Walking the Foothills of the Atlas Mountains

     

        “Bonjour, Madame” a young man greeted me as we came out of our room at the Tafti Atlas hotel.  It was 9 a.m. on our first morning here. This must be our Berber guide, I thought.  I have to admit that reading our Inntravel notes prior to arriving in Morocco I had pictured a Berber guide as being an older man wearing a turban and a djellaba or long robe and maybe thick sandals carrying a walking stick.  He’d probably have a beard, graying hair, and tired looking eyes.  (I read too many novels.)

            Standing before us was a man in his early 30’s, with no beard, short hair, dressed in khaki pants, a bright blue t-shirt, baseball hat, and dusty running shoes carrying a backpack.  He could have been from anywhere.

            “Bonjour,” I answered automatically as I shook hands.  “Are you our guide?” I asked.  “Do you speak English?”

            “Non, Madame,” came the answer while I suddenly panicked and turned to Art. 

            “Didn’t the Inntravel notes say that we would have an English speaking guide?” I was sure they had.  “He says he doesn’t speak, English,” I whispered trying not to panic.

            “Of course, I speak English,” the man spoke up suddenly.  “I was just teasing you.  My name is Azou Abdou and I am your guide,” he grinned in perfect English.  I breathed a sigh of relief trying to imagine spending three days hiking while struggling to revive my rusty college French.  Azou, who obviously had a sense of humor, turned out to be at least quadrilingual speaking English, French, Berber and Moroccan Arabic…and probably a little German and Spanish as well.  University educated, Azou told us he had wanted to be a school administrator but there are few jobs in Morocco for young people who are not born to privileged families with money and connections.  So, he turned to working as a guide for a tourist company, which is seasonal work and dependent on tourists coming to Morocco.  He had tried to get a visa to immigrate to the US but had been turned down five times and had given up. His prospects seemed discouraging and simply shrugged and said “that is how it is here”.

           We would learn more about Azou in the next few days as he lead us through Berber villages, on donkey trails, ancient paths, and sometimes simply across fields he was familiar with. We could go at our own pace and stop whenever we wanted to.  We could have never found our own way much less asked our way because we saw few people on our daily walks and most only spoke a specific dialect of Berber language. In larger towns and cities most Moroccans are bilingual if not trilingual with French, Arabic, and Berber but not in small remote villages where we were.

            Our hike began climbing up and down a strange landscape of heavily eroded undulating red soil that is dotted with juniper trees, mastic and oleander.  Parts of this dry arid landscape reminded me of photos taken of astronauts walking on the moon.  With no one around and only an occasional villager passing us on a donkey or on foot we might as well have been on the moon!  We dropped down to cross a river and followed an ancient mule trail up through walnut, pomegranate and plum trees to the village of Anraz.

            Azou suggested we take a break and offered us the option of having mint tea in a Berber house.  We agreed and followed him through the village climbing uphill until we arrived at a simple house on the outskirts. As in all the Berber villages only the very young and old remain – while teenagers and young adults leave to look for work in the cities.  Those that stay behind, work in the fields farming without machinery, using hand plows as has been done for centuries. We had noticed how quiet the village was and how few people we saw except for some young children playing by themselves and occasionally women down by the river washing clothes.

         Azou went to find the lady of the house and then came back to show us in. We walked through an entrance gate and into an open courtyard off of which we could see a few small open rooms with no visible furniture. I wondered if people slept on mats on the floor and shivered because it gets cold in the desert at night. Azou indicated we should take off our shoes and then led us into a majilis or sitting room where we rested on a long bench with colorful pillows to wait for our mint tea.  I had learned from living in the Middle East that a majilis is the room in the house reserved for guests and special occasions and is therefore more decorated than any other room in the house.  This was a very poor house but the room was brightly painted with deep blue and yellow and reds making it welcoming.  There was no one around at all.

            An old lady brought in a tray with a basic metal teapot and small tea glasses. The favored drink in Morocco is mint tea made by steeping strong mint leaves in boiling water and adding sugar to taste.  She served us, as is the custom, by holding the teapot up high and letting the mint tea cascade into the glass.  Then she disappeared.   Having drunk all the tea, we put our shoes back on, gave the Azou some money to give to our hostess and continued on our hike refreshed.  As we were leaving, a little girl arrived home and I guessed she had been in school for a few hours.  Perhaps she was the granddaughter.  She smiled at us shyly but would not have her photo taken.  No one in Morocco will and so we had to satisfy our photographic urges with pictures taken of people’s backs or with a zoom lens when we were a distance away.

            We passed by bamboo, carob and olives trees, through another Berber village and back down to the riverbed where a few hours later, Azou announced we would have lunch.  Lunch?  I looked around. There was no one around, and nothing except a log to sit on under a tree in the cool shade. We had not been given packed lunches at the hotel but Azou opened his backpack and began setting out three plates and silverware.  He then pulled out fresh tomatoes, carrots, cooked cold potatoes, green peppers, onion, hard boiled egg, canned sardines and fresh crusty whole wheat bread.  I watched fascinated as he expertly chopped up each ingredient arranging them to make an attractive salad plate, which we ate ravenously.   Apples were our dessert.

            “Where did all this come from?” I asked in amazement.

            “The market in Ouirgane, early this morning before I came to your hotel,” he answered matter-of-factly.  The menu stayed the same each day.  I knew he didn’t have a car and asked how he got around from place to place.  He simply answered “By taxi.”  He seemed to know the local taxi drivers in the area who all drove twenty- year-old white dusty Mercedes Benz cars on red dirt roads.

             Each morning Azou came to the Tafti Atlas Hotel, where we stayed for four nights, to meet us. We would set off on foot in a different direction for the day’s walk.  He would consult with us as to what we were “up” for that day and was more than willing to adapt each hike according to how energetic we felt and how much we wanted to climb.

            The second day’s hike took us high up on the Tarabaza Plateau with spectacular views of nearby hills and valleys and by afternoon we could clearly see the newly snowcapped High Atlas Mountains in the distance. (November is when it can begin to snow in the mountains and is supposed to be the start of the rainy season although we saw nothing but blue skies our entire time in Morocco.) It was Saturday, which meant that many of the villagers were traveling by donkey to the  market in Ouirgane to pick up supplies for the week so there was more traffic on the paths we walked than we had seen.  Art tried out “ a Salaam Aleikum” (Peace be With You) in his best Arabic from our years in Dubai and would greet villagers as we passed them on the road.  They looked up in recognition of the phrase and responded.

          Azou again expertly prepared our lunch but we ate it in the majilis of another Berber house where we were also served mint tea.  I defied tradition by asking for my tea with less sugar.  I quite liked the bitter taste of it rather than the cloyingly sweet drink that is more popular with Moroccans. It is surprisingly refreshing when you are hot and sweaty from hiking in the warm sun.

            Our third day with Azou began with an hour-long taxi ride along the Oued N’Fis reservoir river valley, which is spectacularly scenic as it snakes in and out of high barren mountains that come straight down to the water almost like fjords.  Our hike on this day was through peach orchards by the N’Fis River, crossing tributaries that pass through almond groves.  Fields around these Berber settlements are rocky and we occasionally saw a shepherd tending a flock of goats and two women with their sheep in a field.  Our goal was to reach the Tin-Mal Mosque, which dates back to 1155 and is the only mosque in Morocco where Non-Muslims are welcome.  At one time it was part of a thriving town and an important spiritual and cultural center.   Today it is partially restored although there were very few people around when the gatekeeper let us in to take a look.  The inside is completely open but the beautiful arches are spectacular against the cloudless blue Moroccan sky.

            We followed Azou down to the river where he prepared our picnic again. I now understood why he was so expert at this. He had done this many times before.  Yet it felt special each day as if it was being done only for us.

    

            Our three-day hiking experience through Berber villages with Azou is not something most tourists do in Morocco.  What made this unusual was that the paths we walked and the fields we crossed are travelled daily by Berber villagers and have been for generations.  There are no tour buses and no foreign hiking groups in the area.  Azou had no prepared script as most guides do, but we had meandering conversations throughout our days about politics, education, family, customs, history, the United States, and anything we asked about.  He gave us his opinion on things as if we were friends.  We did not encounter a single foreigner anywhere on our walks through the foothills of the Atlas Mountains and so it felt totally special to us.  As if this time we had come close to experiencing life in a remote part of the world as it really is.