In the words of Willie Nelson.....

On The Road Again

It's 6.30pm; we're in the centre of our first capital city of the trip; African rush hour is in full swing; we're stopped at a busy junction; horns are blowing; mopeds are buzzing; pedestrians are flooding the road; what road-signs we can see are in Arabic; Linda's scanning for anything resembling a street name that's on our map, which she's holding on her lap; I'm trying to figure who has right of way......and the traffic lights are broken!

Ha ha, this madness is what it's all about. This is what we came for!!!

We're now in Rabat on the western coast of Morocco and after our 11 days sojourn in Chefchaouen we got moving again this morning.
The last week has been a strange mix of ups, downs and a lot of waiting.

We spent last weekend in Meknes and Fes.
As Linda described, Meknes was a wonderful transport back in time.
Fes was the same, just on a bigger scale!

If the best way to see a country is to meet the people, then the best way to meet the people is to look for a service which usually only locals need.

On the day we left Limerick, the zip in our tank bag split and has been a bit of a pain since.
We reckoned that if we could get it fixed anywhere, it would be in the busy backstreet stalls where everything is mended and nothing is disposible.
After a bit of a search, we met a lovely quiet man who runs a small wooden-doored stall, stuffed with zips, button and fasteners; we call it The Zippery.
A little chat about our problem and following 20 minutes of deft fingerwork, our bag was like new.

We returned to Chefcahouen and to our injured Capall on Tuesday.
We were waiting for 1 parcel of parts from Ireland and 1 parcel couriered from the UK; both of which would have needed to have been collected at the post office.
Tuesday - nothing; hang around and revise plans.
Wednesday - hopes were raised by the arrival of the Irish parcel although nothing from the UK. Hang around and revise plans.
Thursday - hopes were knocked back down with no parcel from the UK. Hang around and revise plans.
Friday - Excitement as the UK parcel arrived at mid-day.

Suddenly, Friday became busy.
The next 2 hours were spent searching for a garage with a bearing puller and press large enough.
We eventually found one 3km outside the town and during a funny chat with the gregarious owner, we swapped the bearing, spacer and seals.
As I said, using a local service is the best....!
Linda and myself spent the rest of the evening putting the bike back together and taking the tent down.

We covered 170miles today and right from the camp-site gate we had mix of glorious sunshine, beautiful views and challenging roads!
We travelled from sinuous curves in the Rif mountains to large expanses of flat plains towards the coast.
Roads were interesting and testing including one section where Linda had to get off so I could 'paddle' the bike as it squirmed about in a muddy track.

The junction scene at the beginning of this post was what greeted us when we got to Rabat and it was all topped off by the fun of getting An Capall up two steps, in the front door of the hotel, down the corridor past the reception desk and into the inner court yard where it's safely tied down for the night!