aprilia ran at a fluctuating speed, sometimes 20km/h, then 45km/h, then 35 km/h, then 15 km/h. We had stopped 4 times to clean/change the sparkplug with Red steadily at the limit of his patience and I, simply placing my hopes on a machine that would regain its functionality and hopefully part again and again and again.... and again.
El Aargoub was a ghost village with 7 houses. After the check up past this village. It was a ride on 5 lane wide asphalt that was laid out without any sense but the possible promises of eventually making this reef side road a future real estate investment. Most of the structures were initiated but not finished and a kilometers of land were groped but not worked on.
I've felt after all this time of riding and sense of companionship given by the tablets that marked kilometers. On this road many of them had disappeared and for a very long time I had no sense of how far we were but just the knowledge that the sun was once again setting. We rode not only at the peak of a reef near by the ocean but further closely to the beach.
The dunes were made of loose sands and strong winds shifted them creating a soft golden mist in the air and covered in a brittle fashion the asphalt. This view against the light of near sunset was beautiful.
All rationed up, we had no fear of camping out but we headed out to arrive anyhow to the border by the end of the night. With very few passerby on the road, the calm of the ride seeps in. At some point, after a deep right curve, we saw lights. I was fibrillating. It was a curious light and though it should be a gas stop in the middle of nowhere. As we arrived, the gas stop was there and next to it a building in a U shape with a tent over the center courtyard where trees and palms where planted and it was metal gated between it's sage colored columns. Absolutely unreal...
We stayed for the night. Fed, warmed, comforted and were serene.
... all this apart from a 4AM interruption due to mosquito attack on only Red who by that time decided not to shower and was covered up by muscle anti-inflammatory gel, tiger balm and lotion all used to massage his hurting back. Followed by Red's conquest to master the pronunciation of the word Japan in 0,3 seconds.
Visualizza Day 11 in una mappa di dimensioni maggiori
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