Solo Motorbike Tour
Portugal, Spain, Morocco
8 Days, 2124 km, unplanned route
BMW R65 from 1979, Cafe Racer Conversion
Highlights:
Lisbon Depature
Sheeps in Spain
Tanger at Dawn
Muezzin in Chefchaouen
Rocks & Rain
The Sun is Back
Ninja Mode & Gear
Electricity Down
Highway Chase
Leaving Lisbon behind, the countryside comes with vast plains and long, straight roads. Around Mourão the roads get more interesting and I enter the Sierra de Aracena Natural park right after the Spanish border. Beautiful landscapes with moderate hills and lots of sheeps.
Smooth ride down to Seville. I make a quick stop at the Plaza de España, famously used as a filming location in Star Wars.
It’s still charming. So am I.
The view on Africa from the roads between Algeciras and Tarifa.
I catch the 7pm ferry to Tanger. My Airbnb hosts needs 3 extra-hours to get the room ready. I need 3 extra-hours to get my SIM card working.
Someone recommends to take the coastal road through hills and along the port to Tetouan. I stop by a tiny beach and have coffee with two friendly locals from Tanger.
The road from Tetouan to Chefchaouen is nice but not spectacular.
Changing to a new roll of Kodak Ektachrome 100. Unfortunately I lost my previous roll to a battery problem. These pics are gone.
I am still here.
Very nice roads towards Bad Berrat with much fewer traffic than the main road from and to Chefchaouan.
Then the rain starts. I bug in a local town. A man tells me about his German friend Gunnar from Frankfurt, who buys 100kg hashish from him. He invites me to his house in the mountains – I have to reject and decide to chase away from the rain.
I give him a hand and get rewarded with spectacular roads. Probably the best on this whole trip.
The Bell Bullit helmet was great choice for me – very comfortable and functional. I simply use my EarPods with it which works great for communications, noise-cancelling and music.
I find this really nice home stay in a mountain village near Ourtzagh and climb a dirt path during dawn – very hard to drive. I drop the bike once and scratch the valve cover on a rock. But I get compensated with a delicious tagine.
I have to refill oil. People here use 20W50 engine oil, but I insist for no reason on 10W40 oil. Eventually a local on the road drives me to the sketchiest workshop in Fes where I refill 700ml of 10W40 engine oil. That’s how much my cycle consumes on 1000km. Later I will know that the 20W50 would have worked even better for these hot conditions.
My average fuel consumption is around 5 liters and I have a 17 liters tank. That gets me around 350km + reserve. No lack of gas stations on the trip so far.
During the trip I see only a dozend of other motorcycle riders which surprises me. What doesn’t is their gear: all packed up on 450kg+ Touring machines like the AfrikaTwin 2500XTR Pro or alike.
I could have stayed longer in Morocco, but my gut feeling (and university schedule) suggest to head back towards Europe.
I make a stop in a village near the highway and the cycle doesn’t start. Electricity dead. I roll it 1km to nearest car workshop where they could fix a burned wire.
Wouldn’t be a proper trip without a workshop visit, would it?
I take the Nacional 2 back up from Olhão to Ferreira do Alentejo. Form there another 150km to Lisbon on the highway. A Google street view car follows me half the way.
