Yallah, yallah! Back on the bus!
After leaving Fez, our route took us south across the “Middle” Atlas Mountains and along the river Ziz for a long, long day of sightseeing through bus windows. After that, we would spend two nights in the city of Erfoud, very close to the Sahara and the border with Algeria. Got that? Let’s go.
Our first pit stop as we climbed up into the hills was the little ski village of Ifrane. Yes, ski village. The town looked as if someone had airlifted part of Germany or Switzerland and gently set it down on the slopes of the Atlas. From the description given by our guide, that’s pretty much what happened. The Middle Atlas are very temperate and one of the few areas of Morocco where you can see greenery all around and not be surprised. It’s green enough for wild macaques to be running around in the trees – macaques that have learned that gullible tourists are an excellent source of potato chips.
The further south we went, the more sparse the vegetation grew. I did my best to take photos while the landscape zipped by, but most of the shots didn’t come out very well. However, scattered among the hillsides were occasional Amazigh encampments. Many Amazighs still live the the nomad life. Their houses are big tents that can be packed up and moved when it’s time to relocate their livestock.
(As in my last article, I’m using the name “Amazigh” instead of the more common – although ethnically incorrect – term “Berber.” After all, how’d you like it if I called you a barbarian? Actually, scratch that. I have too many friends who might consider it a compliment.)
Lunch was at the Hotel Taddart just outside the town of Midelt, and it was here that Lea and I lost all patience with Moroccan cuisine. We’d been eating kefta and kebabs for nearly a week and were eager for anything else, so when we saw that this restaurant had “Salad Niçoise” on the menu we went for it. When it arrived – well, imagine a regular side salad with lettuce, tomato, onion… and a can of tuna upended over the top of it. They didn’t even bother to spread it around or mix it in: the tuna was still shaped just like the can it came out of.
Midelt wasn’t a total bust, because right next door to the restaurant was a fossil and mineral museum/store. Morocco is a fossil-rich country and we would come across them in many places on the trip. This store in particular had an impressive collection of giant ammonites and really bizarre trilobites.
Following lunch was a winding, scenic drive down the Ziz River valley, a narrow strip of lush vegetation in the middle of rocky wilderness and rock formations to make geologists swoon. And Lea did, continually pointing out cuts, folds, and striations in the rocks while both of us took turns trying to photograph the landscape while zipping by at umpteen miles per hour without having the pictures marred by bus window reflections.
While Lea was getting excited about Moroccan geology, I was basking in the glow of all the ancient, crumbling structures that were strewn along our route. It turns out that the joke was on me – even today, people in eastern Morocco still use adobe as their primary building material. Adobe dries and crumbles quickly in the Saharan environment, so every building looks like a crumbling monument from the distant past. Most of the “ancient buildings” I drooled over were, I learned later, no more than ten or twenty years old.
Still, the Ziz River Valley is beautiful, and it shows the stark contrasts of desert life, especially when viewed from any high overlook. Where there is water, life explodes in abundance. Where there isn’t, you fry.
We spent two nights at a secluded resort on the edge of Erfoud with blue swimming pools and light switches that looked like water faucets. Using that as a home base, we would travel south for a tour of the city of Rissani and an excursion into the desert. This is what I’d come for and I was ready – except for those light switches. They really threw me off.
After passing through the gates of Rissani, we were met by our guide for the day: a Tuareg in full Tuareg regalia. The Tuareg are one of the three major Amazigh groups to be found in Morocco, and we were now in their territory. (“Tuareg” is also the name of a very tasty brand of coconut cookie found across southern Chile and in one single convenience store in Guatemala.)
Our tour began at a local mosque. We weren’t allowed to enter the worship area, but we did get to tour the lush courtyard garden and enjoy the ever-jawdropping Moorish architecture. After that, we walked across the street to a ksar (fortified village) built in the 18th century and still very much in use today. This is where I learned my error in assuming any crumbling structure must belong to antiquity. To keep the ksar in shape, the residents continually have to “paint” the walls with fresh mud to replace any that has cracked and crumbled away.
Leaving the ksar, we went on a tour of the local market, starting with a “parking lot” full of donkeys. Elsewhere there were animals for sale, but these were those that local vendors used to bring their goods into town.
While wandering the market I wanted to take pictures, but in general taking pictures of people without their permission is uncool – and most people here wouldn’t have wanted their pictures taken anyway. I tried a sneaky, unethical strategy to get what I wanted. (Bad Jared!) Instead of being obvious about pointing my camera at market scenes, I simply wore it around my neck with the lens cap off. Hidden in my hand was the control for the shutter release. It was far from good photography, but it let me walk the market while taking surreptitious stealth photos. I had no idea what I was getting; all I could do was point my body in the general direction of whatever pictures I wanted to take and snap a random shot. Most of them came out crap, but I did get a handful of gems.
The last stop in town was a workshop where slabs of fossil-rich rock were cut and shaped into tiles, tabletops, souvenirs, and anything else you’d like to spend a few thousand dollars on. Once again, Lea and I were struck with “when we win the lottery” thoughts. After escaping the fossil furniture outlet with our credit cards intact, we rode off into the desert for the “optional” Sahara tour.
But was it really optional? I mean, come on. If you’re this close, there’s no way you’re not going.
The tour began by heading way off-road in several 4x4s for lunch at an oasis, followed by a photo op with a nomadic Amazigh family living in a traditional dwelling. Watching the family’s daughter hand-weave a rug using traditional techniques was genuinely fascinating, though this part of the tour felt exploitative enough to make me uncomfortable.
But enough of that. Bring on the camels!
The camel ride was a sunset ride, so first we rode to yet another desert resort and waited around for an hour or two, drinking tea in the air conditioning until the sun started heading down. Then we were back in our 4x4s on the way to pick up our real transport:
Camels are dirty, gross, and smelly, and I love ‘em. Not as much as llamas, but you can’t ride a llama. You really can’t ride a camel either unless you have trained handlers nearby and the camels in question are tolerant. I rode a horse before – once – and this felt much, much more unstable. Then again, there was sand all around, so I imagine if my smelly chauffeur decided to throw me the impact wouldn’t be quite as painful as hitting hard dirt, unless the camel trampled me for good measure.
None of that happened, of course. These camels were customer-service professionals, and as we climbed on board they took us in caravans, camel-nose to camel-butt, up into the Sahara. And I do mean up. This was not a gentle climb into deep and deeper sand as I’d imagined it would be. The line between Sahara and not-Sahara was a sharp demarcation. The ground was flat until suddenly it wasn’t, and a giant mountain of sand stood in front of me.
(I say mountain. Really more of a hill. I’m from one of the flattest states in America. What did I know about elevation gain? This was three years before I got up close and personal with the Andes.)
The sunset itself wasn’t that big a deal. The horizon was too overcast to see it and the sun was setting to the west, over the Atlas Mountains and not the dunes. However, the sheer romance of the setting (a word I use in the Lawrence of Arabia sense) overwhelmed me. Though this was only the edge, it was still the Sahara: an endless expanse of sand the likes of which I’d only read about in novels by Frank Herbert. And here I was on the back of a camel, dipping my metaphorical toes in the driest of oceans with half of a continent before me, empty and unknowable.
Our camels let us down with barely a grumble and we followed our guides to the crest of the highest dune. Morocco lay on one side and an endless expanse of terra incognita on the other. We watched the light dim and the shadows grow longer. The breeze from the west ruffled our hair. The miles behind us and the miles yet to come vanished for those quiet moments.
Sometimes you build up an experience in your mind and feel empty when it’s come and gone. But sometimes you sit on the edge of the desert, leaning against the person you love most in the world, and listen to the silence as the stars slowly appear.
Next Time: Morocco’s Hollywood! On the set of Gladiator and Game of Thrones. Also, a landslide demolished our regularly scheduled restaurant.
