Tinerhir to El Kalaa des Mgouna, Morocco, Thursday January 8th

I woke relatively early and while Keith searched for a shower and toilet that worked, I did a little blogging. I was still typing when he went out to buy some bread. As Keith walked along, two men were in his path so he moved over so that they could pass. They moved back into his path and spoke to him for a minute, but he could only say that he didn’t understand several times and then they walked on.

Once we were on our way with our packs, we were clearly tourists and were quickly joined by a man in a purple turban. He walked along with us, asking us what we were doing and where we were going. When we were nearly at the town he handballed us to a friend of his in a striped djellaba, hooded coat and he followed us to the bus station. He tried to take over our ticket purchase, but the ticket seller was not having it. We left our big packs at the office and went with the stripy djellaba man to find a ‘grand taxi’, which is a car (usually an old Mercedes) that operates like a bus, with an equal share of the fare for each person. They do not leave until they are full, and full means with six paying passengers in addition to the driver. We chatted to a Moroccan lady beside us while we waited for another passenger. She was rudely told to get out when two tourists appeared. That filled our car up and the lady would have to wait for another one. Before we left she came back over to say ‘Goodbye’ to us. We were taking the taxi to the start of the Todra Gorge and planned to walk around there and then back the 15 km to Tinerhir in time to take our bus at four o’clock.

It was cold when we walked away from the taxi towards the gorge. This gorge is spectacular and easily accessible to cars and buses so is on the tourist route. You can stay in hotels at the start of the gorge and even at some right inside it. There are stalls of souvenirs and work by artisans along the way, but the vendors seemed to be making a slow start to the day and hardly any approached us. A sign said not to swim or bathe in the river to preserve the environment but on the opposite side of the road, down at the river bank, a woman was doing her family’s washing. At this point the gorge becomes quite narrow, with the gap between it deep in freezing shadow. We put on all the clothes, hats and scarves that we had with us and felt sorry for people who were lightly dressed.

One of many advertising boards mounted on the wall of the gorge, mostly for nearby hotels and tour companies.

The road has been damaged by erosion when the river floods, with large chunks of it having fallen off the edges. Now and then we were passed by laden donkeys and their drivers, reminding us that this country is home to Berber people, and not just an interesting natural site. Rocks seemed to balance precariously on the edges of the cliffs and now and then evidence of a landslide showed that the enormous boulders do in fact fall sometimes. The narrow part of the gorge did not go for more than a few hundred metres, but we walked on for a while as the gorge widened out and the views became less spectacular. Palm trees grew amongst the rocks at the water’s edge. After a bit more than a kilometre along the gorge, we turned back, to be sure of giving ourselves enough time to walk back to town. It was great to be out and walking and we were quite warm in the sunshine.

The walk back to Tinerhir was easy since it was mostly downhill. We walked through villages where children often asked us for pens, lollies or money, always in French. It is not an endearing aspect of life in poor tourist areas that so many of the children are begging. Adults just gave friendly greetings. The fertile flats beside the river are covered in date palms, olive trees and farm plots.Known as the palmeries, they are very pretty and a perfect backdrop to the earthy colours of the houses. Some villages seemed deserted; sometimes with a new one right beside it. An old man dismounted from his donkey to lead it to the river to drink, down an access path close to the road.

We ate our lunch on a bit of a ridge, a site chosen for being the only one we had seen that provided a bit of cover for going to the toilet. Even that was not safe since I had no sooner selected a spot to go than a Berber woman decided to walk up an invisible path on the mountain, right behind me. The cold wind ripped into us on our eerie and, although the views and the picnic were great, we were forced to walk on to stay warm. Eventually we were back in town, earlier than I had expected, and either we had walked very quickly or the distance was not quite as long as we had been told. We had a cup of tea and watched a tourist couple with a guide. The woman was asking lots of questions in broken French and her partner was completely out of it until she translated for him. We could hear that the guide was making suggestions and that the couple was trying to decide what to do. It was all very familiar to us.

We had planned to visit the municipal gardens right in the middle of Tinerhir, so it was a bit disappointing to find that the gate was locked. Not deterred, we walked right around them to a broken gate and went in. They could be such an asset and are in a wonderful position, but they are sadly neglected and dilapidated. The swing set must have broken long ago, so long ago that even the replacement ropes to hang swings from dangled frayed and useless. A man slept on a bench beside a dead fountain, amidst the beds of weeds and grass. So many men seem to stand or sit around doing nothing and we know that unemployment is high in Morocco, so it seemed a pity that no-one had organised a working bee to fix up the community garden. Of course, I am speaking in the light of my own cultural background that includes lots of volunteer good works for community benefit. I do not know what the response would be to such a suggestion here, or if there are other priorities, far more pressing than a garden, that are being addressed by volunteers. We are certainly looking in from the outside on such a short visit.

We bought what will probably be our last postcards for Mum and our grandsons, and I wrote them while we waited for the bus. The oldest and the youngest, without computer skills, still needed the old form of communication that gives you something in the hand to read and keep. Mum’s card featured a man pouring tea, with the tea being poured into glasses from a great height and splashing everywhere, as is regularly the practice. Frey and Yonah’s had a kasbah on it, and I wrote lots of information that their parents will have to explain to them.

It was not a very long bus trip and was made most interesting by a fellow passenger who told us about the Dades valley, where he lived. He wrote some words for us in Berber, and Holly’s name in both Berber and Arabic, and gave us his phone number in case we came to his valley.

The town of El Kalaa des Mgouna is not far from the Dades Valley, and we arrived just as dusk fell. There was no-one to meet us, but after a phone call, our couch surfing host appeared. He took us to a café for a cup of tea and a long and interesting chat. During it he asked us about Australia, explained the historical and political reasons why Morocco and Algeria don’t get on, and asked whether we had been keeping up with the news. We explained that we hadn’t, and asked if he could tell us what was happening with Israel and Palestine. It was awful to hear the full story, and we were appalled at what Israel was doing.

Our host had a motor bike, so he walked us back to the bus station where we took a small van type bus to his place, at a spot on the road about four kilometres out of town. We had no idea where we were going and relied on the driver entirely. Once we arrived there, our host, who had been following us, parked his motor bike and we all walked up a path on a bare hill in the moonlight. Eventually we came to a Kasbah that was a modern chambre d’hote (like a motel) built in the traditional style. We were ushered inside. We had no idea why we were there or who the man was that our host was talking to. At last our host turned to us and explained that he lives with his father, who is an old man. They have had many couch surfers before and all has gone well. However, this time, in view of the war in Palestine, the father considered that all western foreigners were in support of Israel, and he had refused to have any of them in his house. Our host then proposed that we stay at the Kasbah, and said that the manager was a member of his extended family. While our host had handled the situation delicately and had sussed out our opinions over a cup of tea, we were suddenly hit with a change of plans that could have been explained to us in an email the night before or at the bus station. We had not investigated any other accommodation, since we hadn’t known we would need any, and so we accepted the room offered, even though it was much dearer than what we usually sought. Looked at from our host’s point of view, he had a tricky situation and had organised some accommodation for us at less than the usual rate close to his home. Our host left, saying that he would be back the next day and that he hoped his father would have a change of heart. This made us think back to the strange behaviour of the men in Tinerhir who had said things to us – were they also seeing us as the enemy in support of Israel and against the Muslim Palestinians?

Monayeem, the man in charge of the Kasbah, couldn’t have been more considerate or friendly. He cooked us the most delicious soup and tajine, and lit the fire in the dining room, even though there were only the two of us. The next day he negotiated a lower price for us with the owner, telling him that we were ‘good types’.