Knee pain, Pottery and a huge tagine!

Waking up on our third day in Essaouira we were in two minds, whether to stay or whether to go. It had been nice to stay in Essaouira and had met some really nice people at the hostel, but we were also keen to hit the road and get to our next destination. In the end we decided to leave it up to fate. We went to the owner of the hostel to ask if it was possible to stay another night and he said it was fine, but he wouldn't give us the discount we were asking for so we decided to leave.

Our route was to take us right up the Atlantic coast and whilst cycling along this route we encountered some really nice views.

Nice beach in the distance

Our lunch spot

Near the end of the day we went past a section of road where the campsite we were looking for was supposed to be, but we were not able to find it so decided to keep on cycling till it got dark and instead look for a spot to wild camp. Unfortunately there were not many spots about, but we eventually found somewhere that was up a slope within some bushes, to make sure we could not be seen from the road. However we were not very far from someones house, but only one person saw us and they just walked on by saying a friendly "bonjour".

We had a really good nights sleep and woke quite late for us; about 8am and packed up and headed off. We had about 80km to cover that day to reach Safi, another big coastal city where we were planning to camp, which we thought should be quite easy to cover in a day.

Although it was just our luck that things started to take a turn for the worse. We started the day with some more beautiful views over the beach and the ocean, however the roads were not quite so beautiful, they were extremely uneven and rough causing us to make very slow progress.

View over the Atlantic

The worst part though was that Carmen's knee was starting to cause her a bit of trouble. This meant we started to get even slower, which meant that time was getting tighter on whether or not we would make it to the campsite before dark. We eventually made it to Safi, Carmen becoming slower and slower all the time with the increasing pain in her knee.

Unfortunately, the campsite was on the opposite side of the city which was still a good 10km away and it was getting late. Our journey was then further disrupted by a horse falling over himself right in front of us whilst pulling a cart and getting tangled in his reins. Carmen saw it all and said that the fall looked extremely painful. She rushed over there to see if she could help with trying to get the horse back up whilst I held the bikes. In the end they managed to get the horse back up and untangled, not looking in too much pain. The moroccan men were very grateful to Carmen for coming over to try and help even though she didn't do anything in the end.

We eventually made it to the campsite although it was a long and hard cycle due to there being a lot of hills and by the time we were approaching the site we were going at the pace of a snail and ended up pushing the bikes up the last hill as Carmen's knee had had enough.

This meant that we had a bit of a problem though, Carmen was definitely not in any condition to continue cycling the next day and there were no trains we could have caught from Safi, as there is a very limited railway network in Morocco. So we decided to stay a couple of nights and have a whole day of rest and see how the knee was. However the next day it was still very painful so we just stayed at the campsite, washed some clothes and did some shopping.

Whilst at the campsite that day, we met a couple in a van (Bianca and Matteo) who had travelled down from Tarifa in Spain, who were very friendly and had a nice joke with about stealing all the hot water from the showers. As when Carmen tried; no hot water. That night we had a discussion again about what to do and made the decision that the next day we would head into Safi and see if we could find a internet cafe to see if we could find a bus to take us up the coast.

However, the next day fortune shone on us. We were just washing up our cooking equipment and a few last clothes that morning when we got talking with Matteo who we had met briefly the day before. He was telling us about his tour around Morocco with Bianca and what they had done so far and where they were heading next and it coincided with what our plans were. As he and Bianca seemed a very friendly couple, we thought we would ask them if maybe they minded giving us a lift up the coast as Carmen was injured and they very willingly said yes.

So instead of heading into the city centre to find an internet cafe we instead hurried to pack our stuff away as we had to be out of the campsite by midday otherwise we would get charged for another night. So we packed our bikes and bags onto the van (who was named Gustav) and drove out of the campsite to a nearby shopping centre to park the van in the car park and then walk into town to look around.

Gustav our new mode of transport

The first thing we went to look at was where they made the pottery, as Safi is very well known for the pottery they make there, supplying tiles all over the country for buildings. This was fascinating. We saw hundreds and hundreds of different pots, tiles, flasks and tagine dishes all in different colours and stages of being made. We saw big slabs of wet clay, the moulded items, the big ovens they used to fire them and then the people painting them, we saw it all. We even got to see the finished products when we headed into the medina to buy a tagine dish, as Matteo and Bianca wanted to buy a couple.
After buying a couple of tagine dishes we headed to see an unusual attraction that we had never actually heard of before and were completely unaware even existed; the worlds biggest tagine! Matteo got a few pictures of it (we forgot to bring our camera with us) before we then headed back to the van to start the drive up the coast to find somewhere else to stay.

Initially when cycling we had planned to head up the coast to a little place called Oualidia to a campsite there, and nicely for us that was exactly where Matteo and Bianca were going. We arrived and set up in what turned out to not in fact be a campsite but instead a cheap bivouac, which was all tarmac. Luckily straight around it there was a tiny patch of grass where we were able to pitch out tent.
Matteo and Bianca then offered to cook us a tagine that night. Unknowingly to us we were in for a feast that night. They not only cooked us a lovely vegetable tagine, but they also did us a nice big avocado salad as well. Both were absolutely delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed them, although both Matteo and Bianca said that it was not a good tagine as they had cooked it much better before, which made us imagine that it must have tasted amazing normally.

Our spot for the night with a very lazy guard dog

After finishing eating we were talking late into the evening about their travels so far and what their future plans were. We learnt that they were originally from Germany (Bianca) and Italy (Matteo) and they had been working in the south of Spain for the last year or so (where they met). So far on their travels they had been to the desert and stayed in the desert, which sounded amazing. They also had gone over the atlas mountains on the Tizi N Test (CHECK)road. They had also been to a little town called Chefchaoun where we very much wanted to go, and they highly recommended it. It ended up being a lovely evening until we finally turned in for bed about 11pm as it had been a very full and tiring day.