To the Ziz

 Friday, March 13

After another generous breakfast, we loaded up to embark on another drive of six plus hours. We have left most of the urban part of our tour now, and are headed to the desert and the mountains.

The first rest stop of the day (Mariam is really good at timing bathroom breaks), was in Ifrane, a little mountain ski resort that resembled Switzerland, minus the alps. Chalet-style buildings, a European kind of layout. It was dead quiet there, the only snow left in crusty patches. But there was a souvenir shop, and we were hungry for souvenirs, it seems. We shopped. It was as much fun as we’d had in days. 

This is Morocco?

Next stop was in a high pass where there’s a cedar forest and a colony of Barbary macaques. The monkeys were hanging around roadside hoping for handouts, along with a few men selling peanuts to give to the monkeys. We might have felt bad about not feeding the monkeys, but a bigtour bus pulled up with a crowd of people willing to participate. 

 

Monkeys being monkeys. Note patches of snow.

 

We emerged from the cedar forest into mile after mile of barren landscape dotted with the encampments of nomads. We stopped for lunch at an apparently unused resort beside a lake. We didn’t go in, but climbed the small hill beside it for a picnic lunch that Mariam had put together for us. 

Nomad home. Their herd of sheep were nearby.

Melica and Bettyanne at picnic spot.

 

 

Amazigh (Berber) home. Mariam bought eggs from them.

We carried on, past more brown lands and past a huge lake/reservoir, to the Ziz Valley. If you look at satellite images of the Ziz, it shows up as a 200-kilometre-long slash of green sliced into the brown of the surrounding lands. This oasis is fed by the Ziz River that flows some 300 kilometres from the High Atlas Mountains. We stopped, along with a bunch of big tour buses, at a viewpoint to overlook this remarkable valley. Vendors tried to sell us scarves and caftans, but again, we were not good customers. 

Why look at the view when there are scarves to buy? Photo by Melica.

Our accommodation for the night was a family-run guest house in the valley. Our rooms were simple and funky, and the whole place had kind of a Southwest U.S. feel. We’re a long way from Fes.

 

I take it back. It's not at all like the American Southwest, not the room, at least