Duck...and other things broken

Got up at dawn to see camels grazing in the distance. Breakfasted with the family on bread and olive oil and got directions down the coast along the piste. After obligatory pics with the family on the bike I set off on the piste following the GPS track and map. Piste, I thought,we did 200km of that last year in Argentina and Chile. No problem.


Richard Allen predicted this bit quite accurately....It was all quite exciting and then it got very exciting. I was not paying enough attention and hit a patch of mud and threw the bike on the ground. The right side of the bike was completely caked it it. I managed to lift it and got going again and about 30 minutes later hit a patch of sand....seems I wasnt paying attention again! Seems thqt the slippy stuff is hard to see sometimes. After that, I was well warned and knew what sand and mud looked like and stayed clear when I could. After that the problems were a more obvious.


Oueds, lots of mud and very rocky pistes. I followed a gps track to get out of this as quickly as possible. This is a tiny example of the terrain.....stop, check it out, fill the bottom with stones if necessary and off again. I kept the bike upright and going for the rest of the 3 hours it took to get to some asphalt and it never felt better. I got to the next service station and had a guy hose the bike down and me too for good luck. I noticed then I had blown the headlight bulb and broken one of auxiliary lights. Bugger. The duck is officially broken now. I predicted at least one blip on the trip and this was it.


Decided to continue on to Laayoune about 200 miles south of TanTan. The road from Tantan runs alongside the cliff for a lot of the route and you see lots of people in the middle of nowhere with a rod and line hanging over the edge. The cliff mist be 150 feet high and very crumbly. You have to like a fish supper to want to do that. I saw this interesting hole as an example of the cliff.



This bit of Morocco (i.e. ex Spanish Sahara) is disputed territory and the UN are here to broker a settlement between the parties. There are police checkpoints all over the place and I had to show my passport 3 times today and they always ask what your job is. If you are a journalist, you probably wont be allowed to enter. The UN have block booked most of the rooms in the best hotels in town and the prices reflect their presence. Felt like treating myself and washing the mud out from between my toes so checked into one of the swankier places. This is as far south as I go.