Marrakesh, Istanbul, Vienna
distance: 1919.65km
duration: 13h 9min
Back in Marrakesh we had actually planned to do some sightseeing - but i got sick again and Daniela had to visit the Madrasa all alone
Also our planned fine sylvester dinner didn't work out, i was happy when i was just able to swallow a small piece of white bread without throwing up.
On the first day of the new year in the early morning we entered the train back to Casablanca, our bikes had already taken the late evening freight train the day before. Wrapping the bicycles at the airport was fun again, this time we had some pretty crappy cardboard from a motorcycle-shop in Marrakesh and in the end the wrapping was maintained more by tape than cardboard.
Back at Istanbul International Ataturk Airport we tried to find our lost bag. They of course did not find it in their computer-system(A yellow Ortlieb bicycle bag looks just like any ordinary trolley, right?) so we pressured them if we could search through their baggage storage on our own. After some discussion they gave in and 10 minutes later we really found the bag! Everybody including the airport workers where pretty joyful and laughing, i guess that doesn't happen too often.
Weather in Istanbul was still cold and ugly so we just absolved the usual touristy obligations(Visiting the Hagia Sophia) before we boarded our plane back to Austria.In the end it turned out to be a pretty crazy holiday where almost everything had gone wrong - everytime after visiting Morocco(3 times so far) i'm happy to leave, but in the end i still go back to this rich country out of fascination and interest.
Sidi-Rbat, Inezgane, Marrakesh
distance: 313.16km
duration: 9h 54min
Joyful morning at the beach. A taxi got us back to the civilization.
Buying a bus-ticket in Inezgane to go back to Marrakesh turned out to be a hilarious situation where ticket-sellers fight for your attention and bus-drivers pretend to leave with open doors but in the end still leave 30 Minutes late. In the end it was an exhausting 8 hour bus ride but we arrived happily in our hostel in Marrakesh.
Inezgane, Souss-Massa
distance: 47.41km
duration: 4h 50min
Decided to go to the south to Sidi-Rbat in the Souss-Massa National Park instead of Essaouria. Spent a night in the tent in the no-mans-land between the N1 and the atlantic coast. Sidi-Rbat turned out to be a sleepy and poor fisher village and we spent the night with a pot-smoking and phlegmatic fisherman and his small family in their very basic house. The nature was beautiful though.