From Marrakech to Ouarzazarte – Day 1
This was my first time in Morocco and also my first time doing a backpacking trip outside Europe. The plan was to leave Marrakech with rented bikes and cross the Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate in 3 days, doing around 200 km.
At first, I thought mountain bikes would be the best fit for this trip since I wasn’t sure what to expect from the roads outside the big cities. With a bit more investigation I understood the route would be covering mostly paved roads and so when we found a shop renting gravel bikes we went for those.
Marrakech was a beautifully organized chaos. Basic traffic rules are more or less optional and honking seems to be the best way to navigate between the traffic. This is to say that although cars and scooters pass a few inches away from your handlebars, everything seems to be done in the safest and most skilled way.
Doing a quick stop on a bike shop before leaving Marrakech.
Got some good quality patches that, fortunately, we didn’t need to use.
The road N9 takes you out of the city and the first 20 km are mostly flat. The landscape is quite dry but there’s still some vegetation that nicely frames the shy mountains that start rising on the horizon. We planned a fairly short first day because we didn’t seem to find a better guesthouse further away and this turned out to be a nice decision. We were still getting used to the bikes and trying to fit them the best possible to us.
Flat lands, oasis vegetation and small hills while leaving the city.
The route takes you almost unnoticeable uphill and it was only around the kilometre 25 we were able to go into the difficulty of the day. The road on this section had been paved recently and the large lanes made us feel at ease after leaving the busy city. I was quite surprised that many segments of the road were quite wide, and there was enough room to ride on the road side together with the scooters that come and go between villages.
I was expecting the entire route to go through very remote places and my biggest concern was to be able to access water. That turned out not to be a problem because even the most remote village had a tiny snack shop with the Coca-Cola logo painted on the outside where we were able to easily buy cold drinks and snacks.
Man’s best friend? The donkey, obviously!
Arriving at the village of Touama we knew we were close to the guesthouse we had booked. As in most of the villages we passed, there was a mosque, a school, and tiny shops. Shepards could be seen here and there, ladies working in the fields, and a lot of donkeys making their way through single tracks loaded with grass.
Placed at the top of a steep hill there was our guesthouse and clearly the best place we stayed during this trip. This incredible house looked more like a palace in the countryside and had a swimming pool bigger than the one in my gym in Barcelona.
We arrived quite early so we were able to enjoy the place, walk around the property, try the swimming pool and have a king-size lunch that made us skip dinner that night.
Our breakfast before starting day two.
As you can imagine the breakfast on the next day seemed also brought from the royal palace. We were happy to have it all and leave with our full bellies and far from having our digestion done.
Day 2 -> Sharing soon!
Inside the bags:
3 T-shirts
1 Shorts
1 Wind jacket
3 Underwear
3 Pair of socks
1 Pair of sandals
3 Jerseys
2 Bibs
2 Water bottles
Blackburn mini pump
Patches
Mini oil bottle
Lights
American tape
Energy bars
