We take the midday bus to Marrakech for what we plan to be a day’s visit before going back to Safi the same way, and continue biking from there. But just as we reach, both I and Lina get sick in the stomach. After we’ve visited a doctor, and received medication, we end up spending a total of four nights in the famous city, also called the cultural capital of Morocco. Lina is well enough to see some of it, but I myself stay at home (we stay with a relative of Karim) and recover as good as possible. A shame in such a famous town one might think, but I guess I can still hear the name Marrakech and imagine something as beautiful and exotic as the sound of that very name. Marrakech.

The road continues along the coast. As we have lunch at a small restaurant in the fishing town Safi – smoked sardines with bread and a sauce of onions and tomatoes for merely 50 cent – we meet Karim. He lives just a few blocks away with his sister, mother and aunt, and he invites us to stay with them.

In the evening, Karim takes us with on a long walk through town. He shows us the market, central town and the waterfront. Most parts of town is bustling and cheerful with many locals out walking. Salesmen and women with stands shine through the dark night with the flickering, warm light of candles and gas lamps.

We sit down to rest for a while, at a point which overlooks the bay and the harbor. Karim points out into the darkness and tells us, “Many locals try to swim out to those ships.” Far away, a ship is alight, shining invitingly as it lies at rest out in the bay. At this time of the day, when it is possible to hide in the darkness, people swim over and climb onboard. Once again they hide; try to reach Europe. The water is pitch black; likewise the sky. Only the stars, the moon and those ships, far out in the bay, shine through. It’s a thin beacon of hope in a pitch-black frame. A small dream in an impossible reality.

Back house, we walk the narrow stone stairs to the third floor and the roof terrace, where the other family members have put out blankets for us to sit on. We sit there for hours together – drink tea, look out over the landscape of rooftops with satellite dishes and clothes lines, and up at the starry sky above. Cozy!

They tell us that in Safi, only the women work. It’s an exaggeration – some men work as well – but not nearly as many. This is because only the women get employment in the many fish factories, that line up along the coastal road. There, the women can start work at nine or ten in the morning, only to finish when there is no more fish. Sometimes, that can be as late as midnight or even in the wee hours.

We set off early in a foggy, damp morning; leave our farmer friends by the cornfield where we spent the past night. We have breakfast en route at a café in El-Jadida. In Sidi-Abit, we enjoy a great lunch: smoked fish with thin slices of red onion and a tomato salad. It is very cheap with fresh fish along the coast of Morocco – one would have to look far to find a more tasty lunch.

We reach Oualidia at sunset. It’s a bustling town in the early night. There is a circus in town – beautiful with all the colorful lights as we cycle through. By the southern outskirts of the town, a road leads us down to another part of town, lining the coast. There, we get a free, sponsored night at Camping-Caravaning International Oualidia – Sable d’Or. The camping area also occupies half a dozen simple restaurants and shops, and in one of them – a small kiosk – I meet its owner Ahmed. We keep each other company for a short while. Friends of him pass by; we chat. He has a small TV under the desk, and some passersby curiously lean over to watch for a few minutes.

The road south from Casablanca is really narrow, with more or less no shoulder at all for us to cycle on. So it’s not that big of a surprise when it is also on this road that I’m hit by a car for the first time. Everything happened really quickly. He drove into my left back-pannier from behind. Luckily, it fell off and the bike only got a minor push. I wobbled a bit, but was able to stop smooth and safe.

Karim, the driver of the black Mercedes, quickly pulled over ahead. He ran back to be, and gave me a hug for what felt like ages. He repeated over and over again how sorry he was; asked me if I was ok. He then begun to pull out 200 dirham bills from his jeans pocket. I had to tell him many times not to pay, before he finally took them back. Instead he gives me his cell phone number and invites us to Casablanca, and says, “Would you ever return, I will take you out to a restaurant and you can stay at my place.” We say goodbye as friends, though I told him to keep the distance and respect cyclists better in the future.

Reaching Azemmour, we ask two farming boys if they know a place where we can camp for the night. They lead us to where they spend the night themselves – in the middle of a cornfield, next to a small hut. There, they guard the crops from animals during the night. We pitch our tents on the sandy ground next to the hut.

When darkness has come and the stars have emerged above us, we make a grand campfire. On it, we boil some spaghetti for dinner. The boys hesitate for a moment when we invite them to share the food with us, but I persuade them to try. Only afterwards, they tell us that it was the first time ever that they ate pasta. They say they didn’t like it – making a wry face as if they’d just had a glass of lemon juice – but then finishes half a plate anyway.

Later, one of the boys walks the kilometer or so to his parents’ home, and comes back with mint tea. On a silver plate, he carries a big silver pot, a glass for each of us to drink with and quite some bread, enough for all of us. It feels awkwardly noble to drink tea in glass cups with golden ornaments, in the middle of a sandy cornfield. But with the stars above us, and the sparkling campfire centered between us, it all makes sense.

In ‘Casa’ – the economical capital of Morocco – we struggle once again to reach in time. This time to the Mauritanian consulate in the southeastern part of town. We cycle on four and six lane main streets, cramped between high skyscrapers, and through crossings of up to five such roads. Talk about bustling city!

Again, we reach just in time – barely 15 minutes before closing-time. We receive our three-month visas at three p.m., when the consulate opens again to hand out granted visas. Since it is valid – not as usual from the day of entering the country – but instead from the day of issue, we needed one that is valid for three months. But since the usual only allows a stay of one month, we were asked to pay the double fee – 400 dirhams. I don’t know if it was the regular way or not, but we didn’t have much choice since it will take us a month just to reach the border.

After four nights in Kenitra, and now fully recovered from our stomach sicknesses, we hurry off early in the morning to try to reach Rabat before noon. Our aim is to vote in the Swedish general election at our embassy before it closes for the day – and the week. We barely make it, finding our way through the capital with the help of good hearted traffic police that gave us directions.

After voting, we continue to the nearby Mauritanian embassy to inquire about visa. But they wave us off; forwarding us to the consulate in Casablanca which is their only representative in the country at which visas are issued. It is a pity, since it means that we will have to go through Morocco’s largest city (pop. three million), but we have no choice.

We camp next to some guards post on a beach five kilometers before Skhirat, between Rabat and Mohammedia.

Early morning, we find out that playing with small kids and babies, and eating out of each others’ hands, has a price: really terrible stomach problems! We run back and forth to the toilet all morning, and else try to get some sleep. Unfortunately though, we have to leave Aissa and his family in the afternoon, since they themselves are leaving the house to attend a wedding for three days. It’s an unfortunate moment to say goodbye – they take blame for our sickness, and we find it difficult expressing the opposite: that we’re thankful for the two nights of rest and their wonderful company.

We struggle to pedal; every meter is a pain. We eventually reach a petrol station, and without neither a camping nor a hotel anywhere nearby, we accept the offer of two gendarmes to drive us south. We are taken to the next town – Kenitra, about 50 km south. There, they show us to a place where we can camp for free – Foundation Hassan II, Centre d’Accueil. It is a foundation created for Moroccans living abroad with “the aim to reinforce their fundamental bonds with their fatherland.” They are established in three cities in the country, where they offer their fellow countrymen a free place to camp as well as facilities such as showers, toilets and a café.

When we arrived, there seemed to be no question about giving us a free place to camp. All the staff members were happy to welcome us. We spend four nights at the spot, recovering from our illnesses.

After a breakfast of bread with butter, milk tea and boiled eggs with salt and cumin, we make the one-two km walk to the beach nearby. Through the village, across the highway, through a field of sunflowers, over a sandy pitch and then down a steep escarpment to the beach below.

Again, we are served great meals throughout the day – and ‘real’ couscous for dinner. The latter is nothing like the one you buy in packages at the supermarket, and served in a yummy sauce of fresh cow milk (they milked their cows just an hour or so before). The couscous is supposed to be rolled into balls in ones hand, but neither I nor Lina can manage to do it properly, so some family members roll them for us. We share not only the same plate and food, but also eat out of each others’ hands. It’s a great feeling of being one; together – of trusting each other and sharing everything.

Later in the evening, we sit outside on the yard. We share a few thick blankets that warm us up in the evening chill; we chat. We go to bed inside on a pile of maybe five or six blankets – making a bed as thick and as comfortable as a mattress. We sleep side by side, next to each other. The men in one room; the women in another, adjacent one.

Before leaving Khalid, his friends and family, he explains that the next time we come, they will slaughter a goat for us. We invite them all to Sweden, although well aware of the sad truth; that it is far from easy for them to get the money and the visa needed to visit us. But maybe if we invite everyone we meet during this trip, then maybe one or two will eventually make it. Then that would at least give us an opportunity to reciprocate in some way for all that we’ve been given.

The roads in northern Morocco are often lined with salesmen of fruits like melons, cactus figs and green figs, and home produces such as honey or olive oil. They sit there throughout the days, in the shadow of tall eucalyptus trees. A soft breeze fills the air with the trees’ fresh scent.

When stopping by at a roadside kiosk, we meet Aissa. He lives in the very next village south of where we are, and invites us to stay there with him and his family. We follow him on his bike, and reach their house after a short ride. As we enter the inner yard, we are at once welcomed as guests by the rest of the family. Some members immediately set off to some neighbors to buy two chickens. “To slaughter for dinner in honor of your visit,” they say.

Aissa takes us on a short tour through the neighborhood; their fields. He shows us how he feeds the family’s two cows; how some women beat the seeds out of dried sunflowers; and how he gives a customer a haircut in his small salon. The latter is situated inside a container-sized shack built of corrugated iron sheets just next to their house. It’s a dollar for the hair, and fifty cent for the beard.

Back home in the evening, we sit together until late, just chatting. There are always at least half a dozen folks around. Family members and friends.

Early morning, proud to be the first to wake up, the cock crows for an hour or so. Then the sheep bleat and the cows moo. Only then, the people in the village slowly awake. The sun is already halfway up the horizon.

For breakfast Khalid and his wife serve us a tomato sauce to eat with the same kind of bread as yesterday. A tomato sauce might not sound very special, but the primary produce is so natural and tastes so much more here than in Sweden, that even the most simple food is delicious in itself. They also make coffee – a lot, but not very strong, and with loads of sugar. Khalid and I then take our bikes to the market in L’Arachi. He rides mine, and I try out his. Most parts are about to fall off from it – the pedals and the gears – and only one of the handbrakes works. Barely.

At the market – which he constantly refers to as the ‘super mercado’ (supermarket) – I’m able to pay back a little of what he has given us by buying some fruits and vegetables. The market is beautiful in itself. Under an askew roof of random plastic sheets, supported by wooden poles, homegrown vegetables and fruits are lined up in separate, colorful piles. Everything is sold per kilo, weighted on balance. A sudden but short lasting rain gets everyone running crisscross to take cover by the salesmen and -women under the roofs.

Back home, we are served green peppers that has been well fried in olive oil, a tomato sauce, olives from the market, freshly baked bread and homemade chips. Most of the food proves how delicious a single dish can be – despite only two or so ingredients – given that the primary produces are good enough.

From Asilah, we continue as near the Atlantic coast as possible, and reach the small village Pueblo. There, we meet Khalid. He is also on his bike – returning home from the market in L’Arachi, a village not far way and just slightly larger than Pueblo. After a long chat by the roadside, he invites us to stay with him, his wife and their two children. We walk a small dirt road to the village, through fields of beans, before reaching their home.

Many of Khalid’s friends pass by in the evening; we enjoy freshly brewed coffee in their living room. We sit on thick blankets on the floor, and lean back on large pillows that line the walls. We try to make ourselves understood to each other through a mix of French (our only common language), English and Arabic – and body language.

Later, after most friends have left again for their own homes, Khalid and his wife serve us spiced rice, topped with pieces of chicken. We gather around and eat from the same, big common plate. We eat with the bread that Khalid’s wife breaks into pieces and distributes among us. The bread is a bit salty, with a hard crust. Flat and round, big as a tray. Come night, they give us their bed to sleep in, and themselves hatch on mattresses on the living room floor. We tried to make it the other way, but we were not to reject the offer!

We take the boat in the morning – from Algeciras to Tanger; from Spain to Morocco; from Europe to Africa. We bought the tickets yesterday – 35 euro each. Unfortunately, we get on the wrong boat at first. We pedal off the boat imagining ourselves to finally do our first miles in Africa, but find ourselves in Ceuta. Although a part of geographical Africa, it still belongs to Spain. After loads of hassle with the ferry company, we get a free ride back to Algeciras (mainland Spain) and a new (also free) ticket to Tanger (Morocco). We’d cycled eight km between different ferry terminals, until we were finally on our way to our true destination. Six hours wasted. As a final compensation for the hassle, we don’t have to pay the 30 euro fee that they usually charge for bicycles.

We reach Tanger in the afternoon and immediately start cycling south so to reach as far away as possible from the border before darkness. People drive a bit more reckless (although slower) than in Spain, and the roads are somewhat narrower. Sometimes sand has blown up on the shoulder, so that we have to cycle in the middle of the road and get quite some horning and shouting from the truck drivers. But people here are welcoming towards us – a good change from private Spain.

There are fruit salesmen all along the road, often sitting on the ground shadowed by high trees or simple stalls. One of them is Mohammed – two honeydew melons are ours for only two dollars. These are perfect places for us to rest at along the road, and at the same time fill up with some energy from yummy fruits.

We reach the northern outskirts of Asilah after biking the last hour or so in darkness. The local campsite sponsors us with a spot for the night.

We cycle the last kilometers to what will be our last place of resort before leaving Spain and Europe. Algeciras is the port in southern Spain from which the cheapest ferries to Morocco depart. We meet Walter from Nigeria, who invites us to sleep at the construction site in central town that he guards at nighttime.

We sleep on mattresses underneath the stars, between a container, the corrugated iron sheets that frame the construction site, and the concrete skeleton that rises up towards the star-spangled sky. The container for waste construction material is also the toilet. “Go behind, do what you have to do in a plastic bag, tie it up well and throw it in the container,” Walter instructs. He shares his apple juice and explains, “The Moroccans told me about it. It’s great. We don’t have it in Nigeria!” It is as if we’ve reached Africa one day earlier than we had thought we would – but not a single day too early.

Summary Europe

Takeoff

Europe was actually just a takeoff – both I and Lina looked forward to Africa. Although by starting off at home, we could easily supplement our gear in well-stocked shops along the way, at the same time it was difficult to travel so close to ones ‘normal’ life. On the days when we couldn’t find any place to camp – late afternoon became dusk, dusk went into evening and evening drew towards night – it didn’t get any more easy when we passed by a villa with a family eating Sunday dinner inside by the kitchen table, with lit candles. Warmth, food, a shower, a comfortable bed. You only miss it as long as you can see it; reach it.

The roads

The good part of cycling in Europe is that there are usually quite good bicycle paths. In northern Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, that was more of a rule than an exception. Some of the best routes were ex-railway lines that had been transformed into bicycle paths. Since those routes have been made for trains, they are naturally flat, moreover take a very short course from A to B as each extra kilometer was very costly when building the railway. Other good routes are those that go alongside canals – picturesque like anything!

The further south we came, the fewer choices of road were available. In Spain, we actually never found a real bicycle path. Sometimes, there wasn’t even any legal alternative for us to take – at times the highway was the only way. Even worse, we sometimes cycled through long tunnels with just one or two decimeters of verge for us to cycle on. Littered with rubbish and even empty wine bottles. Pitch dark. On one side the curved-in wall and on the other side cars rushing by fast. No matter what hid in the shadows ahead, we only found out a second or so before passing it. Those tunnels were the most scary part of the entire way to South Africa.

The meetings

Even though Europeans generally are far from hospitable, the few meetings we did get were all the better. The one with a homeless woman in Spanish Vinaroz was probably the most memorable. She invited us to stay in her trailer in the outskirts of town, to where we couldn’t come until dusk since the property on which it was parked belonged to somebody else. “If I can earn two euros today, I am rich tomorrow,” she said and meant that with enough money for a cup of coffee in the morning, she’d have a good start of that day. Then, she’d be rich that day.

We continue south, mostly along a highway. It’s illegal, but the police doesn’t seem to care. Possibly because the only alternative is sometimes a 100 km detour. Actually, it’s by the law illegal for some people to cycle to their neighbor village five kilometers away, unless they do it the 100 km way.

The roads along the coast in Spain seem generally to be built for none but those with cars. At times we pass through quite long tunnels with only a ten or so inch wide shoulder for us to bike on – covered with rubbish, even bottles. It is pitch dark – the curved wall on one side, and cars rushing by on the other. Whatever lies on that thin line we cycle; hides in the shadows ahead of us – it only reveals itself a second or so before we pass it. To cycle those tunnels was, bottom line, the most nerve-racking experience on the whole trip to South Africa.

Again, we fail to find any camping that can sponsor us. By the time we reach the end of the N340 road, where it once again transforms into a highway, a wide open sandy pitch makes our home for the night. We’re not alone – just beneath the roundabout, on a flat land of gravel by the sea, loads of caravans have parked up for the night. As well as a busload of French schoolchildren on a summer tour.

We all fear the Guardia Civil (local police), that they will come and tell us to leave. But I guess when all the campings are full, and there is no legal alternative, where can they send us?

We return to Malaga where bike shop Campos Lorca does a rigid checkup on our bikes, working for almost two hours with each bike. They take everything apart, change what is necessary, lubricate and then put them together again. At last all my gears work properly, as well as the brakes.

Along the road are urbanizaciones to the right, urbanizaciones to the left. Many new houses; new cities. Urbanizaciones here are like small, cramped villages of holiday houses, with names like “Mar i mar,” “Sol i mar,” “Mar azur,” etc. The tourist industry here is truly repugnant – and awkward. Who want to live like a sardine on their vacation!?

In the evening, we find it hard once again to find a camping. But after four full ones (yesterday was the beginning of the main vacation period in Spain), we reach one that has ONE spot left. The staff kindly sponsors us with it, but without the owner knowing. Thus no name. Just south of Marbella.