Archive for January, 2008

Our grumpy spell gave way today. So many good samaritans helped us out it was impossible not to feel the world was in fact a good place after all. Such are the highs and lows of cycle touring; you never know how your emotions will swing as you tackle the road ahead.

Frustrations from the two previous days were already fading yesterday evening when the three kind men found us a safe place for the night. Throughout the evening the guardian of the orange grove kept coming over to offer us things. Did we have enough blankets? How about a gas lamp for our tent? A cup of tea? There was nothing he didn’t think of but we were very content just to have a little patch of land to sleep on and to watch the chickens from our tent door.

We slept like babies and woke up early to get a head start on the hills. Shiraz sits about 1,600 meters above sea level so we knew there was a good climb waiting for us. Sure enough, we went steadily higher for the better part of 40km and through seven tunnels before the newly constructed road finally reached its peak and granted us a small descent. (more…)

We got up on the proverbial wrong side of the tent this morning, our bad moods brought on by too little sleep and the thought of making our way back through the village whose residents had followed us down a goat trail and then stayed to watch us for hours the day before. Two of the young men who’d sat outside our tent door in the afternoon even scrambled the considerable distance up the hill after dark to yell “Hello Mister” outside our tent, trying to encourage us to come out. Nothing could have dragged us out of our sleeping bags after the day we’d had and we were none too pleased with our visitors who wanted us to provide them with more entertainment.

Only when Andrew shouted “go away” in a gruff voice did they finally get the hint and leave. Did they think we’d be singing campsongs in the evening? We didn’t realise until later on, when neither of us could sleep and what rest we did get was punctuated by anxiety dreams, just how stressed we were because of the constant attention. (more…)

Maybe we should have listened. So many times we’ve been told a road is too tough, too dangerous, too long or too busy for our bicycles and every time we’ve managed to find a way through so when crowds of locals started telling us the same old story we didn’t give it much thought. And, to be perfectly honest, we were so tired of people gathering around us to stare and ask questions we had little patience for any conversations, even ones meant to help us.

“This road is impossible for you,” the local English teacher said. When asked why, we were told it was deserted. Fantastic! With so much of our daily movements watched by curious locals the idea of an empty landscape couldn’t have been more appealing.

“You might have to walk,” he said. No problem, we thought, remembering walking our bikes over rough paths in Spain and Greece. (more…)

Never camp in a dry riverbed in case it suddenly springs to life. That was the advice we were given by Brahim, one of our friends in Morocco nearly a year ago. Last night we saw his words in action. Thankfully we weren’t tenting in a riverbed but on the banks of a stream. We’d been listening to the steady drips of water on our roof for a few hours when a roaring sound sent us scrambling for our shoes and out into the wet evening to see what was happening. The little water channel, which had been totally empty just a few hours earlier, was now full to bursting.

By morning only a few puddles remained but the events of the night before left a real impression in our mind of just how quickly a river can appear out of nowhere. Our stream went from hardly a drop to several feet of water in thirty seconds. Early in our trip we favoured dry riverbeds because they were flat and often surrounded by high banks to hide us from roads and houses. Looking back it was a silly place to put our tent and we were lucky not to encounter much wet weather. (more…)