Merzouga to Zagora 250 kms
Back on the trails ( 28th April) 250 kms
Sadly leaving the dunes today!! Would have liked to played some more but will leave that for another year! We did manage to get a last half hour of filming in!! Now that we could stay upright in the sand !!
We left Raid Mamouche around 9.30 am and rode pretty fast back down the MS6 route that we came in on. We kept going till we hit the “feche feche” Had no big problems negotiating it this time as we were now harden sand riders!! But our timing wasnt perfect as it was in the mid day sun we made this crossing !! We popped back into Kems Kems and stopped for lunch and to escape the heat! After lunch we headed out on the MS4 trail direction Zagora!
Mat “That was a proper riding day: 300 kms of changing terrain. I really appreciated the hard part, were the Dakar pistes were. On the dried land you can open up and that’s a hell of a fun. It’s so wide but every track reaches the same point, so no worries about getting lost. I was doing a hundred (kms!!!), so I can imagine the Dakar guys…But it’s not all flat, and being careful is also necessary…The tires open the superficial white crust and it’s all red underneath. So it’s fun to draw figures and circles there. We met no-one at all and I recommend this very peculiar track. Jon had a puncture, the only one of the trip, and managed to change the tube within an hour, not bad! The unavoidable curious running kids were told to stand along the tree and to shut up. they then deserved a few dr. each…”
This was a very big dried out “oued” or in other words lake bed! Fun to ride on !
Our one and only puncture – compression pinch – surprised it hadn’t happened before!
This was done in around 35 degrees C – hot work!It took me around an hour to do!! Although I think I spent half an hour trying to get the valve back in the rim!! Never really sussed out a good technique for this! The local kids enjoyed the show!!
The local cafe en route
More great trails!
We arrived in Zagora quite late and were directed to Camping Zagora by a mechanic in one of the off road garages.!! Camp site was ok but lots of mossies – we manged to get the camp site guy to find us some mossy nets! Life saver!
Mat ” I met a guy in this camping that I knew, a musician from Toulouse. So we had diner and he played card tricks to entertain us. He had spent 3 weeks in the desert on his own, looking at the scarabs walking around there.” Jonny “I also remember Mat the guy who was making the big red bricks so he could build his own house!!”
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To avoid punctures, don’t park your bike under Accacia tree, because of spines felt on the ground, bikes don’t need shadows