October 27, 1999 Tarifa, Spain - Hostales Facundo We left Sevilla in the afternoon We Drove through Jerez where there were so many sherry bodegas (wineries), many of them open for tastings. Other than for wine tastings, Jerez didn't appear to be a nice area to stay. It has a very industrial appearance. The coastal area around Tarifa is usually pretty windy. This is a common area for wind surfers from through Europe to come to. While the motorcycles were parked, the wind pushed Jim's bike off the center stand while he was wandering around looking for a hotel. Jim and I did another Tapas pub crawl, where we would stop in a tapas bar, have a few tapas, beer and/or sherry. We had some delicious octopus at one place served with fried potatoes covered with an olive oil pepper sauce. delicious... At another bar, I had a bowl of small sea snails. Another bar, I had a sandwich of fried pork (lomo) and Roquefort. surprisingly it went well with the Canasta Cream Sherry I was drinking. Also, I ordered a plate of Jamon Iberico (Spanish proscuito), cured pork, Spanish cherizo salami (very different from Mexican), and a type of hard white cheese most similar to a parmesan. Notes from sherry tasting of that night... I focused on Oloroso's since these are a bit pricey back home and very cheap here. Alfonso Amantiado - hard to appreciate after drinking Olorosos all night. Alfonso Oloroso seca (dry) Oloroso 1847 dulce - nice, but nothing compared to the Canasta Cream Sherry Canasta (oloroso) Cream Sherry - excellent My favorite cream sherry. Most similar to a 20 year Tawny port. In Cueta (tax free zone), this sells for 850pesetas (US$5.75) per bottle, I would pay US$30 back home if I could find it. Osborne 10 RF - 10 year old cream sherry. Ok, but I like the 1847 cream sherry. [Later Note: The US distributor for William Humbert, makers of Canasta Cream told me that it has not been imported into North America for the past several years... not available] ---- Jim asked where I keep my money and important documents. He had a special made leather belt which he wears that stores all of his money, and then he carries a money belt around his abdomen which stores his important documents. In addition to his real wallet, He keeps on hand a fake wallet which he keeps expired credit cards, and foreign currency in that looks like it's worth more than it is. I told him, I only keep enough currency for a couple days in my wallet. the rest is stored in other places. I limit my loss by distributing in several places, which include on the motorcycle, in my luggage, and in three places on my person. Most of it is easily accessible, and secured out of sight. If a pick pocket were skilled enough to get into my 10 inch deep pockets that are partly obscured by my fanny pack belt, they would only find my everyday wallet which contains enough currency for a few days. Everything else is secured away. I once carried a fake wallet stacked with small foreign currencies, and even some real looking "Japanese dollars" that a Burmese kid gave me. I found the fake wallet annoying to carry, and decided to focus more on avoiding muggings, by being aware of pickpockets, of which I've only encountered two unsuccessful ones in the last decade. October 28, 1999 Larache, Morocco - Hotel Espagne We were on the road leaving Tarifa at 7:30am, heading for the Cueta ferry which left at 8:00am. Since sunrise is around 8:45am, we were riding in the dark. The 1 hour ferry leaving Algeciers to Cueta cost 4600 pesetas (US$30) which covered one motorcycle and one person one-way. Today the winds were blowing from the Mediterranean which I've been told are much milder than the one's blowing from the Atlantic which was the source two days ago. The bikes were tightly strapped down with a winch belt over the seat which was good since the boat rocked. Cueta is a Spanish tax free haven. Gasoline which sells for 122 pesetas per liter in Spain ($3.03/gal) sells for 70 pesetas in Cueta per liter ($1.73/gal). Oil which can cost as high as US$8-$9 per liter in Europe sells for about $2 per liter. At a gas station in Cueta, I bought 5 liters of Mobil 20W50 for 1550 pesetas (US$10). This time of the year the border was not busy at all. I walked the paperwork around. The entire process took about an hour. Fill out a white arrival paper, and get the passport stamped. Pick up a green temporary vehicle importation form for the vehicle. I showed my passport, green card insurance, carnet and the filled out green vehicle importation form. The carnet wasn't necessary, nor was it stamped. They just used it as a 'carte gris' (gray card) which is an official looking piece of paper that identifies VIN and license plate number. After the green card is stamped, an inspector checks the bike and the contents. My inspector wanted to look in the top box, and my tank bag. Through a small nylon bag, he felt some AA batteries. Vocalizing his thoughts, he paused for a moment thinking that they might be rifle bullets... Just like American/Mexican border where the Mexican border guards look for guns carried from fearful Americans, the Moroccans are probably use to finding guns on fearful Europeans entering this third word neighbor. After the inspector checked us off, it was over. I showed my paper and passport at the gate and they let me through. No costs involved in the border crossing other than the tip to the guide who directed foreigners where to go. I gave him a very generous tip of 10 Dutch guilders which he was quite pleased of. He was very helpful, not pushy, said his services were free, but would appreciate a tip. 5 bucks is a bit much, but the smallest currency I had on me at the time. This was after refusing the Jordanian money that Jim wanted to dump of which was worth approximately 10 bucks. Jordanian currency has no value here... I changed some French Francs at one of the two banks at the border crossing. The rate is just under 10 Dirhams to US$1. After Sharon's accident due to oil on a the road through a curve, I was closely watching for this. On many roads every curve had oil spilled on it. Although I didn't see as much oil on any of these roads that Sharon had the misfortune of running over last year, my anxiety was on high. I can imagine that there must be quite a few vehicles with broken oil pans, or shipment of oil in open containers. It's really incredible how many curves have oil spilled on them. I haven't seen the likes of this anywhere else in the world. Almost all of the taxis are old Mercedes, usually diesel. They drive down the roads slowly and are often packed with people. While I don't remember seeing any buses today, the light blue painted taxis were pretty plentiful. Driving style is quite relaxed compared to Europe and especially Spain. People generally drive slower, probably so they will lose less oil on the tight curves. Typical driving for today was 80-90km/h. We drove to Larache on the coast. Stayed in the center of town at the nicest hotel in the town, Hotel de Espangne. Cost was 195 Dirhams for the two of us. It was just off the main roundabout, and about three blocks from the Atlantic ocean. Parking is on the street, but supposedly there is a guard out all night who watches the motorcycle. I took a walk around town... I forgotten how much I like the Moroccan friendliness. People smile, or say hello, and it doesn't feel like they are after anything. Some only want to say hello, and after I return the greeting, on several occasions it seems that this is the limit of their non-arabic vocabulary. After running out of things to say, often they will walk on. This puts in perspective on the friendliness of the people. I think in my own culture, if all that could be spoken is a greeting, one would not go out of their way to strike up a conversation with a stranger("Hello", "How are you?"), only to encounter t he awkward situation of not being able to communicate any further. There were many cafe shops where men only sip their coffee or tea and watch passer-bys. There were a few parlors where men only play cards, or play Parcheesi. This town has a few wood working shops, and many furniture shops. The tools in the wood shop were interesting, I saw the biggest band saw in my life. giant planners. October 29, 1999 Laroche, Morocco Communication is a bit of a hit or miss. However it's been a nice surprise, last night, I ordered a fish, and Jim ordered brochette, what we ended up with was a plate of assorted seafood. This morning, we attempted to ask for fried potatoes (hash browns), and instead got something better... tall fresh squeezed orange juice, 'Rife' (with a rolled 'r') which might be best described as a flaky square crepe folded up with butter and jam. cafe con leche. It was delicious and filling and total cost was 15 Dirham (US$1.50) After breakfast a continuously smiling kid we named 'Smiley' shined our shoes with hand slapping flare. He would bounce and slap his brush as he polished the shoes, all for show. In the late afternoon, Jim and I sat facing the center of town roundabout and found it hard to talk about anything other than what we were observing... It was like a zoo. This appeared to be a disproportionate number of mentally touched characters in town. This was the congregation point of the wacos. Forrest Gump was a frazzle haired seriously suntanned guy with sand/dirt colored clothes, high top sand colored shoes with bright white new laces. Forrest Gump looked like he was on a mission heading somewhere quickly, He interacted with almost no one and carried a small plastic burlap bag over his arm. However, since he passed in front of us about 6 times in 15 minutes, we quickly discovered he just likes to walk fast and would benefit if he had a goal. He was like Forrest Gump running across the country and back. At 12:55am, Jim looked out the window of our hotel. He saw him still going, 7 hours after we had been observing him. He could make a name for himself if he walked in one direction. We figured at the pace he walks he could go from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in a year on foot. He passed by 3 time within 5 minutes still traveling at the same fast pace. We were thinking that Nike should sponsor this guy, or at least hire him as a quality assurance tester. The next morning from our balcony. Forrest was still going, however his pace had slowed down considerably. When butt skitcher (later nick-named to Holy Pants) intersected Forrest Gump on their separate but equally seemingly goalless journeys, they waived to each other as if they were buddies and hadn't seen each other in a while. Holy pants had a bunch of small holes on his rear end as if he had been skitching on his butt. Desert man was dressed in sand color clothes, and carried a long bag that fit like a crude backpack. He looked like he might be a hermit who lived in the desert for months at a time. Larache is a long way from the open desert. This afternoon, he was taking a nap on his pack on the sidewalk in the roundabout. Acrobat boy (Moeshine?), was a 19 year old muscular kid who had been training since he was 11 years old in a circus/acrobat team of 7 acrobats. Three months ago, he came back from a 15 month stay in the United Kingdom where they performed. We invited Acrobat boy to sit and talk with us, until it seemed things stopped clicking and a few marbles were missing. Radio dude, (Jim called F.N.), was a bit abusive sounding. He spoke in a very loud voice in English, often intruding or interrupting. He wore a gray winter coat with a shirt and sweater underneath (it was 72 degrees out), and always had a transistor radio up to his ear. While unable to grasp our unfriendliness towards him was due to his intrusiveness, his main goal became being our friend. The Professor, had studied languages, and claimed to fluently speak 8 languages. He would come over and sit down with us and had an almost too friendly personality that always made me wonder what he was trying to sell. After he would leave, I would always conclude that he just wanted to talk. He ended up giving us good recommendations on places to eat in town. He seemed to know most people around, and was constantly interrupting conversation to wave hello to someone in the distance walking by. he has a habit of talking with his hands waiving within an inch of his audiences face. Socks was a toothless old man who wore eye-catching stripped red and white socks that made me think of Dr. Seus, "Cat in the hat". He wore a jacket over a 49'rs fan shirt, and a winter hat. He had a walking stick which he would occasionally burst out and whack the pavement with. He was constantly on the move wandering for several minutes at a time within a 10 foot square area on a corner before he would move to another corner and do the same. He would smile at us when he thought we noticed him. Smiley, was our shoe shine boy. He appeared about every half hour smiling at us and nodding hello, constantly reminding us of how much we had over-paid him for a shoe shine. His jealous friend was very persistent in wanting to shine our shoes even though our shoes were still quite shiny from having just been polished a couple hours before. blabber dude, had wild hair, a dark tan, and wore a white Nike T-shirt on backwards. He would be walking in a hurry, and burst out yelling something at us in Arabic as if he was asking for money, and then quickly walk on. We saw him about every 10 minutes, but for only about 2-3 seconds at a time. Had my months allotment of sugar.... two Moroccan mint teas loaded with mint leaves and sugar, served from a cheap silver plated small tea pot.. High on sugar and caffeine consumption, and low on actual food, we went out looking for a restaurant. We went to Restaurant Saccala just inside the medina. recommended by the Professor. The owner showed us his slightly cool refrigerator of the catches of the day. He had fish, squid mantles, and cows hooves. I ordered Harina (Moroccan vegetable noodle soup), and lamb tajine which surprisingly had no couscous, but rather French fries, lamb, quince (membrillo), carrots in an oily sauce. October 30, 1999 Rabat, Morocco - camped in Sale Municipal campground We decided to stay at the campground solely because we had heard that is the place to meet the overlanders, and get information. When we arrived, there was a Dutch bicyclist who was going from Paris to Dakar ending his trip 6 months after beginning. The other two or three other foreigners staying here weren't the sort we were looking for. The campground itself, isn't much to speak of. It's a walled in area with broken glass cemented on the top of the walls for security, and a single entrance, and is located next to the beach. The campground itself has only two trees to provide shade of which we were lucky to get the largest. The new lessors just planted a bunch, so 20 years from now it should be better. October 31, 1999 Changed engine and transmission oil in both R100GS and R80G/s topped off the R100GS brake fluid. Since we didn't have a way to measure the oil precisely, we held off on changing the driveshaft and final drive oil on the R80G/S. Jim has been running the R80G/S with the carbs running rich, and occasionally popping when the engine is cold. Adjusting the carbs today made them worse. Jim was regretting having had them mucked with in Holland. November 1, 1999 Rabat, Morocco - camped Being Monday, it was the first opportunity we had to work on getting our Mauritania visa. I put on my best and cleanest clothes, took a shower and shaved making myself dapper to receive a visa for this occasion. With hindsight, I don't think it mattered much for this embassy, but one never knows. We took a taxi to the embassy. Our over friendly campground guy had told us it would cost 3 dirhams each. This we later found out was the price for multiple sharing the same cab, and going no further than the center of Rabat. We ended up taking this to the Mauritania embassy which was on the other side of town. When I gave the driver 6 dirham to cover the fair, he asked for 100 dirhams (50 each). This was the amount I had thought I had settled on with the taxi driver before we got into the cab. I later suspected he didn't understand much French, and would have shaken his head at anything I said. This ended up being a protracted problem which was not getting resolved, and the taxi driver got everyone standing outside the embassy involved of which there were five embassy workers. Jim, who appears to be hypoglycemic didn't have any breakfast this morning, and was becoming more disagreeable than ever. Seeing that this was a lose-lose situation by not resolving this problem soon, I paid the difference and got on with my life. Inside the embassy, which appears to be just a nice house in a subdivision, we were told that we would need an airline ticket into and out of Mauritania and a 100 dirham fee. The embassy is open from M-F 9:00- 3:00, closing earlier on Fridays, but they need the submission by of all information by 11:00am, if one wants the visa that day. From other sources, we heard about the requirement of the airline ticket. This has been on-going for the past 6-7 years. The local travel agents know the deal... They sell the ticket to you for full fair, and then the next day, you return it with a 10% loss. An airline ticket on Air Maroc from Casablanca to Nouakchott is 6165 Dirhams, so my cost after returning the ticket will be 616.5 dirhams or (US$62). Several travel agents are ending this practice due to problems with Air Maroc, and travelers returning the tickets. We went to "La Royale" travel agency across from the central train station in Rabat. They only took cash which I paid in French Francs for (FF4100). Before we went to the travel agent, which, are all closed between 12:00 and 2:30 for lunch, we stopped in an Internet cafe, and got caught up on mail, and did some information mining on the area we were about to cross. www.sahara-overland.com turned out to be an excellent source of info. Cyber cafes are everywhere in Rabat. The one we were at cost us 12 dirhams per hour ($1.20), however I would guess they were multiplexing a single 56k line among all of the dozen or so computers they had there. If other people were surfing, the network would crawl. Since it was way past 11:00am, the cutoff time for the embassy, we just explored the town and walked back. Back at the campground, a 54 year old French traveler introduced himself, and gave us loads of information on travel through Morocco, Mauritania, Mali. His English was a bit slow and rough, so we conversed in Spanish, since that was easier for both of us than French. The information was quite valuable, and receiving it was the sole reason why I was staying at this campground. Later, we walked off from the campground, and Jim and I found some sandwich shop that sold egg sandwiches with great french fries. Two sandwiches with a side order of fries each, an extra order of fries, and two Fanta soda pops cost 25 dirhams (US#2.50) November 2, 1999 Sale (Rabat), Morocco - municipal campground We met two other travelers who spent the night at the campground. The had bicycled here. One was Daniel from just outside of Los Angeles, and the other was Ken from New Zealand. Daniel was a short guy who spoke with a lot of California grunge slang. He had the style of a traveler who had been on the road a long time, and an seemed an interesting person to have a beer with. He had spent several months in SE Asia, and did an illegal entrance into Burma from Thailand which is impressive given the density of DEA agents, poppy fields and Karen fighting going on in that region. At 8:30 We were on our way to the Mauritania embassy to get our visa. Yesterday, we had been told that if we got all the information in before 11am, we could get the visa by 2:30pm. We were there by 9:00am. Filled out the application, and then were told to come back tomorrow around 11am. I turned in my application, 2 passport size photos, my airline ticket, and 100 dirham ($10) I checked the travel agent to make sure we could still get a refund on her required round trip airline tickets... yep no problem. Other traveler had gotten their Mauritania visas in other countries with different requirements. Daniel (above) got his in Zurich, and didn't need a an airline ticket. The Dutch guy from a few days back got his in Madrid. He didn't need an airline ticket, however he did have to get a letter from his embassy requesting a Mauritania visa. After, we returned to the campground. Walking around the campground with Ahmed, the manager of the campground, was someone we hadn't seen before. In his hand was a divining rod. Ahmed called me over. For some reason he wanted to me to witness that this person had declared that 3-4 meters below this spot, there would be water, and that a well could be dug. So sure was the diviner, that he offered to have his hand cut off should that not be the case. He showed me the reaction of his stick. The stick was shaking so much and pulling so much that it looked like it was about to pull the guy over, and stick right into the ground. He had shown his ID card to Ahmed, so that Ahmed would know who's hand to cut off should they dig more than 4 meters and only find sand. The payment for this service was some bread. While Rabat's water supply was fine, they wanted to build a well to be used for watering the newly planted trees in the campground, and the city supply was expensive. Jim asked me to accompany him to the welder to get a few things fixed on the bike. We took off the panniers only to discover that the right rear sub-frame had completely fractured on the right side. The fracture had occurred about an inch away from the repair done in Morocco last year. After repairing the fracture, the welder added some reinforcement to the rear sub-frame on both sides hopefully preventing this from happening again. He asked for 50 dirhams ($5). Jim then wanted to get the side stand fixed. The welder bent out the engine guard it was attached to which had crushed long ago under the weight of the load of the bike. He then reinforced it with more steel. The lean angle was still a bit far, so the welder then extended the length. After nearly an hour working on the motorcycle, for his time and two other helpers, materials and equipment us he charged an additional 50 dirhams, or 100 dirhams in total ($10) Jim paid him 120 dirhams. As usual for me, visiting welders is one of the most satisfying experiences. Not only do they fix serious/potentially crippling problems, but they reinforce the weak points, making them stronger, and the cost for their labor is relatively nothing. Jim was on a high after that. Had lunch in the Medina. I decided to spend my afternoon at a cyber cafe. Cyber cafes are all over town, and easy to find just by walking around. There was one just up the hill from our campground which I visited. Performance is incredibly slow. For the 16 or more machines they have, it seems as though they have one 56k line multiplexed between them all. Time must be cheap in Morocco. People don't mind waiting for their page downloads. It sometimes took 15 minutes to see the list of hotmail messages I had, other times, this would time-out. My browser was telling me that I was getting a throughput speed of 37 octets/sec (37 bytes/sec) or just under 300 baud. Looking over my shoulder, I could see other users were use to this. One kid had seven Netscape sessions going, all downloading pages at the same time so that he could be reading one while the other six were downloading. Of course, this meant the download of my single page suffered... A majority of the users there were in chat rooms. They charge 8 dirhams per hours ($.80), so there isn't much room to complain. In the evening, two motorcyclists had arrived. A Dutch guy on a Honda XR600, and a German guy on a Honda African Twin. They had just been on a three week trip though Morocco with a group of six. Three were continuing South, while three were heading north, back to home. In total, two were Dutch, three were German, and one French. It was interesting to hear their stories in that I got a feel of a completely different riding style. Six guys, with testosterone off the scale was my take. In those three weeks, four of their motorcycles had serious problems. The XR600 had cracked the oil sump case. They patched it up with some liquid metal, but he still loses so much oil that he needs to add some significant amount every 300km. The guy on the Africa Twin went through some deep mud and ended up sucking in some and killing his fuel pump. His bike had fallen a few times, and really banged up his new aluminum/steel luggage system and rack. He said he was taking it easy compared to the others. The third guy heading home had some unfixable problem with his motorcycle and had to have it flown home, fortunately the transport cost was covered by the German Automobile Association. One of the travelers heading South and intending to continue through Africa for a year cracked his 40 liter plastic gas tank on his Suzuki DR650, and had to have a new one flown in since he didn't have any petrol resistant patches or glue. It's amazing how poisonous testosterone is... ---- Dave Thompson http://www.roadkill.com/~davet/worldtrip ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com