(To follow the full Morocco trip, start at
TRAVEL: Morocco 1)
Today was a lovely day in Morocco, right up until the end. I’ll let you know when I get there.
We rose after a night in the pitch black tent and went to meet our guide by the fire at 6:30. Each of us wore bulky wool patterned robes with hoods for warmth. After a brief conversation over mint tea we mounted the camels in the pre-dawn. I was at the back, so I tried to take as many pictures as I could. I’m not usually one to do such a thing, but I’ve been warming up to it. We traveled the same route and stopped at the same hill as before. Having been there for nearly three hours yesterday, it felt familiar. Well, as familiar as a dune can be.
GoPros were set up to do time lapses and pictures and pictures and pictures were taken. We sat and waited, enjoying the cool sand and the wind hissing across it. Sunrise was like sunset, in that it was impossible to describe. After the wonder subsided, we had some fun making footprints and messing with the time lapse with little poses – Ok that last one was mostly me.
After cameling back, we headed to breakfast in the big dining tent we were in for dinner the night before. We had fried bread with three different jams (strawberry, fig and apricot), an apple, kiwi, banana and avocado (!?) fruit salad, olives, and a tajine filled with eggs on top of a savory tomato mixture. Before and after the meal, we spoke with Mohamed about how to say different things in Berber (the native language of the Africans who lived there before the Arabs and French/Spanish showed up). The word for thank you was the only one that stuck - Ten-mare’t – though we certainly had fun trying some of the others.
The meal sufficiently drained my companions, who went to take naps, while I finished up my writing from yesterday and enjoyed some time in the shade. I took a shower and sprayed water all over the bathroom, again, because of my tall water-reflective body, my being blind while showering, and the fact these places don’t have shower curtains.
When the gang woke up, we chilled, read and drummed a bit until around 11:30, when we said goodbye to the crew and hopped in the 4x4 to return to the car. While chatting with the driver, we learned a few things:
1.) The huts we stayed in, with the brown straw roofs and camel/goat hair fabric wrapped walls, are traditional Berber huts. Most of the camps we’ve seen are white and plastic. So really not traditional.
2.) The government recently declared that the tents around the outside must be taken down or the military will come in and remove them. Our driver mentioned that he had seen this happen just within the past few days to other camps.
3.) They get windstorms in the area and depending on the direction they can last from a day to over a week. The driver said you can’t see more than a meter in front of you and that we just missed one that came through last week.
We had four hours to cover that day so we got to it despite the fact that most of us were not feeling super great. I didn’t realize that the main road we were on eventually just ends in the desert, so we had to backtrack a bit before heading to the gorge.
Some observations from the road:
-In the southern section here in Moccoro there are far more goats than sheep, (and camels of course) and the clothing of the locals involves men with huge swaths of fabric wrapped mostly around their heads to combat the sand and weather
-The hotels like to put their names in 6 feet tall letters in front of their establishments
-Farmers carry these intense metal backhoes over their shoulders while on the road
-All the fossil stores love to use the nautilus as their symbol/mascot
-It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a mirage. Trippy.
-The oasis spaces often have people cleaning clothes in the aqueducts that run along the road
-Some palm trees have their tops chopped off. Not sure why
-Homes in the middle of nowhere have solar panels
-A butcher shop was hanging turkeys skinned all the way up to the tops of their heads
-A dust devil swirled around a moving car
-One story buildings had straight hairs of rebar sticking out from the concrete foundations. The remnants of a dream to build higher.
-There was a line of three different places advertising visiting an "underground canal" just off the road in the middle of the desert. It looked pretty sketchy so we didn’t stop
-We were passed by an ambulance/van that had little flashing lights and no siren
We ran into a lot of construction this time around. The first was in a town that looked like it was just getting built along with the road. Another led us down a dirt path next to the main road for a while. Must be convienent to make detours when it's flat everywhere.
Inside the car we had a couple minor incidents. I tried opening an orange in the backseat and ended up with juice just dripping from my fingers. The car reeked of it and my hands were sticky for an hour but at least people got some orange slices. The second incident involved the plastic bag containing the olives sprouting a leak while in Emily’s hands. Thinking fast, she stoppered up the leaky side and we all took turns hastily eating the rest of the olives so we could throw the bag away. We’ve had so many high stakes food situations this trip.
As we get closer to the gorge, we started to notice more tour buses and more white people. We had been flanked by two sets of mountains for a good part of the drive, black and pointy on our left and red, flat and majestic on the right. And the road was taking us closer and closer to the beautiful red ones. Sure enough, the winding path took us to a large town embedded in the red rock overlooking an incredibly lush valley. As we climbed, the view got more spectacular and the town turned into a city. The topmost scenic view of the side of the road was so full of tour buses that we couldn’t stop and it became clear why when we found the nearest turnoff. I cannot believe the number of wonderful things we’ve seen on this trip.
Our descent into the gorge began snaking back and forth through the streets of the city. We hit riverbed as the rusty rock walls closed in. The road followed the bed, raised only a few feet above it, and only had sporadic concrete nubs to stop you from driving right into then dry river. Droves of tours buses and merchants selling silks clogged the path. We even caught a few climbers and you could feel the pang of jealousy from Tym and Ellen from the front seats.
The gorge yawned out and after a few bends we came upon our hotel on the other side of the river - A castle built into the base of the cliffs. We took a narrow pass through the riverbed and a couple of tight switchbacks to the front door of the main restaurant/lobby. There we got (gasp) rosemary tea instead of mint and marveled at the gorge in patio seats.
Our rooms were down the side of the castle with impressive metal latched doors. The whole space was carved into the ground. A cave room with a cozy bed at the back. We dropped off our things and just…couldn’t believe what lucky lives we've had.
We hopped down to the gorge riverbed, which was literally just outside our front porch and went on a rocky walkabout. We took pictures and climbed rocks and hunted for shells and fossils. It was like being a kid again, except we worried about sunscreen, bad shoes, bathroom timing, being hydrated and if we’d be late for our dinner reservation.
We made that dinner reservation with time to spare, (along with healthy skin, feet and bowels because we are good adults) and found a seat inside so we could be warm and close to the wifi. The tables were tiled and the chairs were wooden and formidable. You had to lean to one side or another to fill it up properly, making us all feel a little like monarchs on thrones. The food was divine: spicy and black olives, bread with herbed olive oil, cumin lentil soup with a custom wooden spoon, an avocado, tomato, kiwi, green pepper, and pear salad, couscous with carrot, zucchini, and cabbage and a chocolate mouse topped with crushed almonds. Probably our favorite meal of the trip so far.
In the glow of yet another meal enjoyed and overeaten, we descended the stone steps around the castle to our individual cave rooms. I planned to get all ready for bed so that I could begin writing this before turning in, but unfortunately, upon taking out my contacts, I realized I left my glasses in the desert. I began mourning instantly and if it wasn’t for my wonderful wife I would have spiraled quickly. She helped me calm down and go through our things and once we were certain the glasses were gone, she managed to contact the company through texting on WhatsApp. They confirmed that the glasses were there and that they would be willing to send them with a bus driver to a point a half hour away from where we’re staying now. These people are the friggin’ best.
So I guess this is a new addition to what we’re doing tomorrow. Travel, am I right?
Today's Haiku
In the riverbed
surrounded by vast red walls
searching for fossils
Today's Workout
(exempt due to travel)
