Day 3 - Green, Barren, Green

As you can see, there was not a lot of traffic at 7 am that morning...the real reason I clicked on the shutter button was to show that the area could have been somewhere in Austria, too...

No traffic jam that morning

Well, not really Austria, more like Andalusia. Similar to Spain, I saw countless olive trees, where the harvest was in full swing. People were either on these trees, or standing right below them, swinging at the branches with long sticks, laying huge canvases below the trees and having the olive seeds fall into the canvas. The seeds were then brought by animals (horses, donkeys) to large oil mills, where the distinct smell of the produce - something hard to define, between sweet and rotten - could be felt. There was an unfortunate event one late afternoon: I was riding on a rather deserted stretch of road, a horse fully loaded with oil seeds in large bags on both sides was coming in my direction, pretty much in the middle of the road, with the field workers walking next to it. It probably had not seen a lot of road bikers with bright yellow helmets before, the poor thing became frightened, jumped on its rear feet, with the bags falling to the ground (luckily, the seeds did not roll out) and ran away the other direction. I really felt sorry for the workers.

Soon I was the outskirts of Ouezzane, when I met a hitchhiker, heading north. He was from Ukraine, middle of his one-month trip in Morocco - with a total budget of $100 - so if you think I was on a low budget, there are always supremes. He told me he had pitched his tent on the outskirts of the town, but had a horrible night - was harassed the entire night by some wild boar...

Outskirts of Ouezzane

The town itself was quite busy, lots of schoolchildren loitering about (a young vandal even threw a pebble at me - not really necessary, my lad...) and I found a nice café and had a good breakfast of fresh orange juice, coffee, omelets and olives. In Morocco, one can feel the French influence - there are lots of cafes and 'salons du the' - people sitting outside, enjoying their drinks and meals as it were on the Champs-Élysées. That is what I did, a bit of in express tempo, as I wanted to get some distance that day.

The landscape turned quite barren, but never dull - I really enjoyed pushing along this part of the world.

Somewhere...

I stopped at a small kiosk to have some food, but they were really out of everything, them sending me to a gas station some 6 kilometers away. Quite hungry, the road starting to head uphill and with some head wind, it was not the merriest 6 kilometers of my biking career, but I managed to arrive there and had some grilled chicken, bread and a coke, plus some candies, for about Eur 4 (well, this would have been 4% of the Ukrainian fellow travelers monthly budget, so I guess I was being extravagant...).

It was good to gain strength, as it was now quite a push uphill, with some switchbacks, to reach the town of Zegota. My final destination - yes, now I had a destination in my mind, as I wasn't planning on missing yet another UNESCO World Heritage site - was Volubilis, a sizable ruin city from the Roman times - the ancient capital of the province Mauretania. It was getting dark by the time I reached to the city - and not knowing much about the surroundings, I located a supposedly 4-star-superior hotel a few hundred meters up the road, appropriately called Volubilis Inn, overlooking the ruins.

Well, I ended up paying 400 dirhams, some Eur 35 - cannot say it was worth it. Wifi was not working in the room, the breakfast was quite a forgettable experience (they said it would be available from 7 am, was there on time ,and I did not get anything - after complaining - till 8:30), I had to get the hot water turned on - not sure they'd had gotten the 3-star rating in other parts of the world. On the positive side, I had a big, clean bed, 500 channels of Arabic-only TV (what is positive about this, you might correctly ask) and a nice balcony. Had I ridden a bit further, I'd have found better, more appropriate places - oh well.

A nice view from the hotel was nice - a lot more positive cannot be said about this place

That day I had ridden about 115 kilometers, 1050 meters up and 720m down, here is the profile.