Ride: 52 km Climb: +1624 m / -610 m
Restless night, it was fairly stuffy in the room and sinus headache woke me in the middle of the night. Able to eventually obliterate it.
Excellent breakfast today! We had an early start today and were as usual about 15″ late getting going but eventually rolled out, heading for Agadir and the start of our biggest climb.
The countryside was very agricultural, with crops of potatoes, onions and bananas seen. A good proportion of the country’s produce comes from the region; water on each field comes from individual wells.
After a ride of about an hour, we began to enter the ‘burbs of Agadir. Agadir is a city of about half a million, and has been rebuilt since the earthquake of 1960 decimated it. It was nice to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time this trip! and very busy ports. Fishing, LNG, then container ports evident. We stopped for coffee, which was good! then headed out of town to our start point. A new stadium being built for the next FIFA tournament was evident and the city looked prosperous and well kept. The last leg of our journey, once Havid corrected his directional mistake, was through a tony residential neighbourhood with large and expensive looking houses; over the horizon however was major construction on a bridge/overpass. The bikes were partially unloaded so we got ourselves organized and mounted our steeds.
It was almost immediately uphill, and 28C by the time we started, and this was the theme of the day. Hot, and up. And up. And up.
The temperature gradually increased, as did the grade of the inclines. At least there was little traffic….
Up and up and up. We went over a ridge, along the top of it and then had an exhilarating ride down. At this point we passed another two cyclists who were bike camping for a week – one from near Inverness and the other was Welsh. On tattie roguing holidays (time off to pick potatoes, traditionally). We had an interesting stop where we got an explanation of how argan oil extraction was done, and tried some of the local honeys. The cactus flower honey was very interesting, quite spicey with an afterkick – a small amount was acquired to play with in chocolates.
through a small village
The industry of extracting argan oil is a woman’s and although the milling has now been electrified, the majority of extraction is done in small villages and provides a source of income for women. The hard nut, size of a walnut, falls from the argan tree (famous for its’ “goats in trees”) and the outside shell is cracked open and fed to animals. The inner shell is harder, like a pistachio shell, and is also cracked – that one is used for fuel for cooking/baking fires. The inner nut, about the size of a squished almond, is then roasted (for consumption) or put into an ingenious milling stone to pulp it. The demonstrater is holding here two different discs of pulp made with argan; the darker one is roasted, and the lighter one will be used in cosmetics.
Back on the road again…. fairly gradual up until we entered a canyon where we met Hassan and had lunch. He was easy to find today…
It was a beautiful ride through the canyon
We followed a river and there were geese in small groups with ducklings – didn’t recognize them at all (nor did I stop for a picture!)
There was a bit more traffic in here but the drivers were almost universally tolerant and polite to us cyclists.
This was lovely cycling, cooler and lovely scenery to look at.
Then we were out in the full sun, and the climb was on. It was hot! There was more traffic until we reached a park site where there was an obviously popular trail to a waterfall – the lot was full and there was a parking lot attendant directing traffic. The poor muscle bikers were suffering – hot and relentless climbing.
We gained elevation steadily, and watched the profile slowly tick down the meters gained. Strategic stops helped and water was readily provided – there were also roadside cafes along the route where water and other drinks could be purchased if doing the ride on ones’ own, like the UK riders (they were stopping in the valley below, called Paradise Valley, tonight).
view from part way up – road can be seen on the right
We had another incident near the top with groups of boys – this time riding at them at full speed didn’t deter them. It’s always unclear what they’re trying to do – push us off the bikes? Whack us in the back? Whatever, not fun.
Not a lot of pictures of this part, as energy was focussed on getting up the hill. It was a relief to get to the pass, I won’t lie, even on an ebike though it was a piece of cake compared with the muscle bikers – what an effort they put in.
from the pass
There was a brief downhill at the top then another small climb before the start of a bigger downhill – but our hotel was not far down so we thankfully parked our trusty steeds for the night and went to check in.
The proprietar was a little odd, and insisted we individually complete forms to register before being given keys – although he had been provided with the list of passport and police registration numbers of the entire group. It has a spectacular view, and if it had rained recently we would see a beautiful waterfall, apparently, for which it was named after (Cascades Hotel).
assiduously completing our registration forms on the terrace
the rooms are older, with outlets that are not to current code; in mine everything is working but one unfortunate put the shower on and the entire piece came off the wall. Wifi only works near reception.
After cleaning up happy hour with the Victoria group commenced but turned into high finance pretty quickly as tipping amounts are being prepared and calculated. We have one last lunch from Hassan on our last ride tomorrow, and another of the drivers is leaving with the bikes immediately after we finish (and the saddles, pedals etc are removed).
It was a spectacular sunset, and after a short briefing about tomorrow we moved into the dining room to get an excellent dinner – soup, salad entree, then main dish of fish tagine for me and chicken for the others (Yay! no eggs!) and actual dessert of apple pie (more like apple tartine) and orange slices with cinnamon. Delicious.
Quite an energetic day! Tomorrow is mostly downhill with two short climbs and then cycling is done.
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