Day 68: 22 Oct ’91 Tuesday Cycling around Marrakech and a train to Rabat

First thing, we changed the tyres on our bikes, putting on the ‘matrix’ gripped tyres on and folding up our ‘slicks’ onto the front panniers. The, we cleaned the bikes up a little before going for a ride around town, stopping at the train station to get a ticket to Rabat for me. There, I spent ten minutes trying to convince the ticket man that 1am the following morning was a different day than today. He was only convinced when the ticket was printed.

We were not overly excited by the ride. The area we were riding through was just outside the old medina. There was rubbish everywhere and the same old, grubby stalls. We had started to become bored with the medina, its run down streets, crap everywhere and Moroccans coming up to us and making stupid comments, trying to be our guides. It had become repetitive and annoying. We longed to get going again, to be on the road and to get rid of the frustration caused by the delays in getting our Algerian visas.

We went back to the hotel for lunch and spent the afternoon reading and sleeping. Dan and I talked about the things we missed from home and about what we planned to do when we got back. We miss quite a few things, apart from friends and family.  Pubs, home cooking and cold weather were among the topics.

In the evening, we drank in our usual café and then listened to one of Dan’s tapes onto which he had recorded the Gypsy Kings and John Lee Hooker. Listening to that music felt therapy after several weeks of the Moroccan music. It’s something which we hadn’t realised we missed so much.

On the BBC World Service, there was a programme about the effect that Punk music had had on the music industry. Hearing the Sex Pistols on the Beeb sounded funny. I packed a few things into my backpack for the trip to Rabat to get the visas before getting the maitresse to let me out at midnight so I could walk down to the train station.