Our next adventure was a hiking trip to the Middle Atlas mountains! We stayed in a town that was built to model a Swiss skiing village, called Ifran. It was absolutely beautiful.
There are petite taxis and grand taxis in Morocco. Petite taxis take only three people at a time, but grand taxis will put 6 passengers in 4 seats (not so grand). We took a rather cozy ride in a grand taxi from Meknes to Ifran on Friday night. Upon arrival we explored the local grocery market and set to work making tacos! It was so fulfilling to eat something North American!!!
On Saturday we woke up and headed to Dayet Awa, a nearby village with a lake and an 18 mile hiking trail that leads from the lake back to Ifran. The thing about hiking in Morocco, though, is that trails are really just paths that donkeys take and they aren't marked. So, after wandering through some locals' farms for about 7 miles, we decided to give up on trying to find the trail and just climb a mountain instead.
Above: photos of the lake at Dayet Awa on our way out to find the trail.
Above: photos from our wanderings through farmland. Wildlife count: chickens, cows, donkeys, horses, ducks, peacocks, sheep, cats, dogs, and tadpoles.
Above: we took a break as we began to realize that we were quite lost and we sat around this abandoned...something
Below: pictures of the climb!
As we reached the summit there was a huge thunderstorm rolling in and I got some cool pictures of the sheets of rain in the distance!
At this point, I feel like I should mention that I almost died climbing this mountain. I have exercise-induced asthma and even though I've trained my lungs to handle walking and running, climbing a mountain with no trail is a very different story. I lagged behind the group almost the entire way and used my inhaler twice. I also did vertical rock climbing for the first time...as in, I was holding on to a sheet of rock for dear life and climbing it using natural foot- and hand-holes (NOT like at the YMCA). I did not, however, give up. I made it to the very top and back down again and I am very proud of myself (disclaimer: there were minor scratches and bruises)
Above: the lovely house that we booked on AirBnB
Above: Ifran
When we told our teacher we were going Ifran she told us (in Arabic) that we absolutely had to go to Azrou and see the Cedre Gouraud and the monkeys! And we were like...what the heck does that mean?! As it turns out, Azrou (a town near Ifran) is home to an extremely large and dead cedar tree and an endemic population of Barbary apes! So, of course, we had to go see the apes.
Above: I bought some rocks as souvenirs from the Atlas mountains and the monkeys, having learned that humans carry food in plastic bags, attacked my rock collection!
But we made up when I shared some real food.
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