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Published: September 14th 2018
Greetings from Midelt, Morocco, as I enjoy a gin and tonic and paprika flavoured potato chips. We have a couple of hours to rest in our room here at the Hotel Taddart before dinner at 8 pm.
We had another leisurely breakfast this morning at our riad, and left about 9 am for our drive to Midelt, with various stops along the way. Our first stop was in Ifrane, a small town located in the Middle Atlas mountains. It was built by the French in the 1930s, deliberately to look like an alpine resort. The town, at an elevation of 1,664 metres, gets lots of snow in the winter and is a skiing area. It was markedly cooler in Ifrane, compared to Meknes, due to the elevation.
We had a coffee, and a WC break, and walked around a little bit before hopping back into the minibus to continue our journey. The drive today was very scenic and amazingly varied. We passed cypress, cedar and walnut trees, and lots of apple and olive groves. Midelt is the apple growing capital of Morocco. We saw lots of farmers selling apples by the side of the road. As soon as we
left Ifrane it started to rain very heavily, but it did not last for long. The whole day was like that, very hard showers, then the sun was out, then more showers. I didn’t expect any rain in Morocco so the weather the couple of days has surprised me.
A short time after Ifrane we stopped to see the Barbary macaques that live in this area. They are enticed to hang around by the side of the road by peanut sellers. Abdul told us not to buy any peanuts to feed the monkeys as the peanuts are not good for them. We snapped some photos of the monkeys, then continued on our way.
We drove for several hours, through the beautiful scenery, passing Berber camps (the Berbers in this area are semi nomadic, spending the summers with their sheep and goat herds grazing in the high plateau), and Berber villages. We passed valleys, cedar and pine forests, and rocky landscapes. Abdul told us about the lack of education for Berber girls, and a foundation that Peregrine supports which has built boarding schools for Berber girls. There may be a primary school for Berber children who live in a
village to go to, but after age 12 they are unable to continue with their education because there is no school in their villages, and their parents can‘t afford to pay for them to stay in a town farther away, and they likely wouldn’t want their daughters to live away anyway. Peregrine has built schools for the girls, and has convinced their parents to allow them to attend. Life for the semi nomadic Berbers is very difficult, and the children generally receive no education at all.
There is some division between Berbers and Arabs in Morocco generally. Fairly recently the Berber language began to be taught in schools, and the written Berber language is of recent origin.
We had lunch at a Berber family’s home near the town of Zaida. It was a delicious meal consisting of barley soup (kind of similar to oatmeal), which is good for the digestion. It is a common Berber breakfast food, and I liked it. We then were served a variety of Berber salads (cooked carrots, green beans, potato, beets, tomato, cucumber, and rice) along with delicious homemade bread. Then we had a tasty vegetarian couscous - with chicken for the meat
eaters. Each table of 4 got a whole roasted chicken. We finished the meal with watermelon, and then we went outside to enjoy a delicious Moroccan coffee (similar to Turkish coffee) and mint green tea. A few of the women got a henna tattoo painted on their hands.
It was a fairly short drive from our lunch stop to our hotel, Hotel Taddart. It is a large hotel which caters to tour groups. We have a cute, sort of quaint, room, and the wifi is better than our riad in Fes, which I‘m happy about as it makes doing this blog much easier. Photos take a long time to upload to the blog so that’s why I’ve only been adding a small amount of photos.
We were to go for an about 1.5 hour walk, but it was raining, so we vetoed the walk and just went into Midelt to pick up some “spiritual drinks“ to take with us to the Sahara desert camp tomorrow. I bought six Flag beer (the kind we had on the flight to Casablanca, which we liked better than Casablanca beer), and a bottle of rosé, along with some more tonic. Now I’ve
Moroccan flag
The red represents strength, the green five pointed star represents the 5 pillars of Islam.been relaxing in the room, enjoying my gin and tonic and working on this blog.
I won’t be blogging tomorrow as there is no wifi at the Sahara camp, so I‘ll be back in a few days, with our story of our camel rides and our night in the Sahara!
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alex waring
Alexander Waring
Spiritual Drinks
I like this name for them! Wow, I didn't expect to see architecture like the ones in Ifrane in Morocco. Like a little bit of France in the Atlas Mountains! This is where your journey I think departs from my own a few years ago. I look forward to reading more about your travels in Morocco, to places I've not been to myself.