3 April 2023, Touama, 18.85km
Espace Olive R415.77 [DH230]

We are spending the night in a small apartment underneath the Espace Olive restaurant just west of the small town of Touama. Our bedroom has a purple floor. We are thrilled to be here as the hotel we had intended to sleep in, just 50m back, was closed and we were very reluctant to cycle any further today. When we could not gain access to the hotel, we came on to the restaurant intending to ask if the manager perhaps knew how to contact the hotel owner, and were offered an unadvertised apartment. So we have a bed (we wonder if it might be the manager's) and somewhere to eat too. Just perfect!
We had some errands to run in Ait Ourir (a visit to Maroc Telecom and shopping at the BIM supermarket) so left town latish. We cycled 19km only, averaging under 7kph - both numbers attesting to hilly terrain.
What a ride! We began climbing early, immensely grateful for the flat bits in between, and a tremendous downhill 4km before our planned end-point. We were egged on by cheerful calls of bon courage or magnifique, though more often by a prosaic and universal thumbs up.
We cycled into hills coloured green and red, past irrigated valleys and through forests. We saw shepherds, quite often women, tending sheep and goats. We saw families of four squeezed onto scooters. We met Miriam and Leila, out for a scooter ride and eager to interact. Unusually, they were happy to have their photo taken. We passed four uniformed Royal Gendarmerie* lolling lazily in wait for overloaded vehicles. A vendor at an attractive crystals, fossils, clay artifacts, agreed to boil water for us so we could drink our 3-in-1 coffee. He spoke good English and told us of travelling in Europe and living in Switzerland. "Morocco is best" he said.
It was a stunning ride. Exactly why we love cycle touring!
*The Royal Gendarmerie is a branch of the Moroccan Armed Forces responsible for maintaining law and order in rural areas and smaller towns in Morocco. It was created in 1957 and operates under the authority of the Ministry of Defense.