2 April 2023, Ait Ourir, 38.08km
Hotel Nizal R361.54 [DH200]

A fabulous day!
Marrakech was reluctant to relinquish us. We had plotted our route out of the city, but deviated slightly to draw cash and got lost! Google Maps proved of little use, so we spent an hour pottering before finding our bearings. Getting lost on a bike is usually distressing, but the morning was cool, the sky blue, and the city streets flat, taking us past the Bahia Palace and other unvisited areas worth the deviation.
Our next notable destination, around 200km from Marrakech, is the city of Ouarzazate. The sensibly-named Route de Ouarzazate, links east Marrakech to the N9, which we will ride to Ouarzazate and beyond to Zagora. Shortly after getting ourselves onto the Route, Charl got a puncture, the first of the trip.
But it was a wonderful under-40km ride thereafter to Ait Ourir where we are spending the night in a somewhat worn hotel room with a wilting bed.
Both the narrow Route and the wider N9 led us southeast with the snow-topped Atlas, less an illusion than yesterday, on our right, visible beyond brown ploughed fields or through roadside reeds, or across the tops of olive groves or terracotta rooftops.
The terrain was of the trust-your-thighs-not-your-eyes variety. Sometimes a road can read flat, but not be - your legs don't lie!
The mountains we can see from Ait Ourir, are lower than those we cycled alongside today. Perhaps it is these we will begin to climb tomorrow. All we know for sure is that the pass that lies between us and Ouarzazate is over 2000m high. There are several places to sleep before the summit, so we will take our time...
There are many horse-drawn taxis in Ait Ourir, and this morning, a pretty girl on an autocycle in the city centre, thinking she recognized our flag, called out gleefully, "American", and a kindly shopkeeper brought us chairs to sit on outside his store while we devoured corn chips and Pepsi and the two handmade peanut sweets he gifted us.
As I said, a fabulous day.
On our pre-dinner / in-search-of-dinner stroll shortly after sunset, we encountered storks nesting on the cell phone tower and chatty white birds nesting in the palm trees.
Many shops were temporarily closed as shopkeepers popped into the nearest mosque for evening prayers. When I say "closed"... The shopkeeper was absent, his goods, whether shoes or dates, still on display but not for sale. A society built on trust. Not even the stray cats seem tempted to poach.
The town came alive at 9pm, with a lively second-hand clothing market in the square below our window.
And we took a closer look at the mobile petrol station which appeared on the sidewalk between us sitting down to eat our pizza and our short walk home. The vendor was connected to electricity via an overhead cable. The petrol is stored in a container behind the electric pump. Neat.