My son Alex came to spend his college spring break with me, and I took advantage of having him here to schedule a multi-day trip out see some of the farther reaches of the country. By the way, above is his photo of the sunrise in the desert, but more about that later. We started by taking a train to Fez, a city that holds the oldest university in the world (we couldn't go in, unfortunately, but we figuratively pressed our noses to the window) and took a tour of with Mucehine, who is going to be a Fulbright teacher of Arabic at an American university next year. (Honestly, the network of Fulbrighters is nothing short of amazing!) So he took us to see the academic sites and also the crafty ones-- a studio where they were weaving on looms, and a leather workshop, where there were incredible vats of dyes for achieving the softness and colors that people like. We stayed in a classically decorated riad hotel in the medina, and the next morning we met our guide/driver Mohammed for our camel trek. We drove first to a town called Ifrane, which is billed as "Morocco's Switzerland." It is up in the Middle Atlas, and the roofs are A-frames and it is very clean. There is a university there, which is taught by mostly American professors on an American liberal arts curriculum. But to me, it looked like Minneapolis. Next, we drove through a forest of cedar trees, from which I can only assume came all the wood for those amazing walls and ceilings in the old palaces and madrassas, and we saw roadside a troupe of Barbary macaques, or sometimes they're called Barbary Apes. They were quite tame, and allowed us to take pictures. Some following cars stopped and people started feeding them kiwis and oranges, which they seemed to enjoy. It felt a bit like Yellowstone in the 1960s, to be honest. We drove through orchards of blooming cherry trees that were spectacularly beautiful, and then into the Middle Atlas mountains. Apparently the weather system that provided the rain that caused the flooding here in Rabat about two weeks ago delivered fresh snow to the mountains. There was some rain for our mountain travel, some though the high desert and Ziz valley, and when we made it down to the town of Merzuga, gateway to the Sahara in the southeast of the country, we even were treated to a rainbow over the sand dunes. This photo does not do it justice at all, but I haven't mastered photoshop yet! We checked in to our desert hotel, where we we greeted with a glass of mint tea. The hotel was desert-rustic but quite comfy, and we settled in for an evening of off-and-on rain showers, a hail storm, and then some fierce wind that kept random things knocking around for the night. So many pictures that I put some in a slide show: The next day was something I called All-Day Desert Day. We started in the 4 x 4 driving out into the dunes and all around Erg Chebbi. There were some hills of volcanic rock alongside some of the dunes, and one of them provided a great vista of the dunes, the desert, and that plateau that forms the border with Algeria, about 30 miles from where we were. Driving further into the desert we saw many camels, and some tents of Berber nomads. At one tent, two young boys waved to us and we stopped. We were invited to come to the tent and have some mint tea. The dad made the tea while the mom was making some couscous in the cooking tent; the boys went to collect some of the camels that had wandered too far, and the baby was working really hard to crawl in the tent. Her name is Fatima. Lunch was in a small village called Ksar Khamlia. This town is populated by the descendants of Malians, and they celebrate their culture heritage by hosting a music festival every August. We were treated to some singing and dancing, and then lunch in their restaurant called Cafe Nora, which specialized in a "Berber pizza" which was really a lot more like a veggie calzone, but it was pretty tasty. At 4 pm, we mounted our camels for our "trek". I am going to included a specific blog entry on the camel trek, So here are just three photos. Oh, our head scarves are courtesy of Cameltrek Tours-- they have our names stenciled on them! The next morning we got up before dawn, got on our camels, and returned to the hotel so that we could clean up and eat breakfast. And then we headed east through the amazing Dadès and Todra Gorges of the High Atlas range. First, we stopped at one of the fossil "shops" near the town of Erfoud and saw some really astonishing samples of trilobites, ammonites, sharks teeth, squid, etc. And we enjoyed some mint tea with the Fossil Guy! Next stop, the town where Mohammed's family lives. We actually saw his younger brother walking home from school as we passed through the town, and so we picked him up and took him home. I, of course, thought this was a great opportunity to have a "spontaneous natural conversation" in French, but he was a little too shy to play with me. (If you're a careful reader, you will remember that the title of my Inquiry Project is "Spontaneous Natural Conversation in a Second Language...") Then Mohammed's mother invited us in, and served us mint tea! (anyone counting yet???) We had a hilarious conversation in Darija, wherein I struggled to remember words that I knew I had been taught, and she was having a "spontaneous natural conversation." Eventually I agreed (I do know that this occurred in the conversation) to having her paint my hands with henna in the fashion of the area. So here are my hands, in process: Interesting roadside sites: a shepherd had brought camels and goats down to a well alongside the highway, so we visited a bit with him; camel-crossing sign; mass of bikes parked at the middle-school-- it's how a lot of kids get to school, though there are also some school busses; Alex and I in colorful Berber attire (we were dressed by the ladies of a shop in hopes that we'd buy the ensembles. We didn't, though. We drove through spectacular high desert scenery on our way to the Todras and Dadès Gorges. It felt a lot like we were driving right through a Geology 101 textbook! A slide show: And when we checked in to the Panorama Hotel-- mint tea and almonds on the terrace!! The next day, we headed to Ouarzazate, the movie capital of Morocco, But that will be another blog entry.
1 Comment
Cynthia Reedy
4/3/2017 06:39:45 am
This simply left me breathless - what a wonderful adventure!
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Marcie StutzmanTeacher, Researcher, Adventurer, Explorer; Maybe crazy; Possibly too old for this Archives
October 2018
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