Hopefully I get through before the mud pit gets going..

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

My newly acquired riding partner, Jonathan, was talking to a stately looking man that had flagged us down on a dusty moonlit mountain road and I was still sitting on my bike and beginning to get annoyed. Since model forecasts showed no substantial swell arriving until the following week, I’d delayed my departure to the coastal city of Safi in favor of a mountain and desert excursion deep into the interior of Morocco. My poor attitude at this juncture didn't make a lot of sense, since it was dark, we were tired, hungry, and hadn’t seen any suitable place to camp or take shelter for hours and this man it seemed may be able to put us up for the night in his guest room.

Our journey from Marrakech began with a stop in the foothills at the village of Ouzoud where we found a majestic looking waterfall. Ouzoud was filled with lots of mostly Moroccan tourists striking the same pose and taking the same photo in front of the waterfall. The very existence of a waterfall seems to create a tourist vortex causing a feeling of urgent need to show up and stare at the thing. Since we’re tourists, we went and stared at it. It was very nice. It looked as though there should be magical fairies of some kind flitting about in the mist above the torrent. We took the same photo that everyone else did.



We rode southward from Ouzoud higher towards the peaks of the Atlas range that loomed hazy in the distance. The Atlas ranges separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert. They were created as the land masses of Europe and Africa collided at the southern end of the Iberian peninsula, pushing peaks up 13 thousand feet into the air. Our path had us traversing a high pass and then descending towards the Sahara desert on the other side to the town of Ouarzazate. I'm very happy that I can now correctly spell and pronounce the name of that town since my first attempts were not very useful. Learning words in Arabic makes me feel like I'm in the novel 'Dune', which I know is really stupid. Not the novel. The novel is fantastic. Red rock faces and soils dominated the landscapes that we rode through.


As the sun sunk behind the mountain tops and our altitude increased, the air temperature dropped nearly as quickly and the road quality. We dodged massive pot holes, wash-outs, rock falls and wayward sheep as night fell. Truth be told, I have trouble to tell the difference between a wayward sheep and one that knows exactly where it's going. We passed small villages with soccer games happening in the road which they stopped for us to pass and I smacked a couple of high fives to the kids as we rode through goal on the far side of the road. There were a few jeers from some of the kids as we robbed them of a few last moments of game time before it became too dark to play. In every mountain village kids would give us a cheer for as we passed as if we were in the middle of a massive rally race of some kind. I pretended that was true. I think it made me keep waving at adults that had no intention of waving back at me. Their confused expressions as they hesitantly raised their hands out of politeness indicated they must have been thinking "What hell does that guy think, he's some enduro race star that everyone wants to wave to?"

<img class="aligncenter" alt="" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/JO2Jn2F2mMHXSxbhzamy1CiZG4PtxedImp06JQ7nmJw=w750-h474-no" />

Jonathan had negotiated a fair price for us with the man who had flagged us down in the street for a night stay and dinner at the guest room in his home. We drank Moroccan tea and his wife made us an excellent vegetable targine for dinner. Their simple home had a warm feeling within its walls.



My cause for annoyance at our initial stop proved to be immaterial, as there was a secure place to park our bikes right next to where we slept, provided we were able to ride them up the steep dirt slope, up a few steps and through the narrow doorway. We both managed it, though not without a bit of difficulty. Our sleeping quarters were richly layered with blankets and pillows of vibrant traditional Moroccan design.



The next morning we awoke to rooster crowing and our host bustling about in the main house who was quick to bring us morning tea and bread with honey as soon as we began to stir. We were very thankful for the hospitality that we'd found in this simple dwelling simply by chance riding along a dark road in the mountains. We had no idea of the day of riding and scenery we were in store for as we motored away that morning. The narrow band of asphalt that traversed the mountain pass seemed to wind back and forth unendingly, with the road narrowing where gravity worked to smooth the man-made gradient back to a more natural, unorganized state. From time to time the asphalt disappeared entirely, reclaimed by soil and rock falling from the upslope side. Though our throttle hands grew heavy on some of the twisty racetrack sections, our progress was slow as we could hardly ride a few kilometers without stopping to admire the landscape or the villages below us. The square mud and hay buildings flanked by cultivated terraces took on the appearance of delicately constructed models of some kind. The red peaks held our gazes spellbound one turn after another. At each village we slowed so as not to disturb local villagers going about their business in the road.









On a slow rocky section, I dumped my bike over and broke one of welds of my surfboard rack. So, I hadn’t actually gone surfing yet, but I had managed to break my surfboard rack. Which I need to carry my surfboard as I ride around in the Atlas Mountains towards the desert. This was starting to feel a little bit ridiculous. It does make a really nice camp table though.







At least I wasn’t the only one with a sleepy motorcycle..



We woke our bikes up from their naps and headed for lower ground.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

The temperature climbed steadily as we motored downward into the town of Ouarzazate, which serves as a gateway for expeditions to the Sahara desert. Crossing the Atlas Mountains had taken far longer than either Jonathan or I had anticipated and we were now tired from two long days of riding. We checked into a hotel with our two favorite qualities: dirt cheap and indoor bike parking. We drove the bikes in the front door, through the lobby, and tucked them in to sleep right in front of our room, nearly close enough to cuddle. An unnatural degree of attachment to our machines is developing.




The next morning we set off for some desert riding,blasting along on tracks and cross-country over the desert pavement that makes it pretty easy to just point your bike wherever you want to go and roll on the gas. We came across some strange sights in the desert:





Morocco has a long history in the film industry with lots of movies and television shows filmed near Ouarzazate including as Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and part of the Game of Thrones television series. We came across several relics of films gone by and sets for others currently in production. Since there was no one around to tell us otherwise, we helped ourselves to a tour aboard our bikes while trying to guess the films and shows that we were riding through.







Jonathan was keen to stick around the desert for awhile for some dune riding on the KTM and I had a swell to catch in Safi. So while he tried his best to keep his clutch in tact and axles above ground in the sand, I motored westward over another mountain pass back towards the coast.





I took the long way out of Ouarzazate along a beautiful twisting single lane asphalt road where I found the fortified city or ‘ksar’ of Aït Benhaddou and the first of the kasbahs: fantastical looking buildings often hewn straight from the red cliff faces that flanked them. The Berber people who historically inhabited this area and still do are responsible for construction of these earthen high walled structures, the oldest of which are believed to date from the 17th century. Ksar Aït Benhaddou (top image) has even been designated a UNESCO world heritage site. While most people now live in the adjacent village, apparently 8 families still live within the walls of the ksar. Historically, almost all cities in this region had a kasbah, as it was a sign of power and wealth for the city and a necessity to survive an attack from the outside. I must have passed a dozen ksars and kasbahs as I rode up the Ounila River valley.









My zen attitude about motoring in Moroccan traffic evaporated climbing the mountain pass headed back to Marrakech. Even with a line of ten cars bumper to bumper ahead of me while climbing the twisty grade, no driver could stand being behind a motorbike and they would just creep up beside me, half in the oncoming lane, and then shove me over to the crumbling shoulder. Ironically enough, I was surely the fastest thing on the road. Eventually I became so frustrated with this behavior that I somewhat dangerously blew by the entire line of cars in one go. It was very satisfying to leave everyone behind that seemed so willing to put my life at risk for no reason whatsoever. I could feel adrenaline flowing and told myself to calm down and not to do that again. If my luck is good and the wave at Safi is all that its cracked up to be, there would be plenty of excitement off the road.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

As a traveling surfer you’re always at the mercy of the ocean’s rhythms for the success of your mission. You may have arrived at one of the best surf spots in the world, during peak swell season, have your super casual tube-ride pose down cold and ready for the cover shot, but it’s just not up to you whether you score or get skunked. This is part of what makes riding good waves both at home or in far flung corners of the world so special: they are here one day and gone the next. This was my week to score.

When I rode into Safi it was under a blanket of fog, so that I could hardly even orient myself relative to the coast. The city is dominated by a massive sea port and rail line that block access to most of the shoreline. From my talks with people here, I’ve gathered that both the port and rail line are primarily occupied with moving sulfur and phosphorus extracted from mines north of the city. Some of what comes out of the tops of the local processing plant wafts through the city air. This scene was hardly what you’d imagine as an idyllic surf destination of endless summer dreams.



So then, why in the world have I come to a place like this? The same reason that surfers have come for decades - a cranking right hand barrel of a wave dubbed Le Jardin (the Garden) on the north side of the sea port. First ridden in the early 1980’s by surfers who kept it a secret for many years. On its day it has been called one of the world’s best waves by legends of the sport like Tom Carroll and Gary Elkerton. Every winter, top pros and feral surf travelers alike show up hoping score Safi doing its thing. The catch here is that the wave is fickle, requiring at least 10 feet of swell in the water and a low tide to start working and all, and the water is severely polluted by waste material from local processing of phosphates (see paper here). If you can brave the dirty water, and have the fortune to find the right swell and wind direction, the lip of the wave will pitch out to let you start riding through the wave rather than on it. On the right day,the wave can look like this:


image source: Safi surf house in Morocco. Surfinn - Surf Holidays, Surf Trips, Learn to Surf.

On arrival, there was some serious swell potential on the horizon marching our direction.



Since I couldn’t even see the ocean, let alone identify where the wave was located, I was just riding around town without much idea where to go. Fortunately, I finally stumbled across the Safi Surf House, where I met my host, Medhi, who filled me in on the local wave conditions and everything else that I needed to know. Since the swell was still too small on my arrival for the main wave at Safi, we surfed a beachbreak 10 km north of the city. I quickly realized that weeks of sitting on a motorcycle stacked on top of the hectic days of preparing to leave California had taken a toll on my paddling fitness. It felt good to be back in the water again after such a hiatus.



The next day the swell cranked up and the wave at Safi started to fire off. Mehdi and I had the main wave at Safi to ourselves, and the days followed on with excellent waves and very little crowd. No barrels yet, but I was more than happy with the head high racing walls. Mehdi knows everyone at the beach and in the water and the familial attitude amongst some of the local surfers and bodyboarders was immediately apparent, with a good vibe pervading our days in and out of the water. I felt privileged to share some waves with this crew of guys at their home. Mehdi is consummate surf host, making sure that I scored waves and looking after anything I could have needed while in Safi. If you ever get the chance to come surf here, Mehdi’s 'Safi Surf House' should be your first stop. Here's my host ripping it during my week of surfing here:



One day after surfing, I went with Medhi to the local hamam for a uniquely Moroccan experience. We entered a square room completely covered in tile from floor to roof and filled with steam and layed down on our backs straight onto the tile. By the time that I was nearly ready to pass out, we exited to another room and layed down on another tile floor on rubber mats maybe 1-2mm thick when a guy wearing some little shorts proceeded to twist me into a pretzel. While on my stomach with my limbs behind me tangled up with those of my tormenter, I imagined it looked something like your favorite WWF matchup, complete with me pounding an open hand on the floor in defeat. My attempts to tap out and grunts for mercy didn’t seem to make much difference in the severity of the pretzeling. I got the idea that he thought my behavior indicated he was doing his job well. When that was finished, he started to scrub me down with what felt like steel wool, followed by another round that felt about like a brillow pad as though he were incrementally removing my grit with finer grades of sandpaper. After such I thorough treatment, I may not need to shower again until Cape Town.
A week after my arrival, a good clean swell arrived. Still few barrels to be had, since the low tide just wasn’t low enough, but we enjoyed rippable overhead walls rumbling in all day long.


Yours truly:




In the evenings I strolled the markets in the Medina while I ate dinner from street vendors. With so few tourists about it never took long for someone to say hello and offer a cup of tea and some conversation. From these encounters I learned about the history of the city, its main industries, and how people thought of the few European tourists or business people that would come and go. This is really one of the great things about surfing while traveling: it brings you to places like Safi that you wouldn’t ordinarily go without a mission of some kind, which in turn provides a different view of a place than sticking to the more well trodden tourist trail.






Mehdi has been struggling for years now with local politicians as the local representative of the Surfrider Foundation to advocate for reductions of industrial pollution and maintenance of the small degree of tourist infrastructure, but to no avail. The road down to the main wave is in ruins and cannot be driven any longer, not even on a motorbike. It seems that the bottom line is that Safi is an industrial town. The money comes from the phosphate mining, processing, and transport, not the tourists. But the surfers will always come.

The giant sleeps:
The swell declined and I now had some info on surf spots further south so I got ready to motor on, now frothing for more surf after having a taste of what is on offer at Morocco’s point breaks.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

G'day Garnaro,I have to admit to thinking the same as the unimog guys about your surfboard ,until i read your comment (which made me laugh),i'm very much enjoying your ride report,you have taken some splendid photographs Too .I will follow your journey with interest.Regards Noel

Thanks Noel! Updates on the way..

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

The last time I stood staring at the waves spilling over reefs below me was in December of 2001 when we made our camp here for two weeks. I had driven to Morocco in a van with an Australian couple, Jon and Raylee, who I’d met on the surf trail in South America a year earlier and traveled with for a spell in Peru and Chile. We were all well-addicted surf explorers back then and before we parted ways in South America, we hatched a plan for a surf trek from England along the Atlantic Coast surfing all of the waves that we could find in France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. After South America they went to Scotland and I left for South Africa before returning to California. Eight months later, they picked me up in France in an old Mercedes Sprinter van with a fresh home paint job of white with a red stripe down the center. Strapped to the roof inside were six surfboards that I had delivered to London from South Africa on my way back to California earlier that year. Everything we did back then was somehow directed to the next destination and finding the next wave. Even standing on the same spot where we enjoyed many a dinner of baguette and Laughing Cow cheese, looking at the same chunk of reeef, it feels like a lifetime ago.

After spending last week surfing in Safi I’d ridden to Sidi Kauki – a tiny, sleepy coastal village with an authentic charm and a handful of little cafes, one owned by French expat with a passion for fresh ingredients and superb cuisine that he served up in the most unlikely seeming of locations. There was traffic on the beach. But it was just donkey traffic.

There was traffic in the trees too. But it was just goat traffic.


Traffic on the road was mostly camel traffic.

There was a good wave nearby that I made a halfhearted attempt to reach. The poor road eventually gave way to sand dunes and with my bike fully loaded, running road tires at high pressure, I was quickly stuck. After a couple times digging myself out, I decided that the terrain had bested me for the moment and I retreated to hunt another day.

The wind had not subsided the entire night and continued the next morning, so I packed up my camp and motored south, leaving the sand dunes behind. The road climbed some coastal hills and eventually rejoined the coast where I saw that there was still more swell in the water than I’d expected given the last forecast I'd seen. The first small pointbreak that I came to was completely overpowered by the swell, so I knew to keep heading south where larger points waited that would bend the lines of swell energy to into peeling lines to of fun to ride.



That night I surfed by myself at the reef break just below our campsite from years ago. There were plenty other surfers about, but the wave that I saw breaking just in front of the exposed chunk of reef had been overlooked. I sat waiting for sets that appeared on the horizon 15 minutes apart, trying to judge the correct distance that I should be from the nasty looking pieces of rock. At low tide, the wave sucks up quickly making for an exciting take-off and first 20 meters riding past the exposed rock shelf.
The last time I’d surfed here years ago I’d misjudged that distance and ended up planting myself and my board right onto the reef in very ungraceful fashion. But it wasn’t all my fault. It was partly due to the yogurt. In the spirit of the trip, we had procured some recreation enhancers. We kept trying to think of ways to use the hash other than mixing it in a joint with tobacco, which none of us cared to smoke. We eventually settled on melting it into some oil and mixing it with yogurt. So when the mood struck before a surf session as we were pulling our wetsuits on, the query would come: ‘Anybody want to yogurt up?'. And we would yogurt up. The whole thing was phenomenally silly.

With all my wits about me, I managed to keep myself off of the reef this time around. Rejoined with my riding mate Jonathan, we made a camp on a hill perched high above the surf.

Every morning I get up about 7, throw on my board shorts, eat some yogurt (just vanilla flavored) and bananas, load up my board and wetsuit and motor down to check the waves. It's an absolutely fantastic feeling bounce over the dirt tracks on the way out the surf every day, park my bike right on the rocks at the top of a point and jump in the ocean. Some days after surfing for a bit I’ll hop on the bike still in my wetsuit and blast up to another reef or point for some more waves. Following this routine day after day is incredibly energizing.



Local guys ride around in these cool little high riding Renaults to the beach.

While we surf, women from the village collect mussels from the rocks. The fishermen in the village haul out their catch straight in front of the restaurant where they are served.



Life is simple and people are friendly here. While there are many more surfers here than there used to be, and my exuberance about the madness of it all is more subdued than it was a lifetime ago, this is a good place to come back to.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

As I hummed along northward on the highway with the sun overhead just like I had many days before, a glance downward and to the left instantly sent a shot of panic through me. Since I was going surfing, I had my surfboard attached to my motorcycle. When I looked down, I found no surfboard, only a void and the asphalt rushing past below. I whipped around and sped the other direction fully expecting to either return to the last place I’d checked the surf 2 km back without sight of it, or to see it splintered and strewn across the highway somewhere. I rode fast, thinking that if I were quick enough I could snatch my one and only craft to ride the waves of Africa from such a cruel fate. I got to the turnoff to the dirt track where I’d last checked the waves, still without a sign of my board. Relief washed over me as I came to a stop. All the way at the end of the track, in the middle of the rocky bluff without a soul around was my board lying bottom down, with the arm of my surf rack still fully attached and in place.

The rear arm of the rack had broken off at the same place it had been repaired in Safi from my fall in the Atlas Mountains. On examination it was clear that the repaired weld used a lot of material but formed a poor bond. Enough bouncing around on the dirt tracks to check the surf and it had finally given in right where it lay. As I sat there looking at the ocean, engine running, my board had simply dropped away without my noticing and off I sped without it. Needless to say, I was very happy to still have a surfboard along on my surf trip.

We found our standby spot with too low of tide for the sizable swell that had grown overnight and was now pounding the reef. The massive and mysterious ship boiler marooned on the reef was sticking high above the water surface as waves sectioned and closed out around it. Fishermen deftly dodged exploding waves to the north.

A couple of the local Moroccan surfers told us about a lesser know spot about 10 km to the south and we decided to head that direction. One of them climbed onto the back of my bike wearing only board shorts and sandals and off we went. We found some head high quick-breaking waves that lured us out. When we got out to the surf, we quickly found that the waves were nearly un-makeable with the speed at which they broke down the line. You would get to your feet, stay as high as possible on the wave face for as long as possible racing as fast as you could until a section finally forced you down and outran you. The swell direction was too westerly. According to the local guys, swells arriving from a more northerly direction hit the reef less squarely and produce waves requiring a less frantic pace down the line. While the waves left something to be desired, it had been a fun excursion somewhere new, led by local surfers, which is always a good time.
We arrived back at our ship boiler to find the tide had risen along with the swell, creating some big clean looking waves in between massive bombs that steamrolled through the lineup. Only one surfer was in the water – the Spaniard named Axier who I’d befriended at the campsite and been surfing with during the past week. He caught sight of me and waved me out and so out I went. I barely managed to squeak out the keyhole channel between a big rock and the ship boiler before the area was mowed by a set. Axier and I looked for the more manageable ones we both dropped in on a few that quickly blocked our paths down the line with heaving sections of lip.

After an hour or so I locked into a really good one and rode it just a bit too far. Once out of the lee of the protective headland where we were taking off, the current was relentless and it had me pinned right where I didn’t want to be – stuck on the inside taking closeouts on the head. The problem here was that we only knew one safe exit point – the same place that we’d entered, through that keyhole channel where the rocky headland attenuated a lot of the swell energy. For as far as I could see, the southerly direction that the current pulled me the shoreline was just rocky slabs exploding 10 feet high with whitewater. I lucked out and found the right spot at just the right time to exit safely enough.
Upon exiting the water a local girl who had watched my struggle was smiling and giggling with her friends sitting on a concrete wall just up from where I landed. She came down the slope a little way and threw me a mandarin, which landed in the rocks just near me. It was as though she wanted to say hello but was scared to get too close. I retrieved the mandarin, made a motion of thank you which was returned by another giggle. I stood there catching my breath and devouring the best tasting mandarin I’d had in a long time. After that she became bolder and came all the way down to had me a little glass of mint tea. I was incredibly grateful for the small kindness.
The local bodyboarder, Ahmed, who had followed us out found the same exit as I did. Axier wasn’t so lucky. He misjudged the current and missed our exit point and after struggling against the current for 30 minutes or so trying to get to it, he gave up and let it carry him down the reef. Ahmed and I scrambled southward trying to scout a good exit spot and finally found one that coincided with a break in the sets. Walking back, we were all pretty happy to be back on the ground.

We walked back to the local resident (the only local resident) Mohammed’s cave at the top of the point. His little abode is built into the cliff right next to the surf pounding on the reef where it looks like nothing would be safe. From his doorway, monstrous waves rumbled by, but posed no danger due to its position in the lee of the small headland.


Mohammed had lived here for 8 years, entertaining the traveling surfers as they came and went from the run-of-the-mill feral wanderers like us to top-level pros. In turn, surfers brought things out to him to make life a little easier on this barren stretch of coastline. He had cooked us all up an octopus targine that we all enjoyed inside the cave.

We packed it up for the day leaving some lonely waves behind. The goats went home too.

And I retreated to my clifftop camp.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

G'day ,i'm glad you found your board,i think we have all lost stuff off our bikes,which we'd rather not have.Very nice coastal photo's.Bye for now regards Noel

hey Noel - I'm going to try hard not to loose it again! Thanks for the well wishes!

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

The further south we rode, the greater power the desert seemed to have to undo what had been done to hold it at bay. The asphalt crumbled at the edges and lobes of sand crept inward across the road, threatening to consume the black strip that bisected the sea of dunes. The sand blew across the road in a steady stream, invading eyes, nose and mouth. I’d turn my head almost 90 degrees from the vertical to avoid receiving a blast up into my helmet when I saw a particularly solid looking wall of sand hovering above the road surface ahead. We’d ridden hundreds of kilometers through this barren scene since the hills had given way to the dunes.




I was glad to have met Thomas, a Polish rider on a Honda XR650R along the roadside two days prior, to avoid traversing such a landscape alone. I was also glad that he was riding in front when we crossed a finger of sand 6 inches deep extending onto the roadway so that I had an additional moment to react. Jamming on the brakes seemed like a bad idea, so I just gassed it and let the front get wiggly for a moment.

We had run out of daylight and had hardly seen anything for hundreds of kilometers along the coastal plain, including a place to camp that would hide us from the road. High cliffs ubiquitously blocked access to the beach. In the fading dusk light I spotted some dunes out by the coastline that I thought would do the trick. Sure enough, we were able to find a nice rocky, ridable path into the dunes and tuck in behind them. We set up our camp on the soft sand and watched a giant grapefruit moon float into the sky.


All that I had for clues to surf spots in Western Sahara was some chicken scratch on a napkin from a Portuguese surfer I’d met at my last stop. I was pretty sure that he’d misspelled the name of the village he mentioned since I couldn’t find it on any map. On the way south towards Dakhla, I dragged Thomas off of the highway a number of times to look for waves. The general process was to identify a point of land on the GPS sticking out into the ocean facing the right direction to bend long period swells from the northwest and motor out to have a look. Sometimes there was a track and sometimes we made our own.
Motoring cross-country. it did cross my mind that Western Sahara is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, owing to the conflict between Mauritania and Morocco for control of the territory. It crossed my mind and then left it, because I simply had to see if some of these points on the map had surf potential. Besides, there were plenty of tracks off the highway and no exploded burnt out vehicles to be seen, and we were still a long way from the border with Mauritania, so I figured the odds were with us.


Since there was no swell in the water yet, all I got to see was the potential for surf, but there seemed to be plenty of it, with a number perfect looking pointbreak setups with perfectly groomed sand bottoms just waiting to come alive when a big storm started spinning in the North Atlantic. The camels thought it looked pretty good too.

Upon arrival at a campsite near Dakhla, we were immediately befriended by the neighborhood expats and recreational residents - a mix of wandering motorcyclists and windsurfers. Five days of waiting for waves seemed to mush together in a smoky blur of evenings filled with wild boasting from some big fish living in this small pond and a perpetual game of one-upmanship centered on which country had invented the best stuff. England, Germany, Poland, and the USA were represented. They said McDonald's doesn't count.

We met more overlanders coming north and south. The Belgian couple in this super kitted-out land cruiser had just finished a year long trip all the way around Africa!

Dakhla sits at the end of a massive 40 km long sand spit peninsula and is separated from the mainland by a shallow channel. Since the peninsula is less than 2 km across and often has a steady wind from the northeast, it makes for an excellent ocean playground with windsurfing in the channel and points for surfing on the other side. After a week of killing brain cells the swell finally arrived and it was time to find what all that potential I’d seen a week prior could churn out.
I motored northward to find a point that I could see on the map, but couldn’t see a road to it. The reason, of course, was that there was no road, just some tracks leading off of the highway in vaguely the direction I was after. It seriously looked like riding into desert oblivion. It’s moments like these that I question what in the world I’m doing out here. It just feels like the maddest thing in the world to ride across a mud flat towards a massive dune field in the distance in the middle of the Sahara desert on a motorcycle with a surfboard. Lots of fun of course, until things start to mess up. When I hit the dune field, things started to mess up.
The deep loose sand made for difficult riding and I proceeded rather gingerly since I wasn’t wearing my boots and I really didn’t want to fall and break my surf rack again. I seem to have a problem of leaping before I look on two wheels. I just figure, keep your momentum and you’ll roll on through the tough part or sail right over a gap. Sometimes that works and sometimes it just gets you in over your head rather quickly when the terrain only gets worse up ahead. This time happened to be the latter situation. After grunting and sweating my way along in most ungraceful fashion for 500 meters or so, I found some Land Rover tracks that made riding easier and eventually saw a headland and whitewater appear over the dunes – I’d found the surf spot! Within a few hundred meters I got a full view of the shoreline. The waves sucked.

Riding back out to the road earned me even fewer style points than the ride in, and this time I had a full escort. As I turned around in the sand, seven feral dogs darted from a fishing shack in my direction with canines blazing. I kept my cool and waddled along with this raucous pack nipping at my wheels the whole way. I hoped that these dogs were as docile as the others I’d already met, but nonetheless I now had another reason not to dump the bike. I kept telling myself: this is the adventure part of the surf adventure.

With one wave hunting fail under my belt for the day I continued north to one of the points I’d scouted on the trip south. Looking down from the cliff I was dumbfounded to see ruler edged perfection wrapping its way around the point. Holy crap. It was time to go surfing.
First I had to find a way down to the beach. The only way seemed to be the steep sandy track that the fishermen used to drag boats up off the beach with tractors. Going down was fine, but given my recent sandy trauma I really wasn’t sure that I would be able to make it back up the steep slope, but I also didn’t feel like leaving my bike out of site at the top of the massive cliff. There was nothing to do but go all in, so I slid down the track to the beach.
I rode 400-yard long, 5 ft. reeling waves all day by myself. Wave after wave I rode to the beach, hopped out, and walked back up the top of the point for another. On one of these rounds I helped the fishermen carry one of there boats up to the beach, which made me feel a bit less of an oddity that had invaded their world. There was no reason not to try to go big turns because if I fell off, there was usually an identical wave to the one I was riding right behind it that I could easily paddle into. Not sure how me going big on turns looks in real life, maybe a bit like a guy throwing pizza while swinging wildly back and forth on a slack line. But I sure looked good in my imagination. The whole thing just seemed unreal. After 5 hours or so, exhaustion started to set in and I felt as though in a dream floating from one ride to the next. In my euphoric haze, I thought: this was why you come to the middle of the Sahara Desert with your surfboard and fall all over the place in the while being attacked by feral dogs.


As the tide began to come high, and the hard, packed sand was inundated, the thought of escaping the beach on my moto started to weigh on my mind with each wave I rode. What looked like an armada of identical blue fishing boats appeared on the horizon, done for the day they headed for the beach. By the time I was finally able to stop myself from paddling out for just one more wave, the dry part of the beach was completely crammed with fishing boats and the hard packed sand was covered by the tide. As I sat with my board loaded up and the engine running I thought about the fact that the cost of those last few waves was that I now had to ride my steel framed bike through the fantastically corrosive saltwater. I waited for a lull in the sets gunned the throttle, bolting across the soupy wet sand the receding wave uncovered and made it to safe ground in front of the steep sandy trail up the cliff.
The only way that I would make it up the slope was fast, so there would be no foot paddling to keep balance. I got the best run at it that I could with the small area of sand left dry, got to second gear, stood on the pegs, leaned back, let the front do what it wanted, and steered my way up the slope from the back wheel. I let out a shout when I edged over the top of the cliff. After all the fun that the ocean had provided, the beach dealt out the final thrill for the day.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

The stretch of terrain designated as ‘no man’s land’ began to seem a bit more ominous as shadows grew long in the late afternoon. A 5km buffer zone that lies between Western Sahara and Mauritania consists of tracks that criss-cross through nasty sharp patches of rocks and sand pits and is littered with burnt out vehicles. I thought that I’d planned plenty of time to get to and traverse the border, but again I’d underestimated the slowness of progress through the chaos of African borders. Little offices with very grumpy attendants doling out little pieces of paper and no indication of the ordering of which office and which piece of paper needs whichever stamp on it first. This is standard procedure, and while I told myself that I need to get used to it, standing in line after line sweating in motorcycle gear is exhausting. On the upside, I am now quite good at interpreting anything on an immigration form in French.



Finally riding away from the Mauritanian border feels fantastic – I’m in! A twist of the throttle and I'm free, out into the open desert again. Time to go find some surf. But first, as usual, time to find some sand to fall down in.



Looking down at the GPS, I saw that I had been in and out of the red border that marks no man’s land all morning as I rode around looking for a wave. Each time I approached a group of buildings or someone in a truck I expected someone to tell me to get the hell out of there, but it never happened.



Then I found a very big boat. While its location was rather unfortunate for the people who were on the boat, it happened to help create a nice little sandbar with a wave whizzing along in its shadow for me. It was an eerie feeling surfing right next to a massive ship in the wrong place as I heard the loud clang of waves smacking into the far side of it reverberating through the hull.



A better surfer may have found his way out of a few of the little barrels being served up, but I just found myself a face full of sand prior to exiting. Chalk one up for Mauritania.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

If I laid on my back and turned my foot just so, I could get enough light from the nearby fluorescent lamp to dig the biggest urchin spines out of the ball of my left foot. The restaurant parking lot in Dakar that I’ve called home for the last week isn’t the most glamorous of accommodation, but it is affordable and close to embassies that I’d been running around to trying to procure visas. Despite the mood that this scene might conjure up, I couldn’t have been a happier camper. As I motored south to Senegal, the waves turned from very good to stupid good. I arrived to find a perfect barreling lefthander grinding its way along a reef in front of a giant ornate mosque. I surfed alone until two Spaniards living nearby came out to share some waves with me until dark. The surf continued like this for the next few days and I mostly teetered at the edge of having myself truly stuffed into some tubes on my backhand, right in the pocket of the wave. I got pitched over the falls pretty good on one failed attempt and managed to put a nice elbow sized hole just about dead center in the bottom of my board. Chalk one up for Senegal.





The pelicans thought the surf looked pretty good too.





After two and a half months in the desert, I’d had enough and was more than happy for the abrupt change in landscape that happened as I approached the Senegal River, which marked the border with Mauritania. Near the border I caught sight of one of the longest trains in the world - with trains up to 1.6 miles long that traverse the Mauritanian Railway carrying tons of iron ore.






I’d eaten lunch that afternoon sitting on a sand dune, and now suddenly there was lush vegetation before me and I could feel moisture in the air. It felt fantastic and it pulled me southward.






The shift away from such an arid landscape meant that I now got to fall down in the mud rather than the sand. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to hop off of the perfectly good track that I was riding down onto the tidal plane near the mouth of the Senegal river, which, rather predictably in hindsight, turned out to be a squishy moto-eating mud pit. I hadn’t seen another car for the last 40 km on the track and the tide was coming up. After getting properly bogged, I took what I thought would be the quick option and tried to get unstuck without unloading anything and ended up spinning the bike around barely in control so that it ended up laying d0wn pointing into the river rather than back up towards the track. So much for getting out quickly. I was feeling pretty foolish about creating this situation as I began to unload the bike.





Fortunately two German guys in a Toyota showed up to find my yard sale strewn out along the bank of the Senegal River. They rolled up their pant legs and came down to give me a shove out of the mud and back up onto the track.





Their Toyota was kitted out with big suspension, a winch, and a roof tent, and full pantry. Their dinner cuisine was far better than any of my efforts to date. But they did have a strange sense of fashion.





While the landscape turned green, faces turned from brown to black, women went from fully covered or absent in public gathering places to being visible everywhere in vibrantly colored dresses. Incredibly fit looking men trained on the beach and groups performed regimented soccer drills. It couldn’t have been more apparent that we’d left Arab Africa behind and had entered Black Africa. Our first stop was a camp on a sand river bar south of St. Louis where I made a little friend who liked to wear my hat.



There is nothing more fun gathering around big map laid out in the sand to discuss places, plans, and routes. There were all brands of overlanders in the mix - trucks, motos, and bicycles.



Now traveling with the Germans in the Toyota, I motored south to Dakar. We were stopped numerous times by police for fabricated violations trying to get some money out of us. We’d already had our fill of extortion from people in uniforms at the border crossing, and we were in no hurry, so we just stayed friendly, bought mandarins from the ladies at the side of the road, and waited them out until we were simply told to go.
The city of Dakar sits at the end of the Cape Vert peninsula, the westernmost point of the African continent. It is the historic finish point of the Paris–Dakar rally, the most prestigious off-road race in the world (now moved to South America due to security concerns). While in Dakar, in addition to roaming about the Cape Vert peninsula looking for waves, my task has been to procure visas for some of the countries that lie ahead. The red tape fun began in earnest. Nearly every country on the west coast of the continent requires a visa of American citizens for transit. Each one takes about 2 days to process and some have substantial documentation requirements such as a hotel booking, letter of invitation, and letter to the consulate describing your travel intentions. Even with everything in order, the fact that a visa may be denied for whatever reason deemed sufficient by the consular officer can become incredibly frustrating. I dug in and made myself comfortable.





Dyna Rae got some new rubber.





And between rolls of red tape, I found some ocean magic at the western edge of Africa.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Great report! Best I've seen in Ride Tales!
Excellent photo work!

Seems like you're coping well with your DR650 in the deep sand. Impressive.
How is the bike holding up overall?

I do OK on mine with Knobbies fitted ... not so good with street tires if really deep sand. (Baja)

Fantastic waves, epic beach shots ... and very little tourism. Sounds like
Surfer Heaven to me.

Ride safe, Ride Far ... Pray For Surf!

Coping with deep sand, but it ain't pretty..

The Mefo explorer front feels absolutely terrible on anything by tarmac - going to try to change to a TKC 80 in Togo or Ghana. Should have left with one mounted, really.

Your posts from years gone by actually helped me select and kit out the DR for the trip mollydog..

Bike is doing very well so far approaching 24K - that's 7K miles on this trip and 5K just before shipping it to London on the Oregon BCDR and Northern Continental Devide route + transit back to CA.

It's holding up better than the gear, really which seems to keep breaking. Who knew that JB weld was good for fixing moto boots? Even managed to break my pelican case! No problems with the bike other than an occasional annoying knock on a hot restart that I've read about from other owners and would love to diagnose properly. I'm due for oil change and valve check pretty quick now.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches