Right now I am in the bar at the Xaluca Dades in the High Atlas Mountains. I can hear the winds screaming across the empty high desert and can feel the building sway under the force of the wind. Beautiful, magical Maroc. So different than the hustle of Central London.
We had planned on attending the famous Festival of Roses tonight but the winds will be keeping us in. I'm sure none of us really mind. We are all a bit weary after the hectic schedule of the last couple of days in this wonderful country. And several of us have been traveling now for a week or more, taking the opportunity to visit somewhere else on the way to Africa.
Athena and I could see the sparse desert landscape from the window of our jet as we came closer and closer to experiencing the smells, sounds and sites of Magical Maroc. I have been here before. Two years ago I came to see this place and to visit my friend who now lives in Maroc with her partner, a native and proud Amazigh. Massine was overjoyed to be my guide, preparing a travel itenerary that frankly made me fall in love with his beautiful country.
Now I bring seven friends with me, meeting me here in Marrakech from Tucson and several places in Europe. These are travelers, like me, and no matter what happens, I am confident that they will find mystery and magic here instead of the inconvenience of a fierce desert wind or a canceled backpack. In Maroc, the next thing - no matter what it is - has the real possibility being exactly what should be happening next. That is its Magic.
The first night, we stayed out of bustling Marrakech in a kasbah far away from the city lights. The approach to Kasbah Le Mirage has the potential to be offputting to the traveler not yet used to Maroc's extremes. The setting of the kasbah is above what we Westerners calls a 'wash', in wide open land on the edge of a small settlement with a mix of newer houses and older kasbahs gently eroding onto the desert floor. It is not uncommon here to witness an obviously brand-new building with a very old pise wall leaning against it. The old is being replaced with the new as those loyal to the past make arrangements to turn the beautiful, spacious old kasbahs into hotels with the conveniences expected by Westerners.
It is not at all uncommon for your Fiat tourist bus to drive right by a man leading a donkey piled high with this year's alfalfa crop. But Maroc, like many emerging economies, has an entire generation of young citizens growing up with the internet, solar power, leggings and free education. I fear that the Maroc I know will not be here for the next generation and that, in my opinion, would be tragic.
Maroc has already given us so much hospitality and adventure, even in the few short days we have been here. Our first night, so romantic out in the desert, long after dark and in a beautiful, renovated kasbah we ate our first meal as a group. For all of us, delicious cooked prunes providing the sauce for the tangine meat of the night was a first. Such a wonderful surprise.
The next morning, after a Moroccan breakfast, we headed up into the High Atlas, driving over Tichka Pass, a winding and sometimes rather terrifying but now nearly paved road up and then down into the Dades Valley, one of the largest of Maroc's many desert valleys. On the way up to the pass, the desert gives way to trees further up the mountains as mountains have given way over the centuries to villages of reddish clay stuctures blending into the hillsides that are the same color. This reddish clay, immediately reminiscent of our own desert adobe, is mixed with straw and is called pise'. Many of the oldest structures are beginning to crumble as families no longer live in large family collectives called kasbahs. Nevertheless, those that remain draw the visitor into thinking about what has been lost as we witness what has been gained.
Our second night in Maroc was spent in Kasbah Asafar, a true family kasbah not far out of K'Laat M'goun and perched right above the enormous Valley of Roses. Six of us were supposed to leave the next morning on a three-day trek starting right at the kasbah but circumstances caused a change of plans and we packed up our equipment and other clothes, moving to Kasbah Awayou, further up the Valley of Roses the next night.
Kasbah Awayou, more popular with the trekking set, had a familiar feel for me as I watched the other trekkers prepare for their own adventures. Our 2-night trek was reduced to a 12-kilometer day hike at this point, but a day hike covering seven miles of river, irrigated fields, ancient villages and one absolutely beautiful gorge that necessitated a half-hour walk in water.
We began our hike trekking up to a plateau, led by our very experienced and knowledgeble guide Hussein, then over the rock to another valley where we continued to encounter locals of all types - people as well as livestock like donkeys and mules. We walked along the tops of embankments which held irrigation channels for the verdant and productive fields of barley and turnips and onion and other agricultural products, through villages much , much older than any of us. We finally came to the Gorge, a narrow red-walled place that reminded all of us of our own Arizona and Utah red canyons, the rock strata folding each successful strata.
We walked with a young Frenchman named Francoise, agreeable enough to trek with five women over 50 and one in her late 30s, one with a heart condition and one just having completed chemotherapy for cancer. Tough women. No whiners here. Nearly at the end of our trek, we said our goodbyes to our agreeable Frenchman and walked the last few kilometers back to our tour bus which whisked us to our present hotel, the Moroccan equivalent of 4-star lodging, the Xaluca Dades in Boumalne Dades, hanging off the cliff above the city. From my balcony, the lights of the city twinkle below while the stars twinkle in the dark sky above.
Tomorrow we begin our journey into the Sahara Desert.
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