High Atlas Mountains

Saturday, May 18, 2013

When we woke up, it was raining in Marrakesh.  We're glad we had our tour yesterday!  Even though the room was a bit small, we enjoyed our stay at Riad Siwan.  It was peaceful, had good service, and they didn't charge us for our extras when we left!

Brahim picked us up at 9:30.  We only had an hour's drive to our next location, which is a night in Bab Ourika in the Atlas Mountains.

The difference between a riad and a "bab" is that a riad has windows looking into the central courtyard, and a bab has windows looking out.  It took 7 years to build this place.  It was a bit of a chilly day, misty, but apparently last week they had temperatures in the 40's, so this is probably better.  We were given a tour of this beautiful "kasbah" as he called it.  Then taken into a sitting room with a warm fire and served Moroccan tea.  This seems to be the tradition when you arrive at a hotel.  Our room is on the top level, we're getting very good at climbing steep stairs now.  We have a wonderful view over the mountains, with a balcony and an outdoor shower on the balcony which I'm sure we will not be using in this chilly weather.  We're racking our brains, but we can't think of another place we've stayed with such a nice view.

Before lunch we met Omar, our tour guide de jour.  He had along someone named Mohamed who is training to be a guide, but who didn't speak English.  They took us for a long hike, over an hour and a half long.  There were great views and we often stopped for pictures, so we were a lot slower than they were.  That's why we have so many pictures of their backs.  The people we passed were friendly, but many don't like to have their picture taken.  The women often turn their backs when you approach.

From road to path to crossing streams and narrow footpaths, they definitely took us the long way.  Everywhere we walked we had to watch for "donkey beans" again.  They look deceptively like fallen olives on the path.  We finally arrived at the home where we were having lunch, belonging to Mohamed and Aisha, a traditional Berber family.  They had obviously dressed up for our visit.  Aisha took Frankie into a back room and dressed her in traditional Berber dress, including taking her own belt off and putting it around Frankie.  Tight!  She wanted to put eye makeup on Frankie, but Frankie declined.  Then she handed Frankie a lipstick which Frankie felt obliged to do after saying no to the mascara.  Aisha didn't speak any English or French, but she demonstrated to Frankie how she was supposed to dance an entrance into the room with the men.  Meanwhile, Anton had been dressed in a traditional djellaba.

In the fancy room for entertaining guests, Frankie was put to work making tea.  The whole process involved about 10 steps and took half an hour.  When it was finally ready, it was the best tea we have had in Morocco.

After tea, it was time for lunch, which was eaten in the other half of the room.  There was a "salad" to begin with, which was a plate of cooked potatoes and carrots.  The main course was beef tajine (again), but this one was much better than the restaurant versions we have had.  It took 3 hours to prepare, cooked in the tajine pot over a propane stove.  Very flavourful.  Dessert was a plate of melon pieces, we each had a fork and dug in.  During lunch, Omar explained the Moroccan perspective on being Muslim.  They tolerate and are friendly towards anyone else and their religion, but trying to convert someone to other faiths is not looked upon kindly, mainly because different faiths would cause friction between people but having people all the same faith keeps things peaceful.  The Muslims here are definitely not the radicals that make the news back home.  Many of them practice in name only, like many "Christians" back home.

We gave them some gifts as we left:  some Canada pins and books and pencil crayons for the children.  We had lots of fun with the Canada stickers, Aisha really had no idea what they were so she hung them from her ears.  She looked quite amazed when we showed her that the backing came off.

We took a different path back to the hotel, starting with walking through a village.  We had a few Rocket candies, so we handed them out.  Then all of a sudden children came out of nowhere.  When we ran out of Rockets, we handed out stickers.  They were all excited, one boy ran to his house and we could hear him excitedly telling his brother to come.

We thought we were taking the road back up to the hotel, but Omar took us straight up some donkey paths up the mountain.

It was 3:30 when we got back to the hotel, and our schedule was free!  We took our time exploring the beautiful and extensive grounds of the hotel.  There are immaculate rose and vegetable gardens.

For the rest of the day, we relaxed and rested.  There was a nice fire in the library, so we read there for awhile.  The meal here was absolutely superb, and Frankie isn't the only gluten-free person staying here, so food was NOT an issue.