My 2021 Year - Page one index
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My 2021 Year Highlights
2020 ended as we got tested for covid-19 and then left for Morocco. So, my 2021 Started out in Morocco on New Year’s Day. Many things were closed, but it just meant there were fewer tourists. A lot fewer. In fact we those of us who were there, when we saw each other, we usually stopped and talked. Even along the roadside. It was a bizarre situation in Morocco. Later in April we had our big family camp out in Moab. Betsey finally got her college graduation gift / trip when Janice, Betsey and I went to Turkey and Egypt. The European, Asian, AFrica Trip.
The rest of the story: about an hour after that picture above showing the switchback was taken, I experienced a little mishap on my motorcycle. A combination of poor packing, the result of not having the paniers or saddlebags on my motorcycle, along with unusual slope and curve and just a mistake on my part, cause me to go down hard. I was a little concussed and disoriented, so it made for an exciting remainder of the day. Things worked out well however. Zack and Ben took very good care of me and we stayed in a very beautiful hotel and later had a nice walk through the Dades. We slowed down a little bit and smelled the roses. Zack got a little too stressed out, but it all worked out well.
First Adventure of 2021
Morocco, North Africa
Because it was open for tourism and it was on my list of cool places to motorcycle ride, we changed our plans from Patagonia and spent New Year’s day in Marrakesh Morocco. With maps and a loose itinerary we took off southeast towards this the hard desert. I could never have imagined the adventure we were going to have for the next two weeks. We ended up never going farther north than Casablanca, so will have to go back and visit northern Morocco next time. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip…
So many highlights, but here is one of the last. Quick tour of Casablanca with a dinner at a nice French restaurant, the Le Gatsby Café & Restaurant, facing the Mosque. The Tuna shown above was amazing and a nice change of pace. We did not know when driving to Casablanca, but all restaurants had been closed for months and we got there the day they opened up again. We flew out of Casablanca the next morning.
Here we are looking out over the Saharan desert sand dunes.
One surprising highlight: The King Hassan II Mosque. Built on a rocky outcrop of reclaimed land — in response to Hassan II’s translation of the Koranic verse that proclaims God’s throne was built upon water — the mosque is a truly marvelous piece of architecture. It can accommodate 25,000 worshipers inside and 80,000 more outside. At the time it cost more than $750 million, all of it paid by public money. It took 6 years and more than 6,000 craftsmen to build. They used marble from Agadir, cedar wood from the Middle Atlas, and granite from Tafraoute; Venetian glass was the only imported material. The mosque is not only one of the world’s largest, it’s also one of the world’s most high-tech, with heated flooring, a retractable roof, a section of clear-glass flooring — for worshipers to see God’s water below — and even a laser light atop its 210m-high (690-ft.) minaret, pointing the way to Mecca each night. There’s also an ablutions hall with more than 40 fountains and two public hammams.
December 30 and 31st, 2020
After getting our covid-19 negative test results, we fly from SLC to Atlanta, then to Paris, then to Marrakesh. We arrived in Marrakesh where our kind friend, who arranged for our motorcycles, picked us up at the airport. We drove straight away to inspect the MotorCycles. They were not exactly what I wanted, but we decided regretfully, to go with them anyway and went to the hotel to pack and consolidate. We planned on the next day, driving around Marrakech with no luggage to get used the motorcycles and make sure they were in good condition. We survived day 1.
I spend some time looking for some good places to eat. Little did we know that most were closed and all required to stop serving at 8PM. We got lucky most days and took freeze dried food with us too. We brought half of it home.
Above: Above: Delta International Business class has really lost its allure during covid. Food was poor and over all service way down. Using covid as the excuse for everything is the new normal. The airport in Paris was cut to the bone too. Only one terminal was open. We we finally arrived in Marrakesh, it was all but deserted too. We saw very few non Moroccans while in country. It was a surprise when we did and the people we met were as surprised as we were. I don’t recall seeing another American.
Day 1- Jan 1, 2021 - Marrakech
Stayed at the Opera Plaza Hotel in the heart of Marrakesh. A tourist hotel with a restaurant; which was good, because most eating establishments were closed. We soon discovered many people were ok breaking the covid laws, except our hotel, and ate some good food we had delivered. We drove around and saw a few sights, then came back to the hotel to hire a cab so we did not get killed by the totally insane Moroccan drivers. They are the worst. We went to the main square, ate and packed to leave.
We brought extra cases to ship our motorcycle equipment home after the trip and had our friend store them. We had room for Bens Tagin and Zacks Berber rugs and all the stuff we carried on from the USA.
On the flight, in my guide book, I found this restaurant I really want to try in Marrakesh. We drove around forever in the confusing central city, with no street names and poor GPS connectivity, to find it, and even when we were only 20 yards from it, other vendors nearby said it didn’t exist. They wanted us to buy their food. It was sad when we entered. You could see it was a magnificent 3 story building with an indoor fountain and a place for a band. All of the furniture was stacked up and piled around. They were not in business. But as soon we entered a guy came up to us and wanted to show us the menu. we walked up to the top level with a great view, and before we knew it we had ordered a big meal to be delivered a few hours later to our hotel. The pictures from the restaurant here show a beautiful view over Marrakesh. It was such a shame that we could not eeat there, but delivery to the hotel worked out well. Even though the hotel did not let the person know what room we were in even though we alerted the front desk. I think this was the first sign of how aggressive everybody was for their piece of the tourist dollar. Everybody fighting everyone else for the rare tourist money. Sometimes it was by providing exceptional service and other times it was by very aggressive and annoying behavior. The food was really good.
On the flight in found this restaurant I really want to eat at in Marrakesh. We drove around forever to find it, and even when we were only 25 yards from it, other vendors nearby said it didn’t exist. They wanted us to buy their food. It was sad to go in, because it was a three level restaurant and entertainment establishment, and all of the furniture was stacked up. They were not in business. But as soon we entered a guy came up to us and wanted to show us the menu. Before we knew it we had ordered a big meal to be delivered a few hours later. The pictures from the restaurant here show a beautiful view over Marrakesh. It was such a shame that we could not eeat there, but delivery to the hotel worked out well. Even though the hotel did not let the person know what room we were in even though we alerted the front desk. I think this was the first sign of how aggressive everybody was for their piece of the tourist dollar. Everybody fighting everyone else for the rare tourist money. Sometimes it was by providing exceptional service and other times it was by very aggressive and annoying behavior. The food was really good.
Jan 2nd - Day 2 - From Marrakech to Ouarzazate
From the Opera Plaza Hotel, we headed south toward Ouarzazate and our first Kasbah. Zack decided our theme song. We heard it at least 500 times. And even listened to every re-mix, and re-make. We looked for other theme songs after a while, but never really tired of hearing it 10-20 times a day and no others really ever captured the spirit of Rock the Kasbah. We also spend the next two weeks trying to verify the real lyrics, which we never really agreed on.
Mandatory breakfast items include...
The hotel breakfast buffet really spoiled us. We learned that olives and dates are a part of every meal; breakfast, lunch and dinner. And the Moroccan version of Newtella, is really good.
Many pictures above from the time we left Marrakesh until we arrived in Quartzsite. We found a nice place for lunch along the way and of course had a Tagin meal. We weren’t sure if we were eating chicken, lamb, kitty cat, or any other meat substance. But it was good.
Our first day traveling on the Motorcycles we almost learned a a valuable lesson about fuel and daylight. We learned you never have quite enough of either. So, the first day, we took our time and ran out of daylight and almost fuel near Aït Benhaddou, one of the places I really wanted to spend some time visiting. Because we were fearful about finding gasoline and And our hotel and didn’t want to travel at night, we continued on without really stopping for more than a photo. So we continued on and found lodging in Ouarzazate. The next day, we back tracked to go see Aït Benhaddou. It made for a long day headed to wards the Dadès Gorges; a series of rugged wadi gorges carved out by the Dadès River in Morocco. A long first day, Made for a tiring second day that turned out to be very eventful.
Ait Benhaddou
Aït Benhaddou is a historic ighrem or ksar along the former caravan route between the Sahara and Marrakech in present-day Morocco. It is considered a great example of Moroccan earthen clay architecture and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. Many movies have been filmed here. Most recent and most popular would be game of thrones. But others include the Jewel of the Nile, the last temptation of Christ, the money, gladiator, and many others. Consult Wikipedia.
We arrived to visit Ait Benhaddou early in the morning to take a closer look. We really had no time to cross over the river and go up inside, but it is a spectacular site. One enterprising store owner got Zack’s attention and asked him if he would act as his secretary and write a postcard to a friend of his. We still don’t know if it was a ploy to get us to stop and look at his shop or if he genuinely needed someone who could write English and would allow this old gentleman to dictate a brief letter. In any case it was pretty funny. We looked around and took pictures and headed onto the Dade’s. where we found a really nice restaurant at the top of the switchbacks. The plan was to continue on word and upward into the Atlas Mountains which we were unsure how far we could go and we had no plans for a hotel. But as luck would have it our plans changed. This is my chance to tell my side of the story. After a nice leisurely dinner we continued on our way. I was traveling on a Honda trans alps 650. The plan was to have side bags on the back or paneers. But that is not how the motorcycle showed up. Not wanting to delay another day, we went ahead and took them and instead of having things at a lower center of gravity on the rear of the motorcycle my items just went up. So we were traveling through these narrow winding roads, and it one point in time I was being tailgated by a little pickup truck, so I slowed down to let him pass and then sped up a little bit to try to close the distance between me and Ben. I was still getting used to my motorcycle and in one instance, as I was slowing down on a curve, which was going down into the right, instead of shifting into second gear, I pushed the gear into first. I knew instantly what happened based on the words I uttered. as heard on my go pro, my rear end just popped out from underneath me and I hit the ground and skidded down the road a bit. I was trapped under my motorcycle and while I never lost consciousness, not for an instant, I was disoriented and according to Ben and Zach I was very disoriented. I just could not believe I had that happened to me. And I was trying to understand why and how it occurred. In any case bed and Zach freaked out. I rode the motorcycle down to a safe spot where we sat for a while and Zachary raced off to find cell phone service and then he did rudimentary concussion protocols for me. It was finally decided, and I was in agreement to go back down the valley to a hotel. Zach arranged for a cab for me and then shuttled the motorcycles down. We actually stayed in a very nice hotel and had very good food so it all worked out fine. Only about $200 damage to my motorcycle and no long term permanent damage to me.
we had a good nights rest at the Babylon hotel in Dade’s, and a fantastic breakfast. Because the roads were too icy we couldn’t go back along the path we were on the day before, and we still wanted to see the Dade’s canyons, so Zach arrange for a cab and we took a long ride up the same road we were on the night before. It was a good call, because it was slightly below freezing and the shadows on the road meant for potentially icy conditions. We came back, impact, and headed south for warmer weather.