Sweet smell of success!

We made it! Stopped at Tifnit beach on our way where we got the bikes good and stuck in the sand, tried to convince some fishermen to take us to the finish line in their boat, and almost made a really bad decision to drive several kilometers through soft dunes in the hope of finding a road...

Made it to the finish line party and my helmet finally tried to kill me.

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Met up with Justin & co

Broke the head gasket on my bike while mountain climbing today, me like! Have to adjust the carb back to its original malfunctional self tomorrow though, lost 20km/h in top speed after the mechanics magic touch. He said something about driving carefully for two weeks, he was obviously still drunk from new years.

Civilization!

Yesterday we started off in the little crap hotel and started with another day of dirt driving for the first half of the day. We had tarmac some time when it should've been lunch and made our way into Zagora. After having a good lunch and a little bit of access to Wi-Fi we decided that several of the bikes need to be checked out because they're starting to make weird noises. The mechanic that we found had one of the Decour support vehicles parked outside of it, so we assumed that he was probably a pretty good mechanic. He adjusted the valve tensioner and we lubricated the chains and were good to go! A bit more night driving got us into Agdz and we made it to the hotel Rose du Sable. We get turned away at first because the manager saw that there were five of us and said he didn't have room. But then one of the bikes wouldn't start and when I went back to the door to check which other hotel he had mentioned to go try, he said that he had one room. At that point the Adventurists crew popped out of the hotel door and we all had a cheerful welcome. A great dinner ensued with lots of stories and tall tales being told. And more than one bottle of liquor was consumed. So we all spent the night in the one room with an extra mattress on the floor.

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Found a place for the night

Done for the day, monkeys and riders in desperate need of TLC...

Navigation for dummies

Heading west, going north! Mining routes, rock climbing with the monkey bikes, following directions from locals = where the hell are we?! Amazing views!

Lost in Moroccan desert

First thing in the morning we picked up Robin's bike but it took until about 10 AM for it to be ready. After celebrating his bike was back to life, we headed out towards the Gare Medouar crater. Robin, Jim, and I decided we would test our luck making it up to the top of the crater rim. After a lot of struggling, we were successful. We basically had to carry the bikes up. We made our way down to another town, Mecissa, for lunch. And after lunch was about over two of the Adventurists crew showed up randomly.

And then everything went wrong.

We tried to make our way across the tracked desert. But it took us 20 minutes to find the right fork in the road in Fezzou and we had to be led there by random Moroccan. Come to find out his name was Salim, the nomad. He took us through the desert and across the worst terrain of the trip. About 60km of it was done at night. About 170km total for the day.

And then the auberge (hotel) we ended up at had no showers and no heat in the rooms. At least they had a room to lock the bikes up at night

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First check-in

One night freezing like shaved penguins in the tent, but tonight we warm up in a nice Kasbah in some sort of civilized part of Morocco. Note to self: dont drive on dried out river beds in the outskirts of deserts, getting stuck for hours is a guarantee. Bikes are running smooth after some much needed oil and tightening of nuts/bolts. /He-man Hunters