Attacking the Atlas Mountains, Morocco

June 1997

I had previously toured Northern Morocco in 1993 - Kif Mountains, Fes and Tangiers and the amount of hassle was unbelievable. I rated it as the worst country I had ever visited. This time I was covering southern Morocco around the Atlas Mountains with "hiking" as the major activity.

Saturday May 24th

I met Steve Copping at Heathrow for the flight to Casablanca. We touched down in Tangiers to drop off and pick up passengers and flew on to Casablanca arriving after 11pm local time. They had built a train line into town since Steve had been there in 1980. He had had everything stolen on a train there, so it was not his favourite place. Changing money at 15 Dirhams to the £, we caught the train down the central station. There was supposedly an overnight train to Marrakech at 1am, but it didn't leave until after 3am. We had a boring wait at the station with nothing open. We shared a carriage with a Moroccan but could stretch out. It was a slow boring ride lasting over 5 hours (instead of about 3). We stopped in the middle of nowhere at dawn for an eternity.

Sunday May 25th

Arriving in Marrakech at 8.30am, the sun was blazing above us. We were carrying heavy backpacks and wanted to head further south as soon as possible. We walked from the train station to the central bus station along the wide French built Avenue Hassan II and Avenue Des Nations-Unies - about a mile. Three locals offered us hotels. We passed by the Hotel Farouk and checked it out. It seemed ok and we would use it later in the trip. At the bus station, we checked bus times to see where we could get to. Someone had recommended the town of Taroudannt inland from Agadir and a local encouraged us to board his bus "leaving immediately" for Inezgane where we could get a connection. It was the best offer. Of course, the bus didn't leave for another hour until it was full. The other scam was that you paid extra for the luggage to be stowed on the roof. We haggled over the price, since we hadn't been told this and got away with the original price of about £6 for a lengthy ride of 4 hours along the direct route of Imi n'Tanoute from Marrakech to Agadir. It is the fastest but least spectacular route which the majority of traffic takes up through the Tizi Maachou pass of 1700 metres. We slept much of the way. Arriving in the dusty administrative centre of Imi n'Tanoute in the middle of the afternoon, we had an hour's wait for another bus and sipped coffee in a street cafe watching street life. The bus ride lasted another hour across a dusty landscape.

Taroudannt is a provincial and easy going centre whose Chleuh Berber population have cornered the country's grocery trade. It is the modern (and traditional) capital (30,000 pop) of the fertile Souss plain. With its majestic red-ochre circuit of walls, Taroudannt is one of the most elegant towns in Morocco. It is a very friendly, laid back sort of place and an easy point to get to grips with Moroccan city life.

I was amazed to get off the bus and not be accosted by hustlers. We walked through the a wall entrance along an animated street of small tradesmen. Everyone seemed to be doing something - fixing mopeds, hauling produce etc. A policeman directed us to the Taroudannt Hotel on Place Assarag which had been recommended. We were not disappointed. A Taroudannt institution, it was run by a grand old French patronne up until her death in 1988. We were given a spacious ensuite room with hot showers on the first floor overlooking the cool patio garden. We had been travelling non stop for 24 hours.

Before it got dark, we wandered the streets and explored the walls. A open air restaurant in the square offered a decent meals of kebabs and salad. Our hotel sold beer and when we returned, the garden was full of local Arabs drinking dozens of ice cold "Stork" beer. But they stopped serving at 9pm and we only had time for a couple of rounds looking down on the scene beneath us. An old English colonial would drop by and moan how he had been coming for 30 years and that the place had gone to the dogs. It suited us just fine.

Monday May 26th

There was only one bus leaving for Asni at 5am but Steve wanted to sleep and I wanted to explore. I got around 6am and walked around the town as it came to life. I climbed the walls and found the tannery , located some distance from the deserted souks. Leather is cured in cattle urine or pigeon droppings and the smell can be horrendous. It turned out to be small and unimpressive (as opposed to the one in Fes which is spectacular). They not only treated sheep and cows but also silver foxes, raccoons and mountain cats, which I saw displayed. I purchased fresh battered Moroccan donuts before returning to get Steve for breakfast at a cafe, watching the busy street scenes. We checked out of the hotel and walked back to the bus station to try and find a "Grand Taxi" to take us to Asni via the spectacular Tizi n'Test pass. A couple of local boys made conversation and followed us, offering to find a taxi.

For the next half an hour we went through the ritual haggling scene. The first offers were £50 each to have our own taxi. We laughed that off and said we would wait for a Grand Taxi with other passengers. We found one. As time passed, the price came down. We wanted to visit the Tin Mal Mosque and get out to walk. The haggling went on and we settled at £10 each for the 2 hour drive. The drive was a spectacular rise up to 1600m in little over 30km. Throughout, there are stark, fabulous vistas of the peaks and occasionally, hundreds of feet below, a mountain valley or cluster of villages. Much of it is single track, winding around deadly corners with awesome drops below. We passed the Tin Mal mosque which had recently been rebuilt, surrounded by stack upon stack of pink Atlas mountains towering above it.. Built in 1154, it was a famous historical monument, but we only saw it from the car window. As we approached Ijoukak, where we intended to disembark, the driver ignored our signals and we drove on. He stopped the car at Ouirgane 20 km on, which is where he thought we wanted to be dropped. We attempted to explain that he had missed our stop. To be honest, we weren't that bothered. we asked him to drop us at Asni. He looked very pissed off.

When we were dropped off, he attempted to double the bill. We haggled and said it was only another 10km from where he intended to drop us and we settled on £2. The vista of snow capped mountains was stunning. Walking into the centre, a local took us to a truck going to Imlil. Asni had a bad reputation for hustlers, but we easily ignored the jewellery sellers and money changers. We sipped more mint tea/coffee as we waited for the truck to fill. A Berber pulled up on his mule looking very colourful but gave me a mouthfull when I attempted to take his picture.

We climbed onto the back of the truck with other locals for the climb up to Imlil which would be our base in the Atlas Mountains. The ride cost 20D each along a bumpy sandy/stony track along a fertile river valley of the Oued Rhirhaia with the mountains towering above us. A local young Berber girl had had her hands tattooed that day and she sat in the front with her hands hung out of the window attempting to dry them. Cotton wool covered the tattooed. It looked very strange. We were to see many women with tattooed hands, feet and even faces.

The air felt quite different in Imlil - silent and rarefied at 1740m and paths and streams headed off in all directions. There was only one dusty street with shops and cafes. We found the best hotel in town - the Hotel Etole Du Toubkal. For £5 each we got a modest room with a balcony looking up at a pink mountain. There was no electricity. There was a shared toilet and showers. Now that we were finally in the Atlas Mountains, we celebrated by watching the sun come down on the balcony and hit the duty free heavily. The showers were ice cold. When it got dark, we struggled around in the dark and found a cafe which served us 'Tajine' - essentially a stew, cooked slowly in an earthenware pot over a charcoal fire. Mopped up with bread it was delicious if mostly vegetables. Also eaten in the dark with a candle.

Tuesday May 27th

The muleteers were already and packing when we surfaced. We stocked up with tins of sardines. Today we intended to walk 12km to the Neltner refuge following the Mizane Valley to the village of Aroumd and thence to the hamlet of Sidi Chamcharouch and onto the refuge. Most tourists hire a muleteer to have their packs carried by mule. But of course, we wanted to do the macho thing. Our backpacks were full of gear (sleeping bags, stove, food etc) and very heavy. It was already very hot but we set off at a good pace. I had been having back problems before the trip and the hike would destroy my back muscles.

We followed a well defined mule track which zigzagged above the Mizane river before dropping to the valley floor. We bypassed Arounmd and walked along the stony river bed. The river had to be crossed. It was a fast two foot deep snow river. I took off my boots and waded across the sharp rocks in freezing water. Steve's attempt was less successful. He lost his balance and fell backwards getting soaked. How I laughed.

Climbing back up the trail which followed the side of the valley, we reached Sidi Chamcharouch (which we christened 'Sidi Shithole'). Set beside a small waterfall, this is an anarchic cluster of houses, all built one into another. Its seasonal population of a dozen run softdrink/grocery stalls for tourist hikers. Walking straight through and ignoring the delights of chocolate bars on offer, we pushed on. The trail climbed steeply in zigzags and then traversed the flank of the valley well above the Mizane. In the heat, we had an hour's siesta by the side of the trail. Muleteers passed us by with heavily laden mules carrying other tourists luggage who struggled on behind. Refreshed, the trail was pretty clear the whole way up to the Neltner Refuge which at 3207m marks the spring snow line.

Even in the summer, its gets pretty cold up at the refuge once the sun has disappeared behind the ridge. The shelter had two walking groups already booked in, but we were fortunate to get sleeping space on bunk beds in one cramped quarter (50D). There were meals available, but having lugged all our gear up, we fired up the stove and had soup, noodles, bread and sardines. We spent the evening isolated in the cold wilderness chatting to various members of the organised walking tours who seemed suitably impressed that we had lugged everything up without mules. The toilets were blocked. Another evening entertainment was watching Steve wash outside with freezing water.

Wednesday May 28th

After a warm, comfortable night in our sleeping bags, we arose with everyone else at 5am. It was better to climb Djebel Toubkal as early as possible before the clouds descended. We followed one of the organised groups who had a guide and attempted to keep them in sight. We followed the South Cirque (Ikkibi Sud) which is the most popular and straightforward ascent.

The unmarked trail was either innumerable fields of boulders and scree or snow. It was a hard climb. Steve lost his balance and slid 100 ft down one snowy area. We pushed on, as the sun rose across the valley. Eventually we were just climbing up snow banks. The summit, a triangular plateau of stones marked by a tripod was eventually reached after a lot of zigzagging through a gap in the ridge. At the top it was freezing. Steve felt "sick as a dog" suffering from altitude sickness, but I did not have the same problem. The second walking group joined us at the summit soon after. It was quite crowded. We had climbed it in about two hours, very quickly for such a climb. The vista of Atlas mountains stretched around us. Quite spectacular with all the snow around.

We paced ourselves down. It was far harder to descend screes of rocks than climb up them. Torture on the knees and joints. Younger soles skipped down them, but we were in no hurry. We were able to take advantage of a 300 foot snowslide and descend on our behinds with our legs in the air. Further down, we came across one of the showoff Germans who had sprinted down the steep slops only to trip and crush his head on a rock. There was blood everywhere. The sun was up and the whole landscape was lit in sunlight. We could see the refuge a thousand feet above.

Back at the Refuge, everyone congratulated themselves on the climb. The groups had been walking for two weeks in preparation for the climb. We had had one day getting up there, backpacks as well. We felt very exhausted but very exhilarated by our conquest. Originally, we had planned to do a circuit via a lake for a couple of days, but the snow was obviously heavier than we anticipated. It would be miserable to camp out in sleeping bags without a tent. We decided that it would be better to return to Imlil and do walks from there.

Consequently, after lunch we descended back down to Imlil in five and a half hours. It was exhausting in the hot sun, especially with the morning's backbreaking work. My back was agony. It was as hard to descend as ascend. One of the groups had decided that another night at the refuge was too much to bare and passed us en route to their rooms in Aroumd. At Sidi Chamcharouch, Steve needed the chocolate boost. We followed the trail along the side of the valley to Aroumd, which was narrow and tricky with lengthy drops below us. Both physically exhausted, we pushed on to Aroumd.

Aroumd is the largest village of the Mizane Valley, an strange looking place, built on a spur of loose rock above the valley at 1840m. The site resembles nothing so much as a landslide but it also commands one of the most fertile stretches of the Atlas. Terraced fields of corn, potatoes, onions, barley and various kinds of fruit line the valley sides and there is some grazing too. We walked past all the local kids playing soccer. Near Imlil,. we passed a local girl carrying a huge bundle of vegetation on her back. It must have weighed more than our backpacks but she was more than capable of handling it. Embarrassed, we pushed on to Imlil which we reached before dark.

Back at the Etole Du Toubkal Hotel, we discovered that a German group had taken all the rooms. Fortunately the owner, pleased to see us back gave us a communal room which we had to ourselves. I was in agony with my back, applying "Deep Heat" continuously. We celebrated with cold showers and a 'Tajine' stew in the hotel while the Germans looked on amused at two totally shattered Brits with aching bones.

Thursday May 29th

In glorious sunshine, we were able to move back into our former room and the owner told us how to get hot showers (by lighting the gas!). We were both exhausted, but felt that we should get out and do another easier walk. After coffees at a outdoor cafe, we walked out of the hamlet to Tachedirt along an easy track lined with golden spreads of yellow 'Broom'. We followed a local and his mule who eventually left us behind. There were also thousands of ladybirds everywhere. The day long 20km return walk was very enjoyable well below the snowline. Locals would speed past us (even though we only had day packs). We could see complex series of fertile terraces along the valley. Back at the hotel we cooked up as many of our supplies as possible.

Friday May 30th

Enough of the 'roughing it'. We knew that there was a 3 star hotel on the outskirts of Asni and we agreed that we deserved the luxury. Catching another 'sheep truck' we descended through the wonderful valley and were dropped outside the Grand Hotel du Toubkal. Booking into a luxurious double room for £10 each, it was paradise. Moving out to the lovely swimming pool for the day, we discovered the tour group that had been up at the refuge and passed us on the way back. They were having a day by the pool. We sunbathed and drank beer and generally had a day's normal vacation. I think the group were envious of us when they were delivered back to their cramped, cold showered room in Aroumd. Life is hard. Especially when we were able to dine out on an excellent French meal and bottle of wine for £5 each. We were the only guests, and played with the satellite TV, picking up Middle Eastern or really bad Italian quiz shows.

Saturday May 31st

Asni is really little more than a roadside village and marketplace which comes to life with the Saturday souk. I arose early to explore it just down the road. The whole enclosure behind the row of shop cubicles was filled with produce and livestock stalls, an occasional storyteller and a pretty bizarre assembly of Berber barbers. The butcher section had bloodied decapitated black sheep heads lying on the floor. There was even a mule park where at least 500 mules were tethered. I watched the blacksmiths put on new iron shoes while the owners waited. The mules had brightly coloured and thick saddles which could carry heavy loads. There was animal shit everywhere. I strolled around the cramped area which seemed to sell everything, for a couple of hours, just hanging out. Noone bothered me and many people laughed at my shorts and called me 'Tarzan'. Haggling with a trader, I bargained hard for a pair of sheep leather slippers and three djebellas (cloaks).

Returning to the hotel, I had breakfast with Steve, and dragged him down to the souk. The tour group had arrived for a look around. Earlier, I had been the only westerner. French and German tour groups started to arrive and seemed to get pestered with jewellery sellers which had ignored me. Back at the hotel, we packed and took a stroll around the grounds, discovering a caged wild boar in the back. There was also a pair of storks nesting on the roof. A Moroccan family asked us to take their picture. It had been a lovely stay. Battered buses took locals back to Marrakech about 50km south every hour and we climbed aboard one around midday for 15D. A bumpy ride down the twisted and steep valley road took us along an irrigated plain to the walls of Marrakech.

Marrakech remains the most important market and administrative centre of southern Morocco. It has always been something of a pleasure city and a marketplace where the southern tribesmen and Berber villagers bring their goods to sell or find entertainment. At the heart of it all is the square, Djemaa el Fna, really no more than an open space in the centre of the city, but the stage for a long established ritual in which shifting circles of onlookers gather around groups of acrobats, drummers, pipe musicians, dancers, and story tellers. It attracts endless tourists who come to explore the souks in the old Medina and experience the atmosphere.

We arrived at the old city walls by Bab Doukkala and walked into the centre of Gueliz (the former modern French area) in sweltering heat. Checking into the Hotel Farouk, we got a rooftop room for 120D and returned to explore the Medina. As we approached the souks, a few local "guides" attempted to follow us in and take care of us. It was the only time I had to act forceful to get rid of them. The souks were a maze of covered alleyways broken into areas selling specific products. Jewellery, wool, skins, leathers, textiles, coppersmiths, dyers, carpenters, ironsmiths, and potters. Having visited the souks of Fes previously, I was familiar with the set up and we targeted the areas where we could see workers making the products in cramped cubicles. It was not as spectacular as Fes, but enjoyable just the same. We didn't really want to buy anything ( I settled on some cedar wood handled kebab sticks which were made for me and smelt wonderful). We explored many narrow back alleyways with decorative wooden doors hiding the residences behind them. It was nice just to wander around without hassle.

The Djemaa el Fna gradually came to life as the afternoon sun dipped. There were snake charmers, water vendors (dressed in traditional costumes) and dentists (with a desk in front of them and thousands of teeth on display). They all made their money posing for photographs. Stalls were set up as ready made restaurants for the evening with smoke billowing everywhere from the open fires. Marrakech seemed most different from the rest of our trip because women were openly dressing as westerners (platform shoes!) and even riding mopeds. It was also packed full of tourists.

By about 5pm, we were ready for a cold beer and found the Hotel Tazi just south of the square. Bars are few and far between in town. Inevitably, we found members of the tour group there. We seemed to come across them everywhere. We swopped stories about the day over a few brews. The Moroccan habit is to leave your empties on the table and it all gets totalled at the end. There were a few dozen bottles by the time we had finished. In another part of the bar, prostitutes smoked over their beers. Rather than eat at the dodgy stalls in the Djemaa el Fna where everyone seemed to suffer from food poisoning, we discovered an all-you-can-eat meal at the Hotel Ali. For 60D, we stuffed our faces with endless Moroccan dishes - harira (a spicy bean based soup), shish kebabs, couscous bidaoui (couscous with vegetables), Djaja mahamara (chicken stuffed with almonds) , kefta (meatballs), shahada (salad) and hobs (bread), lemonade, mint teas and coffee. A real pig out.

The Djemaa el Fna was really animated on our return. Illuminated by lights and gas lamps, circles of onlookers gathered around the drummers and dancers who stuck out baskets for money every few seconds. Snake charmers attempted to charm money out of punters. Smoke filled the air. The restaurants were packed. We were pretty exhausted and walked a mile back along French boulevards to the hotel, while the Moroccan youth continued to descend on the centre. It was a real party town.

Sunday June 1st

I rose early to explore the architectural and historical sights of Marrakech when the city was quiet. I walked down to the Koutoubia Minaret. Nearly seventy metres high and visible for miles, this is the oldest of the great Almohad towers and the most complete. Built in 1199, it displays many of the features that were to become widespread in Moroccan architecture. It was covered in scaffolding, but impressive none the less. The streets were empty as I made for Saadian Tombs. Long walks were involved in exploring Marrakech and I seemed to walk miles to get to the next place. Storks nested on the city walls.

The Saadian Tombs are preserved in the shadow of the Kasbah mosque. Rediscovered by the French in 1917, they are the city's main "sight". You enter via a narrow passageway into a secluded burial ground (dating from 1557) behind the royal palace where sultans were buried . There are two main mausoleums in the enclosure. The finest is a beautiful group of three rooms with exhaustive decoration. Painted horseshoe arches supported by incredibly delicate arrangements of columns. Faint light beams filtered down over the marble tombs from an interior lantern under tremendous vaulted roofs. I had the place to myself until a school party arrived. The colourful spring flowers were also in bloom.

Nearby was the Palais El Bahia, residence of a Grand Vizier which was built in 1894 consisting of rambling but small palace courtyards, apartments and reception rooms. The complex was packed with French and Italian tour groups which destroyed any serenity.

I decided to concentrate on the vast ruins of the El Badi ("The Incomparable") Palace. Started in 1578, it was stripped of all its treasures later on. What you see today is essentially the ceremonial part of the palace complex, planned on a grand scale for the reception of ambassadors. The eroded red walls (covered with storks' nests) could be climbed to look over the great central court. 130m long and nearly as wide, it was constructed on a substructure of vaults in order to allow the circulation of water through to the pools and gardens. The pools dominate the whole centre of the complex and were (still) full of water. There were a number of summer pavillions on each side of the pools. Today they are just ruins. The Koubba el Hamsiniya (Fifty Pavilion) originally had 50 columns. I explored the former stables and underground dungeons still used in this century as a state prison. It was very tranquil with storks floating down to the pools. Very few tourists. I felt that it was the best historical sight in town, just for sheer scale.

Time was pressing on. It was midday before I returned to the hotel for lunch. Steve had already checked out train times to Casablanca and there was one leaving at 2.30pm. We walked up to the train station. The train had endless carriages and was too long for the platform. It was also packed. Even though we purchased first class tickets, we could only get a seat in second class, which was no hardship. The 3 hour train ride was smooth enough for us to nap in the sun while we passed the dusty landscapes of the south eastern part of Morocco.

The principal city of Morocco, and capital in all but administration, Casablanca was modelled by the French and has a large port. Its development, from a town of 20,000 in 1906, has been astonishly rapid and quite ruthlessly deliberate. It is still growing at a rate of 50,000 people a year. It is very much a westernized city, but we only saw the slums from the train window. From the familiar train station we walked down the Boulevard Mohammed V for a couple of miles to the main square of Place Mohammed V, next to the port. Everyone was taking their Sunday afternoon stroll or hanging out at outside cafes exchanging the news.

Our destination was the Hotel Excelsior which overlooked the square. It used to be the city's Grand Hotel and was a fading relic of former greatness, but still had all the trimmings. Very 1930s in outlook and decoration. From our room (120D), we had a splendid view over the square (just a traffic junction) and saw the Hassan II Mosque on the horizon. Begun in 1980 (it was just being started when Steve last visited), it has only recently been completed, and represents the present monarch's most ambitious building project. It is a startling endeavour, even in the bare facts of its construction. The minaret is 172 metres high - making it the tallest building in the country and the world record for any mosque.. At its summit, a laser projects its beams visible for thirty miles out to sea, towards Mecca. The Mosque itself has space for 80,000 worshippers. The French designer employed 25,000 labourers and 10,000 master craftsmen. The cost of half a billion pounds was raised by public subscription. As an orange sunset descended, we made the boring walk by the side of the Port a couple of miles out to see it. The complex was surrounded by hundreds of Moroccans. A policeman stopped me at the entrance because of my shorts. Built by the sea, it was impressive in scale, but to be honest, looked like a big ugly concrete skyscraper.

We returned to the hotel and found an outside seats at a restaurant on the Mohammed V Boulevard for our final dinner of kebabs. Later in the evening we visited the Hotel Hyatt Regency across the road which contained "Rick's Bar" from the Humphry Bogart movie 'Casablanca'. But not really. The bar never existed. This was just a staid and pricey reconstruction for the tourists. A black female pianist tickled the piano, while a Moroccan dressed as Humphrey (including hat and trenchcoat) welcomed the few takers. We drank pricey beers while listening to an air cabin crew wittering on to each other in the empty bar. We used a credit card to pay the bill of £12 for 4 beers each.

Monday June 2nd

Our final day. We got up early to walk back along the Mohammed V Boulevard to view and photograph the tremendous collection of 1930s Art Deco landmarks of the city centre, designed by the French architect d'Henri Prost. It must have been a stylish street when it was first built. After breakfast, we walked to the Gare Du Port at 8.30am to get the train to the airport. Spending our remaining coinage on beers, we nearly missed the 10.40am flight. When we boarded, we discovered the same crew that we had seen in Rick's bar. Repeating some of the witterings "I'm a Croydon girl", one of the air hostesses was so embarrassed, she could hardly look us in the eye. We stopped at Gibraltar for 30 minutes. Enough time for a beer, duty free and photos of the mountain. I had visited Gibraltar in 1993, returning from Tangiers, and it was world apart from Morocco. The plane arrived at Heathrow at 4pm (local time) and I was on a bus back to Oxford half an hour later.

In conclusion, I have to reassess my opinion of Morocco. We both expected the worst and found the best. While Fes, in the north is undoubtedly the most startling and interesting city of the country, the hustlers reduced the enjoyment. Tangiers is a bandit town of endless abuse that should be avoided at all cost. But the south was a different matter. The Atlas Mountains were an idyllic area of fabulous vistas, great hiking, and friendly, happy locals who did not threaten you. Admittedly, every kid asked for "bonbons" or pens. But they would still smile if you gave them nothing. Marrakech and Casablanca were relaxed in outlook. Taroudannt was an idea place to acquaint yourself with the culture. It was so cheap, that we were amazed to only spend about £120 each for the trip everything included. Maybe two large street wise males made the difference.

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