Okay, so this is a big day. The plan is Todra Gorge to Imilchil. That’s 112km, so not a big deal. But there’s some elevation! For this ride, we’ll climb a total of 1500 meters (5000 feet). Oh, and we forgot to get gas before entering the gorge, and there’s no gas in the gorge. There’s also not a ton of cell service. Cool.
We climbed and climbed, often stuck in first gear, sometimes getting to cruise in second. One of the bikes was leaking oil. That led us all to agree that we should have bought some motor oil in town and brought it with us. Oops. We’d need to find a mechanic.
The road flattened out in a nice valley before we got to Aït Hani, where we stopped to see a mechanic and also get some coffee. The mechanic had fuel too, which was handy. It was lunch time, but we decided to push on so we didn’t run out of daylight before Imilchil.
This began a really significant climb. First gear almost all the way. I learned that I could speed the bike up Flintstones-style, adding one or two kph which was nice considering I was maxing out at about 10kph. We were so slow!
It was quite cold. For layers on my upper body, I wore a long sleeve tech shirt, t shirt, long sleeve t shirt, sweater, sweatshirt, and leather jacket. My leather gloves didn’t offer any warmth. Fortunately it was a beautiful day!
So there we were, moving up the road, sometimes on switchbacks, sometimes just on ridges, looking as if we were on conveyer belts. We had seen snow capped mountains in the distance earlier on the ride. Now we were among them! Having once been surrounded by various shades of brown, we now saw more and more white. The roads were thankfully clear. But otherwise, snow everywhere.
We did eventually reach the top, which was at 2645m (8678 feet)!! That was a relief. We hung out for a bit, taking pictures, throwing snowballs, doing doughnuts. Totally normal stuff.
Then we descended. Going downhill was fun! The bike does have a tendency to rattle quite a bit, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But I got up to 65kph on mine, which felt like a big achievement. Worth it.
Safely to the bottom, we stopped at a restaurant for tea and lunch, and then we proceeded to the chateau we’d booked in Imilchil. We were totally frozen by the time we arrived. Fortunately there was a fireplace and heat lamp which together allowed us to thaw. Then dinner which involved — you guessed it — tagine! Delicious.
Oh, one downside to the chateau. The top floor consisted of a few rooms around an open air courtyard. No actual heat in the rooms except for wood burning stoves. The stove was good except that it burned through all of its wood by midnight. By the morning, the air temperature in my room was just barely warmer than that of outside, which was below freezing. Yeesh!
