Not a dead end

12 monkeybikes, swerving around each other, beeping, filming, determined to get the most out of the last day.

We reach Lamnizla, and it doesn't look like a dead end. There is a mountain road. It is Steepy McSteepface. And some of our bikes really don't do steep. First gear, and you still have to put your feet down and run, Flintstones-style. Who could resist?

Leaving the tarmac behind

Enough highway. I hear there's a mountain road around here somewhere. Lamnizla? Possibly a dead end. Who cares? Let's give it a go anyway.

The final push

One final day. 105km, two and a half hours, on the most direct route to our destination. As if we'd ever take the direct route.

Getting the bikes up the stairs is every bit as awkward as we anticipated. We load up, ride out to the square, and only arrive 5 minutes later than planned. Fred and Bjorn are sitting at the café having breakfast, but the others are nowhere to be seen.

It's relatively early and tourists are thin on the ground, so beggars queue up to ask us for money. Some simply ask, one guy with a pipe walks up and plays four notes, then asks. We all try to avoid eye contact. He plays the same four notes again, then sings the same notes. Eventually someone relents, giving him some dirham in the hope he goes away. He walks off, seemingly satisfied.

Fred and Bjorn get up from the café and join us to talk and plan. Pipe guy spots them and sees an opportunity, so comes back to pipe for them. This time no one pays him, so he keeps playing. Those four notes get tiresome very quickly.

Thankfully he's drowned out by the cacophony of 5 more monkeybikes, and the Taroudant Monkeybiker Gang was complete. We plotted. One last day. A finish line somewhere in Taghazout. Rumours of mountain roads, waterfalls, and a valley called Paradise. Let's go.

The one where our host has fingers in all the pies

Now we've found somewhere to stay, we all sort out kit, and head out to find somewhere to eat. As we're heading towards the main square, who's this? "You looking for somewhere to eat? I take you to my brother's place, it's very good, just a few minutes away". Our intrepid host covers all the angles. As he leads us through the rabbit warren, he stops outside a shop selling tagine dishes, tea pots, and the usual tourist souvenirs. "My dad's place, come take a look". Jeez, no! It's late, we're hungry, let's just go this restaurant already!

Thankfully, it's not far to go. The menu is beginning to look familiar: omelette, couscous, kefta…it's like someone took a menu, made a thousand photocopies, and gave it to every café in Morocco. Still, there's a certain something to be said for simple and predictable. Kefta please.

We order our food, and as we're waiting, we get a message from Fred and Bjorn - "Where are you eating?" They join us a few minutes later, and it's not too long before a third mob turn up. 11 out of 15 pioneers, all at the same café, mostly by sheer coincidence. Talk turns to tomorrow, our final chance to take the machines out in a blaze of glory. Meet you all at 9:30am, by the mosque. Who will make it? Like all our plans, we just have to wait and see.

When haggling gets weird

Highways, the least fun way to travel on a monkeybike. A steady drone fills our ears, like a hypnotic suggestion to sleep. Trucks whizz by at twice our speed, and we wonder when one will nudge us into the verge. But we get there.

Taroudant. A melée of bikes and buses, taxis and trucks, beeping and jostling their way into the medina. And 5 monkeybikers thinking "oh shit".

We have a goal, we have a hotel in mind. Riad Tafilag, very central, and the best-rated hotel in town, at least, so says trip-advisor. We get into the medina, get our elbows out in the melée of traffic, and find a place to pull over for a quick map-check. As usual, us foreigners are immediately targeted. But wait, this one has met Adventurists before! It turns out that the finish-line team stayed there a couple days before.

We debate what to do, because we're just around the corner from the place we planned to stay at, but the guy is insistent, and we figure we might as well at least take a look. "It's just 10 minutes away". We've heard that before.

He jumps on his bike and drives off with us all in tow. And surprise of all surprises, it genuinely is only 10 minutes away.

We reluctantly look around, because there's nowhere to keep the bikes, and it's a little way from the centre, and it's not as nice as the place we originally chose, but it *is* cheaper. And as we look reluctant, it keeps getting cheaper. Haggling in action.

We decide we'll still check out Riad Tafilag, and our interceptor says "OK, I'll show you, come". What?! You can't show us around someone else's hotel! We jump on our bikes to find our way, when the guide jumps on his and signals us to follow. Sigh. This is becoming weird, even more weird than normal.

We follow him at speed through the medina, and the moment we pull up at Riad Tafilag, he jumps off his bike, bangs on the door, and speaks quickly in Arabic to the guy who answers.

Whilst he's doing that, we're looking at each other - there's only 4 of us now. Oh. We've lost Eric. This sucks.

We're trying to figure out what to do, when the guide jumps back on his bike to track Eric down.

With him out of the way, we knock on the door, and ask to have a look around. It's very nice, but more expensive, and nearly full. There's space for the five of us, but if anyone else turns up in Taroudant, they'll have to find somewhere else.

We're back on the street, trying to decide what to do, when the guide reappears: he's found Eric! Reunited, we bring Eric up to speed. Whilst we're discussing, our guide steps in again - and the price drops, again: it now works out at 100dh each, including breakfast, and we can put the bikes in the courtyard. OK. Done. Back to the Benyara. We wrestle the bikes down the stairs, when someone comments "This is the easy part, getting them out tomorrow will be the challenge". Eric the harbinger of doom, or at least excessive effort. Thankfully that's a problem for tomorrow.

Destination: Taroudant

Our goal for today is Taroudant, avoiding as much highway as possible. There's a little backroad near Aoulouz, that runs parallel to the highway. As we ride through villages, kids playing in the street burst out laughing at the sight of us.

We rejoined the main road near Oulad Berhil, with a surprising amount of daylight ahead of us.

Encounters in Aoulouz

We enter Aoulouz. Some residential buildings, some stalled half-built houses, nothing in the way of shops. This isn't looking promising. We keep going, slowing down to eke out every last sip of fuel. We're losing hope when shops start to appear, the place begins to look more like an actual town, and we all breathe a sigh of relief when a petrol station comes into view.

We made it.

Lunch, and another rendezvous: The Adventurists video crew show up, with a handful of bikers in tow. Are they following us?

Running on reserves

From Toubkal back through the mountains, and back onto the highway. A few kilometres before the highway, my bike starts to complain. Cutting out, then restarting, cutting out again. Uh oh. I lean down, and turn the fuel tap to reserve. The engine runs smoothly again (well, as smoothly as a monkeybike ever runs).

We reach the highway. No town in sight. And I'm not the only one running on reserves. How far to the petrol station?

What goes up…

Down the mountain. How long will that take? Our "guide", trying to answer our comments about the gîte being "15 minutes away" insists it only takes him 10 minutes on his motocross bike. We notice that he's not wearing a watch.

Either way, down in daylight is a lot quicker than going up in the dark!

But wait, what's this when we reach the road in Toukbal? *More* monkeybikes? For a country this size, we really do have the strangest of coincidences to keep bumping into each other in random unplanned places!

Right. Onward.

Sunrises and surprise encounters

The day dawned, the sun shone, and we found breakfast and hot tea laid out on the terrace. A waterfall tinkling in the distance. Stunning views down the valley. We talked about maybe taking a hike up to Lac d'Ifni - was it really an hour's walk, it was it "one hour", give or take a couple hours? We thought better of it, started packing up, when the sounds of birdcall and waterfall were broken by the distinctive screeching whine of a monkeybike, and we look up the path to find a trio of bikes bumping down the mountain. Jules and the Spaniards had camped at Lac d'Ifni last night - and it was at least another 2 hours to get there on the bikes!