25.12.2018
As I arrive in Guelmim, I sit down in a café. I am talking to a guy whom I just met and answer the usual questions about my journey. Another man takes place next to us. His skin is burned from the sun, he wears a black turban and his eyes are dark and friendly. Aziz is a nomad and camel trader. The other guy is talking a little too much and so, I don’t get to speak with Aziz very much. But he invites me to go with him to the camel market, the day after tomorrow.
Then all of a sudden, a European guys appears. Jakob is a cycle nomad like me and thinking about going to Mauretania as well. So we exchange phone numbers and promise to call each other later.
I say goodbye to Aziz and the other guy and head of to the Campground in Tinghir, 18km outside of Guelmim.
The Camp place is located in an Oasis and in very good condition. Under Palm trees and with some pets running around, it is easy to feel home. There are even two nomad tents with carpets on the floor and a roof made of fabric.
I spend the first two nights in a room and make use of the time until the camel market. There is a lot of maintenance to do, and batteries to load. But like always, the most time consuming action is to update the website and to edit all the photos.
I can even do all the laundry, in a very old machine, which at first, I doubt it would work at all. And the water, they use is all brown. Because of the rain as the employee tells me. “But it usually works?” I ask him. Oui, Oui, no problem.
And really my laundry is now all clean and fine. Just my favourite white Rocky shirt has now a fancy little brown touch.
The next day, I meet Jakob again. He agrees to come with me to Mauretania, as he has to leave the country as of the visa.
He joins me on the campground and while I do all my work on the computer, he goes watching the oasis. In the night we eat a tajine together with the owner of the campground. He has lived a long time in Germany, speaks well German and teaches us a lot about Muslim culture.
We keep talking long into the night before we finally fall asleep in our tents.
The next day, we are on the camel market. It is basically a normal souk, and it is dominated by the fruit and vegetable stand part. But with a surprisingly good quality of products.
The days, when thousands of camels changed their owner have long been gone. Now there are only about 50 dromedaries and the animal part of the market is more about the sheep and goats that lie on the ground, with their legs tied together.
While Jakob goes back to the camp, I meet up again with Aziz. He shows me a little bit about the camels and we make photos. However most of the time we spend talking. He is a really smart guy, he had been to university and speaks several languages. So we mix between French, English, German and Arabic while we talk. A lot of the nomads are multilingual and have visited some good schools. It is just not the case that they are uneducated and not interested in other cultures.
The more I talk and listen to people from other places, the more I realize how ignorant and full of prejudices the people in Europe are. And I begin to understand how important it would be to the world if the people just sat together and let each other speak. For example am I always surprised how tolerant Muslim people really are while the west is so scared of them. Strange world this is.
Finally I have to say goodbye to Aziz and go back to the campground where we cook a camel tajine.
It is very good, and I can finally taste camel meat. While the meat simply tastes like beef, and the fat extremely like camel, the leg meat is everything else than tender and need to be cut in fine pieces to digest. It is good for the stomach, they tell me.
After the meal, we keep talking into the night in the Bedouin tent under the palm trees.
After a hearty goodbye, the next day, me and Jakob head of to the desert. We take a stony piste along the coast. We thought it might be a good alternative to the N1.
Not really. There are lots of stones and every stone gives a hit on the bike. It does not just hurt my precious parts, it make me fear about my equipment every second. Tack,Tack,Tack ouch, tack, tack, tack ouch.
But there is also a good side of this road. Despite we only make 35 km a day through this empty landscape, it is somehow wonderful. There is nobody to see and we enjoy the peace.
After two days, we finally reach the main road again and I am really glad to be able to drive on Asphalt again. Luckily nothing bad happened to my equipment. Just a little dust. We drive until Tantan, where there is no campground. So we decide to drive to El Ouatia instead. Half way there, the sun is already going down and we decide to camp wild. Not even such a bad decision.
In El Ouatia, the next morning, Jakob suggests to rest here a day. Now the differences between us show up. While he is a relax man, always going as it flows and likes to rest every three days, I prefer to make a little plans and to make lot of kilometres when I have the opportunity. But finally, he is right. There is again a lot of maintenance to do and also things in the internet to do for me. And we have to buy food and stuff for the next days.
So we spend the day next to the Atlantic, with preparation and cooking fresh fish.
The next day something, happens that you wouldn’t expect in a desert. The road is all flat and smooth and it is easy to do a 20km/h. All of a sudden, fog comes up. Not just a little fog from the waves hitting the coast nearby. No. Real fog that covers the landscape and makes it a mystic place. What a nice surprise. The temperature drops a little and you can’t see anymore all of the never ending roads. Very good for us to drive in such a condition. Nevertheless it is dangerous, as Moroccan drivers never use their brakes, instead they us the horn. But hey, I am still alive.
On a gas station, a police officer asks us if we want to stay next to the gendarmerie during the night. We don’t have to decide long. Of course. It is a safe place right next to the station, there is the Atlantic Ocean. And it is a safe place. We pitch our tents only 20meters away from the edge where 30 meters further down, the waves are hitting the coast. There is some fog again, it covers everything with a little layer of water and let ever metal rust in seconds.
And the sunset is just amazing with wonderful colours and glowing like I never saw it before.
Surrounded by the noise of the dogs and the waves, I finally fall into a peaceful sleep in my tent.