Week 8 - El Ouatia in Morocco to Tiznit in Morocco

On Monday Ant tried the bike out and concluded it rode well enough to get somewhere else. After much discussion we decided to go to Tan-Tan on Tuesday and see if there are any better shock absorbers to be had there.

Tuesday morning we emerged from the bungalow to find Mom and Dad had been robbed in the night. Unfortunately it was a circumstances thing. Mom and Dad were getting ready for bed before locking up for the night and someone opened the van door and pinched Mom’s handbag. Dad found it a few minutes later left by the front of the van. Just £160 in cash taken so could have been worse. More trips to another Moroccan police station meant we didn’t get to Tan-Tan.

Understandably Mom and Dad didn’t want to stay in El Ouatia any more so Wednesday we packed up and headed off for Tiznit.

I figured I’d use the time in the back of the van to catch up on the blog and read, but it was so bouncy I ended up lying down with my eyes closed trying not to throw up. Ant had a very bouncy ride too with the not entirely up for the job shock absorbers so we were both very grateful to reach camping international at Tiznit.

Thursday Ant scoured every bike shop, car shop, bicycle shop and mechanic in Tiznit. No shocks, everyone said go to Agadir. Worried in case everyone in Agadir says go to Casablanca and we’ll be back in Spain before we find any shocks!

I stayed with the Mom and Dad support van and Ant went off to Agadir on his own. He phoned later to say he had only been run off the road twice and he’d found a man with shocks, but couldn’t get them till tomorrow. He found a cheap hotel for the night, this gave me the opportunity to go into town and do a bit of Christmas present shopping. Only had newspaper and plastic bags, but even so I did a reasonable job of wrapping. I also made a few decorations for the van. Unfortunately making them out of newspaper resulted in one of the Christmas trees having Michael Gorbachov’s head on it, but they make the van more festive.

Saturday was Christmas eve, Ant returned from Agadir with new shocks and the bike was handling much better what a relief.

There was an advert in the campsite for the Hotel Mauritania who were doing a Christmas eve dinner so we went to see if they had any tables left. Our luck was in and we had a really nice dinner, loads of courses and the main being a really nice roast Lamb. All the other revellers were French people from the campsite and one had bought his accordion so we had music and dancing into the night.

It had turned really foggy whilst we were eating so it was a strange and quiet walk back to the campsite. Sort of a white Christmas, but not exactly like snow.

Christmas morning and Santa had managed to deliver our presents to the right place even though we were in Morocco!

Ant bought me a lovely silver necklace, we all had lots of sweets chocolate and fruit and Dad had 2 new plastic buckets. Who says you don’t get exciting presents when you’re a grown up! Mom and I had bought a piece of turkey for dinner which I roasted in the oven in the van. It took ages to cook, but came out really nice with roast potatoes and home made stuffing. Yummy!