Camels, the sky and I cry in the Sahara

Dear everybody, 

I miss the blog! Do you miss the blog? Welp, either way, we are back baby! I am writing to you from a McDonald’s in Portugal. Yup. Sorry Mother Earth. I write to a background of clubbing music, people drinking beers on a Saturday morning with their happy meals (I guess you can order that here, a true Portuguese special). I fill my water bottles from the bathroom and charge all my batteries, including my own! I set myself a very interesting challenge, booking a flight from inside my tent in Tafedna, Morocco, 3,000 kilometer’s away leaving from Paris On may 18th. 

Home? Yes home! I decided it was time to end my journey. I’ve been trying to get to 100k’s everyday to make the distance which, actually, at this point is physically impossible as I am still in the south of Portugal. Thank Allah for trains…and possibly hitch hiking? And buying a flexible plane ticket. 

I know I owe you all stories from the rest of my months in Morocco…I have So, so much to say but I still don’t feel I am ready to share it quite yet, nor do I have the energy to tap into it and sometimes it feels good just to keep it close to the heart before giving it away. 

But, maybe I will skip to the end, the strangest part of the journey for me, when I finally reached my finish line. 

Maybe you’ve heard of it? the Sahara fricken desert? Ya. Wowza. I had spent months riding a bit in agony, dreading this moment of arrival, kicking and screaming internally of reaching the end, dragging my tires in avoidance, but eventually I reached it after a cruisey 140K day in a dress. Usually I am disappointed if I have high expectations of how something will feel. The Sahara Desert reminded me that it’s okay to have them, to stay excited, to know there’s magic out there in the world and don’t stop believing till you find it. I rolled up to the base of the dunes that day and just stood over my bike in disbelief. It took me 5 months to get there and my brain couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. It reminded me of when I saw the ocean for the first time. I cried! The French family and Basile joined me the next day and told me I was “so intense” for doing so, but maybe it’s more intense to not cry at an earths natural wonders? The day after pure, celebratory elation was followed by depression. Now what? The question I had been avoiding this whole time: Most epic adventure stories stop once the top of the mountain is reached. There’s no playbook for what to do next. What was I supposed to do now? Everybody along the way kept telling me the answer to my questions would be found in the desert. So I went looking for it. I climbed the Dunes, watched camels and scarab beetles make their tracks along the grains, I layed in the windy silence (often broken by a quad with a tourist on it going by) and allowed all these challenging, nameless feelings pass through me, opening my eyes and while being sad simultaneously being awed at the way the clouds cast shadows onto the sand dunes, the way the sand changed colours from light yellow to almost red depending on the time of the day, and of course, like a grand cheers to my journey, when I was there it poured rain and thunder boomed through the dunes, the sand soaking up the water like a camels hump saving it for later. 

I found the desert really inspiring, i learned so much. Fun fact: Camels are empathetic creatures that actually cry. I learned this as I stroked the streak of one and couldn’t believe it when tears started welling in its deep black eyes. “What is happening?!” I asked it’s master, “He cries becahse you show him kindness.” He told me but I wasn’t sure if it was true or the Camel was just overworked. I could have stayed forever. So much open space to feel, so much interesting biology and ecosystems and creatures and colours and the meeting point of cultures such as nomads from Mali and the Algerian border across a mountain range, heavily patrolled on both sides for drug trafficking. 

One plan i had was to join Kloe and Echnico (the French couple I cycled across Sardenia with), on their trip down to Senegal. As the date got approached for our meet up in Agidir, (on the other side of the country), I was feeling really, fricken, tired. Tired of being around people and moving to other peoples rhythms, tired of the desert and the max preparedness you must keep to “survive”(especially during Ramadan, which everyone assured me would be no problem but I was often rural and it was challenging to find food and water sometimes) and just plain old, no need to explain, tired.

I spent my last night camping at Mezouga lake with my French family. Ah! The French family! I haven’t introduced them to you yet. Sylvan, Marie, the parents, and their sons Anouk who is 15 and Adonis who is 12. Travelling for year as a family on their bikes and if I remember correctly, the 5th time they’ve done it. They are silly, and sweet, and on our first day riding together we stopped for a picnic together…and then the nexy day, and the next day, and one after that… you get the picture. I matched their rhythm, slowed down more in the day and earlier night, we shared all our meals together and the road was often spent side by side chatting. I felt safe and welcomed as their 5th child. They also taught me a lot about love, how family can be and feel, and that it’s yours to create. I thought it was really cool how they made decisions together, everyone voicing their needs and what they can do to accommodate. (Like how one person wants to windsurf, the other person wants to bike less hills.) Alore, let’s not forget to mention my French was used and improved, having to have a conversation in French while listening to music while biking up the biggest mountain yet… not easy. I spent almost my entire time in Morocco with these people, and the adventure feels defined by them as much as anything else. We split apart, and basil and I took some sections together, and then Basil split off and I rode with the family, but I voiced that it was my dream to be in the Sahara all together and everybody worked to make my dream come true.

On our last night it poured rain and we all crawled into the vestibule of the family’s large tent to eat dinner. Laughter, cards, but I felt sad, I shared in the best French I could how I was feeling so directionless, so unsure, so depleted, and most all frustrated with myself for my indecision, the family at one point calling me a living round a bout, and I by this point i was getting dizzy. The beautiful part was how they all listened, held space for my big feelings, asked me questions like

 “what do you want more of?”

“What do you want less of?”

“Where do you feel the most like yourself?”

“What makes you dream?” 

My 12 year old bestie Adonis said it’s like grocery shopping, you can scan the isles forever but eventually you gotta buy something! Marie asked if she could give me a neck massage to help my body let go of the obvious stress i was holding. Sylvan told me gently that after travelling together for so long, he noticed that I let myself get down to 0 too often. “Like your phone! It’s always dead!” I felt very loved and cared for, heard and In the morning we said goodbye under the shy sun, and as I rode through the desert town, it started pouring a thick rain that soaked through my clothes and brought me finally a release of tears. I decided then and there I just needed to make decisions and take note of how they feel as I went along the next part. The next day I got on a bus to Agidir to cross over to the other side of the country. I decided not to go to Senegal, which broke my heart a little, I love travelling with them and it felt like a really special opportunity to be invited along and delve deeper into Africa. It felt so good to be together again, see familiar faces, and to be by the sea once again. On the day we parted ways I said I was going back to Tafedna, where I ended up last time I needed restoration. “But there isn’t anything there.” Echinco said, trying hard to convince me to change my mind. “Exactly.” I said. Kloe gifted me a card to read on Christmas when we parted ways the last time, in it was a coin to flip after she watched me struggle so often with indecision. It felt cool to not need the coin this time. I knew what I needed and even if it was hard to say no to other way cooler things, I just knew I didn’t have it in me for more intensity, including the heat. (May is the hottest month in Senegal). 

The map of what I cycled in Morocco looked something like this (not sure if this helps paint a picture really, I stole them from their Polar Steps, cool platform to see visually what your route was, freaks me out that it tracks you though): 

I feel I made the right call for myself in that moment. Cycling through Portugal has made me feel really strong, proud, and most of all confident! I am cycling long distances, wild camping, and putting into practice all that I learned in the last year and from how other people do it. I am meeting a lot of people, especially hikers making pilgrimages paralleling the coast of Portugal. When I tell them what I’ve done, they are amazed and help make me feel amazed too. I still feel too “in it” to see this trip beyond whats right in front of me. I I will say I meet a lot of people who tell me STILL that I can’t solo bike in Morocco. Despite, DOING IT? So now I feel extra passionate about sharing (and I promise I will share more- this is really just a drop in the ocean of my time since February.) 

A lot of people are asking me, what´s next? Where will I live? Where will I work? What do I want and why don´t I know what I want? I have been spending too much of my trip the last while distracted by these swirling thoughts around my brain.  I am trying to ride the waves of unknowingness best I can. Taking notes from this journey that it´s going to be okay, and it´s going to work out. I know the answer to all my questions won´t fall and plunk me on the forehead like a raindrop as I ride my bike. I am going to have to come home and just try. Or…keep travelling. 😹🫣🤭