Now that we’re back in Spain and hopefully on our way to Ireland in a few days, I guess I should write something about the rest of our time in Morocco. In no exact order, because I can’t remember now, here are some of the main things we did.
Todra Gorge is a highlight even if they have sort of commercialized the best part of it because it is actually a through road to high elevation areas. When we got there, we took a 10k hike that at first we thought was new, but when we got around the backside to the Amazigh (Berber) cave dwellings, we remembered that we’d done it several years ago! And there are plenty of nomadic Berbers living in the area. What a different life. Can you imagine living in one of these holes in the rock?
We wanted to do our first via ferrata with the gear we’d purchased and this was a good one to start with here at the gorge. We hired a guide Mohamid to give us some pointers and make sure we didn’t hurt ourselves. We were quite nervous and in Moroccan fashion, he was late showing up but once we got started, it felt easy and we weren’t scared. He was a nice guy.
We’ve met many, very kind people in Morocco and one evening as we pulled in to a wild campspot, we met Banni and her family. She invited us over to her prayer rug and table for tea and we watched the sun coming down to the horizon and talked and then we showed them our camper and parted ways with good memories.
After exploring the gorge we climbed up & up to the residual snowline to explore the Akhiam Cave. It’s a combo hike, waterfall, cave and beautiful rock formation area with dramatic scenery.
We thought we would just stay at that elevation of 10,000ft for the night on a lovely shelf at Tizi Ouaro until a local on a motorcycle kindly stopped and said it would likely get windy and uncomfortable up there so why not come down lower. We heeded his advice and took the switchbacks down and had a restful night.
That brought us down to the Dade’s Gorge, another beautiful area. We pulled in to a campground right on the river where I saw some packrafts on their listing. First, we lost a day because we felt ill after eating some salmon out of freezer that must not have frozen in time. Then, the river was running so fast and so brown that we didn’t feel comfortable taking our rafts down it. And there are no licensed guides doing it. So a big disappointment.
We moved down the gorge to the Monkey Paw mountains and loved hiked around there among those cool rock formations. It really did remind us of Utah.
I was really looking forward to getting to the city of Ouarzazate. On the way down to it, we stopped at the Noor 3 Solar photovoltaic power plant. It makes a crazy light halo around it and is interesting to get up close to. No tours possible though.
We found out that some cruising friends Val & Stan, who we sailed the Indonesia rally with were actually going to be there that night! We knew we were all traveling Morocco at the same time but it seemed unlikely our paths would cross until they actually did! We had a nice evening together which made our stay.
My Lonely Planet book made Ouarzazate sound nice and we were cautiously excited to visit Atlas Studios. They made a lot of movies there supposedly, but it seems like they were all last century. We had a bit of a bomb of a day visiting the studios where the best thing about it was this picture that says Atlas Studios and then we carried on to the second bomb of the day, Ait Benhaddou.
It is an historic ksar filled with tourist buses, tourist tat and cats. We just weren’t in the mood for the tourist bus thing. Morocco loves it’s cats. They’re a part of Islamic religion as the prophet Muhammed was fond of them. It’s really fun to take pictures of them as we moved around the country.
We really wanted to get up into the High Atlas and do some hiking. On Jon’s 50th birthday, we climbed Mt Toubkal and I thought this time maybe we could do the 4 day backpack around it instead. So we headed up to the mountain town of Imlil where this time all the apple trees were blossoming and last time all the apples were being harvested. We quickly learned that it was too early in the season for the circuit, too much snow and no one was doing it. We didn’t care to do the summit again because now you are required to have a guide and while we needed one to do Huayna Potosi at 20k feet, we don’t need one for Toubkal! The first night in Imlil, we got about 4 inches of snow which made for a nice day hike up Mt Talamrout.
The next day, we set out hiking in to the Berber village of Tizi Oussem for an overnight. At first the trail was pretty good, going up over the pass from Imlil and into the snowscape again to a waterfall. Then the fog moved in and we still had miles to go. Then the river was too high to continue on the trail we were going on and we needed to move up to a higher trail, all with poor visibility. Then the trail we were supposed to take to get to the village wasn’t there. So we ended up hiking over 16 miles before reaching our Berber village. A traditional Berber village sounds more intriguing than it is. They don’t have heat, and there are no luxuries at all whatsoever. We bundled up in blankets, were fed very well by a lovely Berber woman and we went to bed to the sound of competing mosques call to prayer. I looked up the words to understand better what is being said at that annoying pre-dawn call to prayer. What they are saying is “prayer is better than sleep”. Depends on who you ask I guess. I don’t mind it during the day but I’m not in love with being awakened in the night.
It was great to get up and get moving in the morning and be outside rather than under a heap of blankets. After a nice breakfast to warm up, we hit the trail back and went a different way so it was a shorter day. Then we headed to Marrakesh.
We stayed in a beautiful flower filled campground outside the city and took a cab in to spend the day. We visited museums, walked all through the city parks, several of the medinas, we got coffee at the famous coffeeshop, had a rooftop lunch, got tricked in to visiting the tannery even though we didn’t want to, took lots of candid pics of the things you see in the medina and then topped it off with the best food we had in all of Morocco at a nice rooftop restaurant Casa Lalla. We were exhausted when we got back to the truck but happy that we’d had a most successful day revisiting Marrakesh.
It’s hard to believe that these 2 disgusting steps, make this finished product. The main ingredient, pigeon shit! Look it up!
We’ve had some night wild campspots in Morocco and this was one of them. Two domed hills, set way back from the road, definitely old cave living areas. Beautiful pink hills. We took a nice walk here.
We also explored an interesting area called Paradise Valley. It had some nice hiking and an impressive waterfall. We liked our campsite and one morning decided to set out on a trail that wasn’t really a trail at all and so we made our own trail for several hours with a dog for company. We got out unscathed and affirmed that Organic Maps app isn’t up to date in Morocco, along with satellite imagery.
We visited the town of Taroudant on the way to the coast near Agadir. It has a long fortified wall and pretty palms. We took a bike tour here with Thami. He showed us his authentic, somewhat gritty town and we could use the bikes to ride back and forth to our truck which was on the outskirts. This town didn’t knock our socks off but it was nice to meet Thami.
This Spring has offered incredible wildflowers. The fields of poppies and yellow flowers are nothing like we’ve seen before.
We moved to the coast and started looking for beaches. Some were better than others and we often had to look out to sea to avoid seeing trash, especially plastic bags. It really does seem that wherever humans are, the landscape suffers. And wherever they aren’t, it can be so pretty. There is practically no stone unturned in so much of the world, and Morocco is no exception. Even so, we enjoyed some sand between our toes.
In the coastal village of Moulay Bousselham, we took a morning birdwatching boat tour. It was something to do and a way to get out onto the lagoon and we saw some stilts, plovers, sanderlings, shags and spoonbills.
When we would crave the hills, we would head back up into them. We stayed couple of days at an eco lodge that had plenty of animals and some pretty views.
The last town we stopped in before crossing back to Spain was the nice village of Asilah. It had an artsy and well cared for feel. It’s surprising how it can vary one town to the next.
You can get some old world feeling scenes in Morocco and some just plain funny ones. The most picturesque might be this kind of scene
The funniest could be this one:
We had a really nice time in Morocco. While we didn’t have as many “10” days as we often hope for, and it was hard to find truly untouched spaces, we felt like we lived a lot and learned a lot. It is a European winter haven and an overlander’s sand driving hub. It feels really lived in with low key tourism. You can get tired of tagines because there isn’t much variety in them, you can get fatigued on seeing stray cats and dogs but then you can get to talking with someone and feel a real sense of genuine empathy. If we spoke French, our experience would be richer. It is good to see how others live with happiness and purpose in a completely different landscape to what we know. And they welcomed us in with big hellos and a hand over their heart. It felt good.
Nobody works harder in Morocco than the mule and burro. Ahead of all this greenery, there is a burro pulling it. Their hee haw is the signature call here. It tops the call to prayer even!
Getting to Morocco was easy. The ferry back to Spain took more than 12 hours and then huge traffic jams to get to a campspot. Who knows why? We were exhausted. We got ourselves organized yesterday, loaded up on all the lettuce we were going through withdrawals without, got our dental cleanings and headed into to the mountains via Ronda. And then today, we did a very long bike ride on the Via Verde. While putting the bikes away, Jon found we have a suspension problem.
So now we have 4 days to get that fixed, get the new tires for the truck that are waiting for us and then drive all the way to Bilboa, Spain to get the ferry to Ireland. It certainly won’t be stress free. I sure hope we can make it. I need a shamrock to put here for good luck.