Advertisement
Published: December 30th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Berber village
Children going back from school Today morning we started off at 9:00 for Imlil. The tour guide picked us up at the jamaa el fna square and dropped off at the taxi stand. There we met with 3 other Spanish tourists for a shared taxi. We reached Imlil and met with the actual guide. That is when we came to know that the tour operator we had paid money to had not communicated anything. The guide thought that we are there for day trip and will leave next day. Then started the phone calls and communication with language and bad cell reception barriers. Finally the guide said today have to do a day trek but tomorrow can do a 2 day trek. Fine, not exactly what we paid for but close enough. Good thing was that we were staying with the family of guide, a really nice family, great people and awesome food.
We first had a lunch of couscous with vegetables. Then started off on our day hike. The hike took us close to some high mountains with quite a bit of snow. We reached a high village and then decided to stay below the snow line. At dinner we had the best tagine ever!
Then we watched a Hindi serial dubbed in Arabic with the family. It was great and so relaxing that we forgot about morning's mixup and decided to stay there one more night after our trek.
Day 2:
Today the plan was to walk over a high pass 2500m and get to other side of the valley. We started off slow, there is no concept of hurry in Berber villages, cooking is slow and going is slow. We started around 10 with a mule carrying all our luggage. I was feeling very guilty about that poor animal carrying all our stuff. But that is how it is there. So with some guilt I started off the trek with a light day pack. We were on top of the pass in about 2hrs. At top it was nice and sunny with some good views. We took a 1hr long break there. The mule driver made food for us, rice and cut vegetables. We saw quite a few groups there. After a while we were starting to get bored and asked the guide to start. Apparently he was waiting for some news about amount of snow near the waterfalls. Not sure what
his source of information would be, I found that odd. There were few groups that had come from other side and could have the information. He seemed not very willing to make the extra effort of the detour even though that would be highlight of the trek. In any case we showed him our snow traction and told him that we want to go there.
The waterfalls were winter wonderland. All the waterfalls were frozen. There was quite a bit of snow and ice there, it would be a bit hard walking down without our traction though walking up was OK. After the waterfalls we simply headed down to the village where we will spend the night. There we met two tourists from US. They were doing similar walk in other direction. Their guide was very attentive and nice. I was quite impressed. I wish I had taken contact information of guide for future recommendation. (If you are reading this please leave that in comments 😊 )
We spent some time watching the cooking process for tagine and couscous. They take hours to cook. In the meantime we ate some warm bread and almond butter type thing in kitchen with
guides and cooks. It was nice chatting up with them. Dinner was couscous with vegetables for us and some Moroccan soup which is basically daal with a hint of rice and noodle. After dinner we went to sleep. There was no need to hurry tomorrow, it's a slow life!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.283s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0663s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Morocco
Great blog. We loved our time in Morocco and the food is amazing.