11/07/2023 Bikepacking Morocco Day 91 : Facts about Morocco

Ouch! My Achilles hurts! Since the striking encounter with the geologist kids, I had a niggle in my lower left calf that developed into something real this morning. I made a segment called “Running from Kids” in the hopes that I’d at least get a KOM for this suffering… but it turns out that there were 6 other people who were more scared of these kids than me!

Today on the road, I met another cyclist named Omar. He had a Scott bike, and I asked if cycling was popular here. He said “no,” and that he was able to get this bike from the USA only because he works in customs. They is now a factory in Morocco making “s***” bikes, so Morocco taxes imported bikes heavily to encourage people to buy locally. I asked him if kids threw rocks at him, and he said, “no because I have a Moroccan face.” He made a grisly bear form with his face and arms to demonstrate how I need to approach the next pack of kids.

I met Mohammed today. Not THAT Mohammed. Mohammed is kind of like Santa Claus in the US. Every store or mall has a Santa Claus impersonating the real guy up North… and after I met my 3rd Mohammed impersonator today, I decided that one could hedge their bets and say, “nice to meet you, Mohammed,” instead of asking for a name. This Mohammed went straight for the real question: “What do you think of the war between Israel and Palestine?” I was sitting on the curb, and jumped up quickly - curious to know what he thought. I haven’t read the news enough to understand what is going on. I had noticed in Spain that all the graffiti I had seen pertaining to the matter was pro-Palestine. Also, I had seen two Spain protests (also carrying the Palestinian flag). He was a teacher, and he refused to let me cheat with my phone translate app. Even I understood the French coming out of my app, but he said it wasn’t good. Either that, or he was afraid that my phone would record him having an opinion on Israel/Palestine. He took an ambivalent stance. “It is bad that the Israel attacked the Palestine.” “It is bad that the Palestine attacked the Israel.” True to form, he corrected my mistakes in French as I unsuccessfully tried to dig deeper into his opinion, or anything about what is happening. What is the stance in the USA, I wonder? I’ve heard that the US gives more money to tiny Israel than any other country. Is that still true?

I’m on a fast track to learning; many of you probably already know this stuff, but others can learn along with me. Those super narrow and crowded streets in Fez I told you about? That is called a “Medina”. It sucks for getting anywhere quickly; today I learned that the idea was to protect cities from invaders. Before drones, I could see this being a very successful strategy. Speaking of Drones, they are illegal in Morocco; I decided not to chance bringing mine to this country that is about the same size as California. When I entered Morocco, I was about the same latitude as Nacimiento Ferguson road on the Cali coast. Now my latitude is the same as San Clemente, CA. Did you know It is actually possible to ride your bicycle from Spain to Morocco! Spain has 5 exclaves in Morocco, and one of them is Ceuta - so I could have taken the boat from Spain to Spain and then ridden across an international border on the African continent. Ceuta is tiny; I’ll post a screenshot.

With the latitude as a frame of reference, it maybe isn’t too surprising now to see some of the photos I’m posting today. I’m slightly guilty of thinking Morocco was mostly camels and desert (though there will be a lot of that up ahead too). Today felt like i was riding through the campus of some Ivy League school in the fall. While we are comparing Morocco to the West of the US, did you know that Morocco was the first to recognize the US as an independent nation?

Morocco still has me a little surprised in that once you’re on the paved roads, it is more developed than I had imagined. Morocco, Guatemala, and Belize all have similar GDPs per person… but Morocco so far feels more well-to-do. So far, there has been much less trash on the side of the road (see my photo for bags of cleanup). I am guessing that the Southern portion is going to be the other side of that balance. By the time I (arguably) leave Morocco, my latitude will be that of Guadalajara, Mexico.