If there’s one activity that makes me want to move straight back to Morocco, it’s hiking. Of course, I suck compared to local nomads, who seem to fly over the mountains despite wearing crappy plastic sandals – but I enjoy it. More than that, actually, I love it.
So here’s what I do.
In the morning, I pack a lunch of olives, bread, Koutoubia sausage, cheese, raisins, and clementines. 2 liters of Sidi Harazem (no, not Sidi Ali, yuk) go in the bag along with a little extra kitchen meat scraps for wild dogs and cats I might meet. Then I head North from the hotel, scrupulously avoiding inquiries from the faux guides as to where I’m headed. I tell my husband where I’m going before I leave, and that’s enough.
After I get past the “mouth” of the Gorge, I take a sharp left, and head up a well-used donkey path. You go straight up for about…oh, I don’t know, but it’s high. Here’s a picture of some guy standing at the top, on what I call the “saddle.” I don’t know him, it’s just a good picture. See the road waaaaay down below? Not the light grey, that’s where the water rushes whenever it rains heavily, kind of like a wadi. The road is the skinny darker grey line to the left of that.
You actually have to keep on going up a ways past the “saddle”to get to the top, where you can look back South towards Tinerhir. This is the best place to see why they call it “la corde verte,” and also the premier spot for lunch. Food never tastes so good as it does at the top of a mountain.
Now, you can follow the paths over the mountain, and you’ll eventually swing back around East and end up in Tizgui, which is the village where my husband was born. You can see it in the photo below, the donkey path is winding along down on the left side.
The last time I went up, I left too late, and had to have a nomad show me a “shortcut” back to Tizgui. It was a shortcut that pretty much took me over the side of a cliff as dusk was falling, which was kind of nervewracking. I made it into Tizgui just as the sun went down completely, only to be welcomed by a crowd of relatives who had been alerted by my husband to come out and meet me. They were kind of shocked at the path I had followed, I think I’m finally an honorary Berber, albeit a slow-moving one.
I’m trying to convince my husband to let me go off overnight with a mule and my dog, but he’s having none of that. Killjoy.
