Feck! Again! All I was planning to do today was straighten the bike out and take some photos. I slept very late, and was nicely refreshed. Outside the sun was beating down with a couple of sledgehammers. The oil thermometer on my bike was reading over 30 degrees, and it felt hotter. I pushed the bike into a berber tent and started fixing the screen, rack and handlebars. With that done I decided to head into Erfoud and get a new inner tube, as a replacement for the heavily repaired one in the front wheel.
About five kilometres out of Merzouga it punctured again, in the middle of nowhere. Bollox! I pushed the bike off of the piste, locked it up, and started walking back towards the auberge. A young man on a moped bumped over the hamada towards me. "You have problem with moto?" Some people really are fecking halfwits! "No problem, I'm walking across the desert in thirty degree heat for the fun of it!" We had a brief discussion about the bike's problem, and I educated him with a few choice English expressions. Just because I am tourist doesn't have to mean I'm clueless. A bike with an obviously flat tyre doesn't just need some more fuel, or some welding, or any of the other fixes this young man suggested. I hitched back to the auberge in a Mercedes panel van, and arranged with the driver to collect the bike on his return journey to Rissani.
Now I'm tired. Luckily the bike was still there when I returned with the van. The driver removed a couple of rows of seats and put them up on the roofrack with a pair of Kiwi rucksacks. We all threw the bike in the back of the van and headed off to Rissani. One of the gems of knowledge I'll take back from Morocco is this; never buy a secondhand van from a Moroccan, if he's finished with it there's nothing in it/on it/bolted to it that still works. I've worked out why all the vans are Mercedes, they're the only ones up to the crap the drivers put them through.
At Rissani we unloaded the bike at the general mechanic, and I made sure I got the "prix total" from the head honcho. They agreed to replace the inner tube with a new one for 75 dirham. I went off into town to get some more cash and left them to it. When I returned they were in the process of washing the front of the bike down. This is a classic ploy, which they'll charge you for, then five minutes out in the desert and the bike will look just as it did pre-wash.
When it came to paying the price had doubled somehow. I explained in my best French that I had agreed a price before and I wasn't going to pay any more. A crowd of onlookers gathered for the show. It transpired that the original price had been given by the mechanics' son, who didn't know his arse from his elbow (his father's words!). Eventually we settled on 90 dirham, and I left as father berated his son.
I headed out of town to fill up, and in the process met Gunther, a retired fireman who had been biking around the world for six years. He showed me his passport, where every page was covered with stamps. This guy had been everywhere, from Georgia to Namibia, Venezuela to Afghanistan. A truely inspirational guy, and he spoke no French or English! His NTV650 was almost completely plastered in international stickers, and proves that you don't need Paris-Dakar heritage or a 1'000cc engine to tour the world. I followed a tourist 4x4 back to Merzouga, more for psychological comfort than navigation. I figured that if I got another puncture I could lean on the horn, and they'd wisk me away to an air conditioned bar to sink beers, while their expert mechanic repaired my bike to rallye standard.
Back at the auberge Ali was waiting for me. We had arranged to go to his shop for tea and to buy a wrap. His shop was clean and loaded with carpets, so he proceeded to go through the sales speil with me. I listened to what he had to say, then reminded him that he knew I didn't want a carpet, just a wrap. Eventually he got a couple out, and they were beautiful, thick dyed cotton, indigo in the middle and black at the ends. I went for two, as it was Alex's birthday and blue is her favorite colour. We then started negotiating the price. Ali started at 700 dirham for the pair, but I wasn't going above 300 and made that clear. We eventually settled on 300 and a beer, which I suspect means I was still stiffed, but the haggling was fun, especially when you get into the swing of it; "300 each! I could buy a new bike for that! I'll give you 50 ... for the pair!"
We went off to one of Merzouga's more upmarket hotels and sank a cold one. We sat out the back of the hotel in between the palms and looking out over the dunes at sunset. A magical view. Ali introduced me to a few of his friends from the village. Even out here, seemingly on the edge of civilisation, everyone knows Manchester United. When I'm asked where I come from, and I reply with "Manchester", people almost invariably say "ahhh, Manchester United!". It's a funny old game.