travellingbennetts

Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. This time not alone, but on the Compass Expeditions Spain Portugal and Morocco (SPAM) tour. A new beginning in our riding adventures. Well, we’d just finished riding in Portugal and Spain, but not in the same places we were going and we definitely hadn’t been near to Morocco, so close enough to a new beginning to claim it.

Our desire to lie down all day after our 5,000km European riding entree certainly interfered with the Lisbon sight-seeing motivation. Regardless, we forgot the Porto HOHO experience and dragged ourselves onto a HOHO bus with the plan to see the Museu da Agua, also known as the Museum of Water for the Portuguese speaking beginner. Being highly experienced subway people, it was for once easy to get to HOHO Stop No.1 at the huge Marques De Pombal round-about, and even easier to try to get on the wrong bus. For some reason the museum closed for siesta, and our HOHO was going to arrive at siesta time. Just have staggered lunch breaks people, please, but we were forced to change HOHOs to go and see the famous Torre de Belem fort at the mouth of the Tagus River instead.

It was a Saturday, so we weren’t alone out at the fort. Motivation further waned in the heat, and after a bit of sight-seeing and lunch we went back to the HOHO to HO again. Loads of HOHO’s swarmed through, but none were ours. A feature of HOHO’s is that when they pull up, 99 people will crowd on, but only 1 will actually have a ticket for that HOHO line, so mass confusion is the norm.

45 sweaty minutes later, our HOHO arrived, and 97 people pushed in front of us before the driver made them understand they were on the wrong one and had to get off. We’d completely lost faith in the HOHO concept by now, so when the stop near our subway station appeared, we H’dO and scarpered back to the hotel.

That night we decided a seafood restaurant was the go, and according to the google there seemed to be one just down the road. The usual pre-dinners to soak up the time until dinner, and off we went. Yes there was a seafood restaurant. Yes we could get a table if we waited a few minutes outside. While waiting, we checked out the display of seafood in the window. It is hard to describe the shock and awe experience when we looked. It was like we and everyone lived in tiny apartments all our lives, aircraft, ships, and the internet didn’t exist, and we didn’t realise that things like the Palace of Versailles existed. Then one day, we looked through a window and saw it. First response is – that’s not possible. Second response is – I want one.

In we went. The menu was in €/kg, and one giant prawn was about 2 kg. OK, go the medium sized (think small crayfish) Tiger prawns. I’m going to be a pig, and I’ll have 4 please. Right up there with the best prawns ever eaten, and certainly the most enormous. With the couple of days off in Lisbon completed and a catch-up with mates Peter and Michele at the Maxime burlesque show, we made a change in hotel from up near a laundry to nowhere near a laundry, and prepared for the road again on Day 1.

Day 1 involved meeting the crew which is always a highlight. Here goes:

• Julia. Ride Leader. R1250GS. A legend rider. Did the 2018 BMW Trophy and has done the Finke. Wants to do Dakar. I want to get up the front of the A380. Similar dreams.
• Juan. Support vehicle driver. We have form with Juan having spent 101 days with him in South America. Our motto, similar to Don Smallgoods – Is Juan, is good.
• João. MotoXplorer support. Looks after the bikes. Speaks Portuguese because he is Portuguese. A top bloke, good fun, and zero motorcycle issues.
• John and Julie. Sydney. R1300GS.
• Greg and Brenda. Gippsland. F850GS.
• Peter and Michele. Melbourne. R1300GS.
• Pamalee. Gippsland. In the support vehicle with Juan and often a pillion.
• Doug. Gippsland. F850GS.
• Dave. Gold Coast. F750GS.

And the BMWMCQ members in the group:

• Mark. Brisbane. R1250GS.
• Huw and Liezel. Brisbane. R1300GS.
• Gareth. Brisbane. F750GS, permanently stuck in Dynamic mode.
• Nic. Brisbane. R1250GS.
• Margreth. Brisbane. F750GS.
• William. Brisbane. R1300GS.
• Ray. Brisbane. R1250GSA.
• Cindy, Brisbane. F750GS. Same one that did the pre-tour but with a better windscreen.
• Duncan. Brisbane. Same old F850 GS.

Day 1 also involved heading out to MotoXplorer to get the bikes and bring them back to the hotel, achieved without anyone heading off into the Lisbon suburbs or breaking down. The ramp down into the hotel car park was very steep and therefore interesting, but no disasters just yet. That evening we headed off up the road for the welcome dinner to start the group bonding process.

WhatsApp has changed tours. In the olden days we’d go out to dinner, and at some point during the drinking of copious quantities of wine the ride leader would tell us what time breakfast was, what time we should have our bags at the truck, and what time the briefing would be for the next day. We would have absolutely no recollection of any of that upon waking, and so would wander about trying to find the ride leader or any member of hotel staff who knew what the bloody hell was going on. Now Julia could just send us a WhatsApp message with all the details, and we could read it whenever we’d realised we’d completely forgotten what the bloody hell was going on, usually every hour or so.

Day 2 was the real day 1. Out of Lisbon, the target was Sagres, at the very southwestern corner of Portugal. More importantly, Sagres is the big local beer brand. Synergy at its most synergistic. The leaving time was early – 8:30am in the Iberian region is a time rarely seen by 90% of the populous, so calm traffic, even the tradies are still abed. Across the big 25^th April bridge over the Tagus River, we’d been pre-warned about staying in the right lane as the left and ½ the middle lane were that metal mesh, actually illegal for motorcycles because they would certainly die.

Across the peninsula and into Setubal, to general surprise we were getting on a ferry. To where? Did I mis-hear at the briefing? Are we going to Morocco now? No as it turned out, just across to the Peninsula De Troia so we could continue riding down the coast and admire the deep sandy terrain and continually ask ourselves whether it would be beyond stupid to ride in it. Yes it would be, but somehow still tempting.

We pulled in for lunch at some Roman Ruins, which were closed but didn’t seem terribly interesting anyway. The lunch protocol was picnic, with food and drinks prepared by those who couldn’t withstand the cold stares from others if they didn’t pitch in. We’d done this all the way through Africa and rarely in South America, so were expert at looking like we were doing important stuff but actually doing the easy jobs like taking the jamon slices out of the pack, putting them on a plate, and wasting time by poking them with a fork “for presentation”. Another way of avoiding work at this site was to focus on the cork trees, which are fascinating. Corks are made from the thick bark of the tree, which is actually a species of oak. The cork producers strip the bark off the tree, but mainly just the trunk so it doesn’t die. They then seem to paint some protecting stuff on, and the tree re-grows the bark.

A thought had been that crashing into a cork tree would result in no damage to person or conveyance, as long as they hit the bit that hadn’t been harvested, but the bark is actually quite tough and hard. Will keep attention on the road in future even when riding through cork forests. Lunch and washing up completed by the non-Duncan people, we were back on the road and trundling into Sagres. The arrival at the hotel was a bit confusing but we were waved into a space for 15½ motorcycles, with some maneuvering required to fit our 15 motorcycles in.

Into the excellent rooms, the tradition of a few pre-dinners and then dinner was stressed to the max. We gathered en-masse at 6pm in the café/bar-ish thingo under the hotel, which had Sagres beer, but no Sangria as per the focus group No.1 best ever drink. The staff at the café/bar-ish thingo said no to the focus group, but next door is practically the Sangria capital of the planet Earth. So off we went next door. Yes we can do Sangria they said, but only if you have a dining reservation and we can only supply by the megalitre. Hummm. Tempted by the volumes, but we are eating elsewhere. No worries they said, the café/bar-ish thingo next door does Sangrias. Betting on getting a Sangria fell away to 50:1, but we went back to the café/bar-ish thingo anyway due to lack of options. A weird phenomenon was observed in the huge queue to the counter – all customers except us were ordering coffee and cake. It’s 6:30pm. You’re drinking/eating coffee and cake. Are you finishing up and heading to bed, or is 6:30pm like morning tea-time in this part of the world? Turned out to be the latter, which fires up the angry people who have to get up before 11am. Anyway, some Sagres beers consumed as a consolation prize, it was off to dinner at a reasonable hour, i.e. before midnight.

Up way before coffee and cake on Day 3, we hit a serious landmark in Europe, the Sagres Fortress which is on a cliff peninsular sticking out toward South America. Prince Henry the Navigator set up a school for navigation in the fortress in the 1500’s, and although modern historians suggest this might be nonsense, he was certainly a force in kicking off the golden age of exploration. Regardless, it is a stark place surrounded by high cliffs dropping directly into the North Atlantic, and very impressive.

An interesting phenomenon out on the Sagres peninsula was fishermen. We’d queued up for the fortress to open, but these people somehow get through and line the cliffs. We are probably talking 40m from the cliff edge down to the water, and I’m being conservative for once, so they’d want to be well hooked and be those fish that just give up when hooked. Getting onto a giant trevally which is like pulling up a safe full of bullion, but with an outboard motor, would be unpleasant.

Off to São Marcos da Serra for lunch via some very nice roads but with some serious technical challenge in the steep cobbled streets of some village where we had to take a diversion. São Marcos da Serra had a creek for some off-road skills practice William took advantage of on the R1300GS, but no amount of hinting could convince Julia to show us her GS Trophy/Finke skills even though we could see she really really wanted to. Another picnic out of the support vehicle, again too much carbs, trans fats, and sugars, I decided at that point to start taking it very easy by cutting down on the cucumber. The target for the day was Tavira, still in Portugal, but only just.

Tavira was good, very good. But we had more important things to do than immerse ourselves in the huge pool, it was off to find an ATM to prepare to change Euros over to Moroccan Dirhams the day after next. Some random card insertion and failure interspersed with more random card insertion and success at several banks, then off to find AA batteries. There was a bit of a queue in the supermarket so I could prep myself by practising Posso comprar algumas pilhas AA, por favor? That fell apart after I forgot all those words except AA and even used merci rather than por favor in the panic, but luckily they were behind the counter and easily pointed at with a supporting chorus of the go-to word obrigado. With Cindy calling me on the phone from outside the supermarket to tell me she couldn’t find the supermarket; we decided we needed a tapas dinner pride reset with a gin tonic and Sagres beer.

Day 4. End of Portugal. West-east in Portugal is about 140km across as the crow flies so the end was always nigh, even at the start. A mere 30km and we were across the subtly signed border, and into Spain. We then headed north just to slow things down a bit, continuing east would have had us at the destination a bit early. Luckily for some, the route was through the famous (for some) Iberian Pyrite Belt, emotions ran high (for some) as we pulled into Tharsis, home of one of the oldest mines on earth.

Fully coffee’d, we were back on the road and riding through the Minas de Riotinto, everyone has heard of Rio Tinto, unfortunately the Red River due to all the acid mine drainage from the Iberian pyrite. A brief stop at El Campillo where I suddenly remembered that I needed to buy a new camp pillow when we got home, and we got to Minas del Castillo de las Guardas for a sweaty picnic lunch. Those who assume I’m remembering these names because of my Spanish geography skills are not terribly correct, these days photos record exactly where they were taken so a bit of copy-paste supports the progress of the journey. Back on topic, the Minas had been shut down for a long time, and they had developed a park on the site, the general theme of which was confusing. Llama and guanaco roamed on the fenced-off utterly barren wasteland in harmony with mammoths, dinosaurs, and disturbingly marine dinosaurs who would have really been struggling out in the sun on the barren ground.

The target for the day was Arcos de la Frontera, once the frontier of the Spanish battle against the Moors. A few epic winding roads later, we pulled into Hacienda El Santiscal. Don’t plug that into the googs because you’ll get Hacienda El Santiscal Adults Only. Sounds exciting, and it was. The 15^th century farmhouse stay kicked off with a meeting in the courtyard. We had a welcome drink, the staff were introduced, and we got our room keys. We thought our room was epic. Then we saw Peter and Michele’s. Their library and sitting room was bigger than most Australian houses. We tried to see them to ask if they wanted to head down for a drink but their staff stonewalled us because we didn’t have an appointment – “Señor Peter is not seeing scum today, sir”. So we went to the pool. The group then managed to run the bar out of gin tonics, luckily there was plenty of back-up and a great night was had – our last ever in Europe, until we return to Europe.

Day 5 and as we’d already done absolutely all of Portugal and Spain, it was time for Morocco. Simple plan, ride from Arcos de la Frontiera to Algeciras. Struggling to remember any of those words, but Julia knew what was happening, so we managed to get to the port nice and early. Typical ferry experience – now thinking how many Cindy and I have had – so no coffee van supporting the queue. But we managed to get through immigration with a modicum of delay and sweating, and then onto the ferry.

The excitement of the ferry ride and what lay beyond in Morocco will unfortunately have to wait for the next instalment. I can’t wait.