Friends – Morocco That Was

Bouiblane and Moussa ou Salah

جبل بويبلان

In the nineteen sixties, there was no paved road to the foot of Bouiblane. Today there may be one, at least part way, and perhaps the slopes have been developed for skiing. I believe that the French, during the Protectorate, skied there. In 1968, the way in, whether you came from Sefrou or Taza, was by mountain tracks. Streams flooded the pistes, rockfalls blocked them, and in the cold months, snow on them increased the danger of slipping off the road, and potentially down some very steep slopes.

Travelling from Oujda to Taza, Bouiblane is visible from the plains of the lower Moulouya, and, of course, from the air.

The long crest is particularly evident from Taza. Aerial view.

Bouiblane also is visible from the region of Fes. The mountain was visible from my rooftop in Sefrou. It was my Kanchenjunga, and Sefrou, perhaps, my Darjeeling. Not the ominous looming presence of Kanchenjunga of the nuns of Black Narcissus, but a friendly, steady presence. The mountain beckoned. It was impossible to resist the temptation to see it up close. Ahermoumou offered a belvedere and a grand view, but at the price of a drive.

Jbel Bouiblane and Moussa ou Salah from Ahermoumou.

Climbing the stairs to the roof of my house was far easier. In the twilight on clear winter days, Bouiblane slopes slowly turned pink, as the kestrels living in the city wall did a few more acrobatics before disappearing into their holes for the night.

And so we off we went, Gaylord Barr and myself, on one winter weekend, on the route de Bouiblane. I had been assigned one of the Peace Corps Willys jeeps.

Gaylord and I stop to talk with farmers on the road to El Menzel.

Strictly speaking I was not supposed to use it for tourism. And I was very good about that generally speaking. I used buses and taxis to go back and forth to my job in the Ministry of Agriculture in Fes, for example. The jeep would have made the commute much shorter and more convenient, but most of the time I read and enjoyed the commute. In restrospect, though, I wish I had used the jeep much more for touring my corner of Morocco. I never went to Erfoud and Merzouga to see the dunes, though I saw plenty crossing the Algerian Sahara after leaving the Peace Corps.
Gaylord and I set off with no good plan in mind. I think we knew that there was a forestry station or an old ski chalet at Taffert. It was probably mentioned in the Guide Bleu. We took some food and sleeping bags in any case, and made pretty good progress until the last 15 or 20 kilometers, where we began to encounter snow on the road. The jeep had off the road tires. They were not much good on snow. Coming around a long, deep curve, the jeep began to slide toward the edge of the road where there was nothing but a steep slope. Luckily I recovered control. From that point, we slowed down considerably. We also began to wonder how we would get back if it snowed overnight. We didn’t have a weather forecast, but the skies were clear, and, foolishly optimistic, we continued. It certainly would have been embarrassing to get stuck there.

Not long after the slipping and sliding incident, the road leveled out and paralleled the mountain crest. We picked up a local man and he rode all the way to Taffert, where, after thanking us, he wrapped his sandaled feet in rags, and made straight up the mountain toward the pass at the western end of Bouiblane, referred to as Tizi Bouzabel. A dirt road goes through it, and I imagine that once he was over the pass there was less snow and the going got easier. The sun was setting and it was getting colder, so we wished him well and he wasted no time. He was up and over before the sun set.

There was a guardian at Taffert, but the building, though substantial, was dilapidated, and there was no fire to temper the cold. I reckon it wasn’t used much at the time. I don’t recall electricity either.

A view from the cedars of Taffert, just before sunset.

So we ate and went to sleep in our sleeping bags.
The next morning was grey and overcast, and the mountain, covered with snow, looked a bit menacing. We were still worried about the road conditions, so we left early and returned home. There were no problems but we drove cautiously.

The next trip was with Louden and his wife, Ginny, and their dog, Pigpen. We didn’t get very far past Ahermoumou.

The track was muddy and snowy, and the streams, with enough water to flow over the crossings, had to be forded. I think we gave up when faced by more serious snow. Pigpen loved the trip, a real change of pace from his yard in Rabat.

That trip set the stage for the next. Don Brown, then an administrator, and formerly a Peace Corps volunteer in Oujda, had always wanted to climb Bouiblane, which he had frequently seen on trips back and forth to Oujda. Now we had a newer Jeep. Louden was there, along with a volunteer, John Paulas. Gaylord and I filled out the roster. It was spring and we started out very early.

Sunrise. Bouiblane is still in the distance.

There was no problem getting to Taffert aside from some fallen rocks.

Stopping to see if the road was passable.

I don’t remember whether we went on our hikes immediately.

I think Don, Louden, Gaylord, and John were set on getting to the summit of Moussa ou Salah. For whatever reason, I think it was weather, I decided that a shorter hike made more sense. I think I suspected that there wasn’t enough time. I climbed the little pinnacle to the left of the Tizi Bouzabel, directly above the refuge at Taffert, and was rewarded with some great views.

Looking east along the ridge of Bouiblane, toward Moussa ou Salah, from near the summit of Sidi Moumin

scan-110212-0029-1 — Looking to the southeast, Jbel Bou Naceur, the culminating point of the eastern end of the Middle Atlas.

The others soon found out the obvious, that the crest of Bouiblane was a very long slog, and only took them to the saddle between Bouiblane and Moussa ou Salah.

Clouds settle in toward the end of the day. Moussa ou Salah still far off.

From that point, they could see clearly that the summit of Moussa ou Salah was higher, but it was very late and they were tired, so they returned defeated. The next day it was foggy at Taffert so we returned home via the Sefrou track.

This set the stage for two more attempts, both via the Taza track. Louden and John returned. Maybe Louden will elaborate if he reads this post, but I think he or John told me that that they went up in moonlight. It is only about a three or four hour climb, so perhaps they witnessed a sunrise, which would have been awesome. It’s always great to be on a big mountain at sunrise and sunset. In the Alps, this is often the plan as you want to be down and out of range of the rocks that hurdle down the snowfields in the warming sun of the afternoon. If you ever experience the sound that these projectiles make, you will never forget it.

Maine people await the first sunrise in the Lower 48 from Cadillac Mountain or, much more rarely, Mount Katahdin. I witnessed a sunset from Toubkal, but paid for it, descending through a damp and cold mist.

I also saw a sunset descending the west ridge of Angour, and another from the summit of Tichoukt. One of my favorite sunsets, though, was from the summit of Pic du Midi de Bigorre, which resulted in a long, long moonlit walk down to a ski place in La Mongie. My companion and I were lucky it was a warm night, and the receptionist was surprised that we arrived at the nearly deserted ski resort without a car! We tried hitching, but very few cars were crossing the Col du Tourmalet that night, and none of them was interested in picking up hitchhikers in the dark.

france pyrenees pic de midi — Sunset from Pic du Midi de Bigorre. August, 1965.

In May of 1970 I finally got my chance at Moussa ou Salah, when a group of staff and volunteers took a couple of jeeps in from Taza.

The Taza Gap where the Rif and the Middle Atlas meet. The city of Taza lies in the valley.

The views from the drive to the base of the mountain were often beautiful.

Moussa ou Salah and Bouiblane from the Taza road.

Moussa ou Salah and Bouiblane in twilight.

We camped overnight and climbed the next morning. The views from the summit of Moussa ou Salah were nothing special. There was a cairn on the summit. Was it a burial spot for a local holy man?

Bou Naceur seen from the summit of Moussa ou Salah.

I think John Paulas and some Peace Corps trainees later climbed Bou Naceur, visible from the summit of Moussa ou Salah, probably in the summer. That must have been a long, hot and dry ascent. There is not a lot of water on any of Morocco’s mountains in the summer.

Morocco is such a beautiful country!

Bouiblane and Bou Naceur from the summit of Tichoukt

Saints and Brotherhoods

Americans sometimes regard the Muslims as if they all are cut from a common cloth. Of course, that is not the case. There is probably as much variability in Islam as in Christianity. Even in a single country like Morocco, a wide variety of beliefs and practices coexist and compete.

The city of Fes boasts one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the world: the Qarawiyyin. A center for religious studies, the school teaches Islamic law and religion. The Qarawiyyin has been a center of orthodox Islam since the Middle Ages.

morocco fes medina center — The tomb of Moulay Idris is under the large green tiled building on the left. The Qarawiyyin mosque and university are in the center.

Leo Africanus, whom I mentioned in a post on architecture, lived and studied there after his family fled Granada.

Adjacent to the Qarawiyyin is the zawiyya of Moulay Idris, founder of Fes, which contains his tomb, and a center for devotions.

enlight132-1 — An entrance to the shrine of Moulay Idris. Deep in the medina of Fes.

Like his father, Idris I, and like some of Morocco’s modern sovereigns, Idris II had baraka, acquired through piety or inheritance. A kind of blessing from God, baraka can cure illness or bring fertility.

The Islamic world, both Sunni and Shi’a, hosts tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of tombs of men and women whose holiness confers benefits to those who venerate them. The Saudis and other Muslims practicing extreme forms of Salafism abhor this. ISIS in Iraq destroyed every tomb they could find. The Saudis consider some Moroccan practices as idolatry and witchcraft.

Folklore and superstition do mix with religion, however, and some of the Moroccan brotherhoods, attached to zawiyyas, do things that seem strange, not just to us, but to their fellow Muslims in Morocco. On the other hand, some Christian sects in America dance with snakes. Who am I, a non-Muslim, to judge? The people in my photographs were often friends, neighbors, students, and co-workers. They welcomed me to their country and took care of me. I will be grateful to them until I die.

The tombs of saints come in all sizes and shapes.

enlight123 — Wood roofed tombs near Imouzzer des Marmoucha.

enlight131 — The shrine of Sidi Ali Bouserghine. Sefrou.

algeria sahara saint tomb truck — Shrine in the Sahara. If one circles it three times and leaves an offering, one’s journey will be blessed.

morocco my bouchta pano copy-1 — Moulay Bouchta. Pre-Rif, north of Fes.

Whether in the wilderness of the Sahara, the middle of a great city, the empty countryside, or in a village, many tombs and brotherhoods have rituals and practices unique to themselves.

enlight135 — Aissawa during the Miloud (the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday).

enlight133 — On top of Jbel Alam, for the moussem of Sidi Abdeslam Ben Mechich. It took a convoy of trucks to get the crowds to the top of this mountain..

morocco sefrou aissawa fire 4 copy — Aissawa at the Cherry Festival. Sefrou. The snakes were not poisonous, but they bit the dancers, drawing blood.

morocco moulay bouchta gunfire — Moulay Bouchta. Gun play before entering the shrine.

None of the scenes above were staged for tourists. Those in them are not of the same ilk as the performers at the Jemaa el-fnaa in Marrakesh. They were taken at religious festivals, or moussems. Indeed, few non-Muslims have stood on top of Jbel Alam in the Jbala during the moussem dedicated to Sidi Abdeslam Ben Mechich. I consider myself fortunate.

I have many more pictures from these events. Perhaps I will do a separate post on each if there is any interest, and try to explain in more detail what is happening.

The Pillars of Hercules

enlight117 — The Strait of Gibraltar. Looking toward the Mediterranean. The city of Fes is barely visible at the bottom left. Tangier, Tetouan, and Algeciras and Ceuta are clearly visible. Volubilis is slightly to the northwest of Fes. NASA photo.

woman 3 — I love this passage. A god’s view of the Mediterranean, as I recently commented on another blog. Too bad the rest of Wilder’s novel wasn’t as interesting.

Morocco might be called an outlier. Until modern times, it has always been a place on the marches. It has always existed on the edge of large empires, but it was never part of them. Arabic historians traditionally referred to Morocco as the place of the Farthest Sunset (المغرب الأقصى), where the sun set in the Atlantic, an immense, unknown ocean.

The Phoenicians set up trading posts in Morocco. They were more traders than colonists or empire builders, though in Carthage, in the middle of the Mediterranean, they produced an empire that rivaled and threatened Rome.

The Romans had client states in the north of Morocco, where Rome eventually took full control during the Empire, but it left most of Atlantic Morocco untouched. The Byzantines had only nominal control, and the Ottomans never got past Algeria.

Some Moroccan dynasties reached across North Africa and into Spain, but none were long lived. The Mediterranean world was focused on the basin of its sea, and had its own dynamics. Morocco had an inhospitable Mediterranean coast with mountains crowding the shore. Most of the country, and its richest agricultural lands, faced the Atlantic. Morocco was barely part of the Mediterranean, the world of the “sea between the lands.” Mare Nostrum, our sea, the Romans called it, because it indeed was theirs at the height of Rome’s power.

The natural continuation of Morocco is Spain, not the Sahara or the rest of Africa. Only 15 kilometers wide, the Strait of Gibraltar can be crossed in one-half hour by car ferry. The Strait of Gibraltar posed few difficulties for the Vandals, who invaded Morocco in Byzantine times or for the Arabs and Berbers who invaded the Iberian peninsula a bit later. Today it poses few problems for migrants swarming into Europe.

morocco straitsspain copy — In the distance, about eight miles away is Spain as seen from Morocco.

After the Spanish Reconquista, the Strait took on a new role as a moat, protecting from invasions, much like the English Channel protected England. It separated Christian Europe from Muslim Africa. The Spanish and Portuguese tried to establish toeholds on the African continent, but ultimately were repulsed except at Ceuta and Melilla.

morocco ksar esseghir bones copy — Burial in the Portuguese fortress of Ksar es-Seghir. This toehold didn’t last long.

morocco spain straits copy 2 — On the left, the tip of Gibraltar, on the right, Jbel Musa and Ceuta. The Mediterranean is in the distance.

Barbary pirates harassed European ships, but technology favored the Europeans. Now technology enables migrants, desperate for work and a better life, to cross cheaply and relatively easily into Europe.

As European sea power grew, the Mediterranean Sea became even more inhospitable. Morocco’s connections to the east were more and more by land, and there were no longer roads as in Roman times, but only horse and camel tracks until the advent of steam ships and cheap air travel put the Hajj within the reach of those with better means.

Trade continued via new routes. The British brought tea, and Queen Anne style teapots. But despite trade connections, Morocco became more and more landlocked until the twentieth century, when the French seized control and established a protectorate, a system under which the Moroccan sultan was relegated to a ceremonial role, while the French ran the colonial government as their own interests dictated. With independence and modern technology, the isolation is broken forever, for better and for worse.

When I lived in Morocco, I always thought of it as a backwater, and I suspect many Moroccans, proud as they were of their country, may have felt some inferiority. Important events in the Arab world took place in the east. Important history in Maghreb had taken place in Al-Andalus. The greatest monuments of western Islamic Art are in Al-Andalus.

None of this is said to disparage Morocco, which is a place I love dearly, but simply a recognition that Morocco is an outlier, and has been for a very long time. Yet another example: Morocco was one of the first, if not the first, countries to recognize the new United States.

If someone asked me where to see the ruins of a Roman city in North Africa, I would say, without hesitation, Timgad in Algeria or Leptis Magna in Libya. Perhaps I would suggest that they go to El Djem in Tunisia, and visit the largest arena outside of Rome. If western Islamic architecture were their interest, I would suggest going to Córdoba to walk under the superimposed, multicolored arches and through the marble columns of the Mezquita, and then go to Granada, to wander through the rooms of the Alhambra and the gardens of the Generalife. I once did that at night. The palace was dimly lit, and virtually empty. It was as close as I could ever get to Washington Irving’s vision. You would be fortunate, indeed, to have that experience today.

scan-110109-0111 copy — The Court of the Lions, in the Alhambra palace.

Still, there are virtues that arise from being off the beaten track. Morocco’s most important Roman site is Volubilis, a short drive from Fes, north of the Massif of Zerhoun, just a short distance from the town of Moulay Idriss. The Arab leader, Moulay Idriss established the first dynasty in Morocco at Volubilis, before building his capital a short distance away, partly from stones quarried from the Roman city. After the fall of Rome, it was common practice to reuse stone from the abandoned Roman cities.

tunisia kairouan minaret door copy — The base of the Great Mosque at Kairouan. Note the block with Latin inscriptions to the left of the door.

Today there is a large shrine devoted to him.

morocco my idriss — The town of Moulay Idris. The green tiles roofs cover the shrine of the founder of Morocco’s first Arab dynasty.

When I visited Volubilis in the late sixties and mid-seventies it was virtually without tourists, even on weekends.

morocco volubilis road — The road leading to the site was a dirt track, in the middle of wheat fields

One could wander through the ruins, step into and out of Roman houses, climb the forum stairs, and do it all in complete freedom, with no crowds to distract from the quiet of the place.

morocco volubilis forum — The forum. Moulay Idris can be seen in the fold of the hills in the background.

enlight102 — Emperor for a day. The forum at Volubilis. 1968.

Tourist facilities were limited to a tiny cafe that served simple, but delicious, food.

enlight114-1 — Dining at the little cafe, Peace Corps volunteer Gaylord Barr. Spring, 1968.

It may be different today when Morocco has twice as many inhabitants and the tourism industry has grown substantially, but then it was a place lost in time and space. The city of Volubilis, wrecked by earthquakes, quarried for building materials, seemed to float over the rich agricultural lands that surrounded it, a stone oasis.

enlight106-1 — Volubilis. The main thoroughfare.

One could wander through it, dreaming of the life and people of that ancient place, reflect on history and the passage of time, and do it alone, in the quiet of the countryside.

There were no guards to remind you to keep to the path. There were no tourists to jostle you. You were really alone.

enlight109-1 — Many houses had mosaics, a testimony to the town’s wealth.

enlight107-1 — This mosaic depicts the labors of Hercules.

enlight110-1 — Some of the animals that formerly were found in North Africa.

Volubilis was not a big or important center. It was an outlier. It grew to prominence just before the Empire entered its long decline. Still, to a young person, new to North Africa, it was a truly magical spot.

enlight115 — Main Street, leading to a former gate in the city wall.

There are many other places to see larger and better preserved triumphal arches.

enlight101-2 — Triumphal Arch. Volubilis.

There are larger, better preserved, and much finer mosaics elsewhere.

enlight111-1 — When wet, the mosaics show their colors.

There are spectacular aqueducts, great temples, immense baths, and fantastic amphitheaters scattered all over the Mediterranean. Volubilis lacks all that, but at Volubilis you felt and heard the wind, and you breathed the scent of the fields around you, while the only footsteps that echoed from the 2,000-year old stones were your own.

enlight105 — The Wind. Note that the modern labels were not in the best condition in 1968.

Traveling on fumes

france montpellier le peyrou night 2 copy — Le Peyrou. A public park in Montpellier where an aqueduct terminates. Lighted is the Château d’eau. The equestrian statue is of Louis XIV.

Traveling on fumes

In the early autumn of 1965, I was in a junior year abroad program in Montpellier, France, that is to say, the third year of a typical American college four-year undergraduate education. I had been been living at the cité universitaire, but the French regular school year was beginning and my program, coordinated by the Experiment in International Living, was about to place me with a French family in Castelnau-le-Lez.

scan-110127-0009-1 — Parking and the student dining hall at the cité universitaire. Montpellier.

I never clicked with my host family. I hope that they haven’t judged all Americans by my behavior. I’m sure that they were happy to get rid of me by late December. They were kind to take me in and care for me for almost three months.

france montpellier remi jouy — Rémi Jouty in Castelnau-le-Lez. Today he heads France’s air transportation investigative agency (BEA). In his yard.

There was a week or two between the two very different living arrangements, and the students in my program, eager to explore Europe, all went off traveling here and there. My initial goal was to visit a friend in Finland and my method of travel was hitchhiking. I had done a fair amount of hitchhiking in the U.S. and Canada with no bad experiences, so it did not seem unreasonable. I also had an interest in visiting college friends in Freiburg, Germany, who were participating in a similar program in Germany.

The day I left Montpellier, I hitched up the Rhône valley, and took a train to Freiburg.

I did not speak German, and was greeted with a huffy “Speak German!”at the Goethe Institute, while I tried to explain that I was simply looking for friends, and knew little German. After I found them, I spent a pleasant afternoon visiting the cathedral and walking about. It was autumn and the weather was gorgeous.

germany freibourg cathedral copy — Freiburg’s cathedral.

That evening I ate with the German family hosting my friends. Their little blond daughter Kiki conveniently found a photo of Hitler decorating her father, who had been a fighter pilot, and after the war became a newspaper publisher. I suppose that you have to be good and lucky to survive the war as a fighter pilot. I remember the poignant scene in The Ginger Tree when the protagonist has shipped out of Japan as WW II begins, and, at a port somewhere, maybe Singapore, she finally meets her son, the son taken away from her because he was illegitimate and her lover was a nobleman. She utters the hope that they might meet again after the war, and he replies simply, with soft regret, that he is a fighter pilot. Nevertheless, I have always wondered about that photo, and why pride would overrule good taste in showing it to foreigners.

My friends and their host were all going to Austria, so the next morning I had to decide what I would do. I decided that Finland was simply too far, so I grabbed a train to Basel, then went on to spend a couple of days in the Berner Oberland.

I stayed in Interlochen in a nearly empty hostel with two British kids from Rhodesia, who made efforts to explain to me how no one knew the real story of what was happening in their country. Their story was that of the colonists who supported PM Ian Smith’s government’s unilateral declaration of independence from Britain. Smith was a fighter pilot, too.

48332AC7-31F8-49FC-AE11-ADCD9670EB28 — Chapel in Wengen with Jungfrau looming.

It was 1965, the centenary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn.

switzerland wengen singrs — Wengen. A local group performs.

From there I hitched to Zermatt, over the Grimsel Pass. It was late in the fall and I was probably lucky to get over.

enlight83-1 — Zermatt. The Matterhorn pokes through the low , thin clouds and leaves a long shadow.

I spent a day in Zermatt, admiring the Matterhorn. It was October. The larches had turned color, and the forests were beautiful.

switzerland matterhorn 5 — The Matterhorn

After Zermatt, I followed the Rhône down the Valais through Martigny, crossed into France and stayed in Chamonix, where I took the cable car to the summit of the Aiguille du Midi.

france chamonix main drag — Main Street. Chamonix.

I strongly recommend that ride, which I got to do again a few years later, but in October, under early morning, clear skies, I was lucky not to get frostbite at the 12,605 ft summit. The view would have been worth it.

france chamonix brevent cable car copy — The Aiguille du Midi is the peak on the far left. The much shorter Brévent cable car, which climbs the side of the valley I am on, is visible.

Continuing south and west in France, I passed Grenoble and got as far as Romans. At that point, it was dark and I had about $1.50. Luckily my last ride left me at a kind of youth hostel, where I ate and slept for the equivalent of $1.20. The next morning, I bought a loaf of bread at the local bakery, and got back on the road. I still had more than a hundred miles to go to get back to Montpellier. I was a little worried, but confident I could do it that day.

The start was rough. The morning was clear and very cold. It was October after all. It took a couple of hours to get from Romans to Valence, only a few kilometers distant from each other. At Valence, I reckoned that I could look for rides on the old Route Nationale 7, which handled most of the north-south traffic in France, and once there, my luck immediately improved. The first car that picked me up had two Frenchmen going to Montpellier. The driver had never been there before. His sister had given him directions that referenced “l’œuf”, the egg, and he couldn’t find it on the map he had. Well, the egg referred to the big, marble egg-shaped square in Montpellier, which even I knew since it was the site of the municipal theater, a big department store, and a number of cafés, one of which I had frequented for coffee and games of pinball (“flipper”). I was elated to be able to help him.

enlight85-1 — The Three Graces adorned the center of the Egg. They are still there, but there is no longer vehicular traffic and the egg is now part of a pedestrian plaza. The cirrus clouds were real.

france montpellier loeuf la nuit — The munipal theater also faced the Egg. Y’a bon was a café I frequented with other students.

As we drew closer, I mentioned that we weren’t far from Pont du Gard, a remnant of the ancient Roman aqueduct that brought water to Nîmes. This is a national treasure and the French guys were interested enough to detour so we could visit it. I was in heaven. I hadn’t seen it, and it was far enough out of Nîmes, which is very close to Montpellier, to be difficult to visit without a car or a tour group.

france pont du gard 3 copy — Pont du Gard carried an aqueduct to Nîmes in Roman times, from springs more than 30 miles from the city. In modern times, Nîmes has lent its name to the cloth produced there that became known in English as denim.

In the sixties, one could still drive across the bridge that was added to the aqueduct in modern times, and, in fact, we did drive across it.

I have been back to Pont du Gard a couple of times since then. In 2000, I took my wife there at the end of a very long day. We started in Carcassonne, visited Maguelone and Palavas, had a great lunch of mussels in Aiguës Mortes, where we walked along the entire length of the city wall, and finally visited the Roman amphitheater in Nîmes.

france nimes arena — The arena in Nîmes. It held 20,000 people and it could be emptied in 15 minutes through entrances and exits designed so that the different social classes wouldn’t have to mix.

Nîmes and Arles both have arenas, which are still in use, and the region is full of Roman ruins. David Macaulay used Nîmes as his inspiration for his kids book, City, which illustrates in pictures how a Roman city might have been built.

enlight92 — The Maison Carrée, a Roman temple in Nîmes that Thomas Jefferson used as inspiration for the Virginia State House.

The arenas are still in use. I saw a bullfight in Nîmes, but that was years ago.

france nimes bullfight 1 — A bull fight in the arena at Nîmes. The word arena comes from the Greek work for sand, which was spread over the floor, partly to absorb blood from the combats. Hence Ibáñez’s famous novel, *Sangre y arena*.

It was nearly sunset when we got to Pont du Gard. I thought Liz would have been exhausted by then, but she found the site so interesting that we didn’t leave until after sunset. Pont du Gard is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There was a downside. It was the day after Easter. I might have been smart enough to know what the “oeuf” was when I was twenty, but years later I still didn’t know that the Monday after Easter is a holiday in France. We had no reservations and drove for miles, late into the night, before we could find a hotel that had accommodations, and it turned out to be one of the worst I have ever stayed in anywhere in the world!

I should have learned a lesson about hitchhiking without money, but it was only a couple of years later that I found myself hitching back from Mexico where some friends had taken me to Ensenada.

scan-110117-0017-1 — The harbor of Ensenada, Mexico.

On an access ramp to the freeway in San Diego, a California State trouper stopped and gave me a ticket. It was Christmas Day, and I surely felt like saying “Thank you for the present, and Merry Christmas to you, too, Officer,” but I only had a nickel in my pocket, and could have landed in jail charged with vagrancy. A bit later, a car entering the freeway did pick me up, and I got back to Hemet, over a hundred miles away, safe and sound, the nickel still in my pocket.

Hitchhiking was a mode of travel that I relied upon for a while when I was young and poor. A childhood friend and I crossed Canada and went down the Pacific coast in the summer of 1964. In 1971, I crossed the Algerian Sahara, though that wasn’t strictly speaking hitchhiking, and traveled around West Africa.

At that time hitchhiking wasn’t easy in West Africa, but it made for some memorable experiences. Heading to Lomé in Togo, we got picked up by an American. When I asked him why he did, he said he worked for Cadillac. I asked him increduolusly, if many people in Togo could afford Cadillacs, and he laughed and replied that he sold armored troop carriers made by the General Motors Cadillac division, not the cars.

More on those trips later. My last serious hitchhiking trip involved traveling with an archaeology group to southern Utah, then hitchhiking north to Salt Lake City, then west to Reno and north along the eastern edge of the Sierras to Susanville, then across California to Eureka on the coast. That was in 1972, and I haven’t hitchhiked since. The eastern edge of the Sierras was remote and beautiful, and reminded me of the Middle Atlas mountains near Azrou.

Maybe those trips are worth a blog post.

Trip to Spain

1AA75078-597A-463F-B77A-33A17FAF9331 — Morocco to the south of France. Fes is to the north of the snowy uplands in the right of the photo, and Brive-la-Gaillarde is under clouds at the top center or maybe slightly off the photo. NASA satellite.

The Trip to Spain

If you’re a movie fan, and, in particular, a Brit, you may be thinking Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, but this blog post is more mundane and less amusing, and it also lacks the sadder, darker undercurrents of their comedies.

In a Walk above the woods I mentioned that Peace Corps vacation policy for Morocco volunteers was basically travel within Morocco, or anywhere in Africa, or Spain. Most of us had numerous opportunities to travel within Morocco, and, much as we loved Morocco, many of us wanted a change of scenery, and, perhaps, a bit more freedom. Algeria was officially considered a hostile country, so a visit there was out. That was unfortunate, because the Algerian people were friendly and happy to meet Americans, and Algeria is full of interesting places to visit. Airfare to the rest of Africa, or, to Europe for that matter, was limited and expensive. Spain ended up the place of choice by default. According to the Peace Corps, the cultural affinities and mutual histories made Spain a perfect visit. Some volunteers discovered even quieter and cheaper vacations in Portugal, but many of us went to Spain.

What you did in Spain depended a lot on your personality. Did you want to see historical sites, major cities, Islamic monuments? Lounge on the beaches, eat tapas in the bars, look for romance? Ski or hike the mountains? Appreciate art? Catch a recent movie? Spain already had an enviable tourist infrastructure, and the south coast had become an important destination for British pensioners. Spaniards were friendly and accommodating, and the food and wine was great.

And what you could do depended on where you went. Ceuta or Melilla were for duty-free shopping and a visit could be as short as an afternoon or an overnight.

enlight80-2 — Ceuta. Fishing boats. Monte Hecho in background

If you lived near these enclaves, they were only a bus ride away! The peseta was cheap, and the hotels were inexpensive.

spain morocco ceuta-1 — Ceuta. The harbor and town at dusk

Once in Spain, the possibilities were unlimited. If you were going to peninsular Spain, you could take ferries from Tangier to Algeciras or Malaga. You could also go to Gibraltar, but during much of my stay in Morocco, Gibraltar, because of Spanish territorial claims, was blockaded, and you could not get into Spain from the Rock. The shortest, cheapest route was Ceuta to Algeciras on the passenger/car ferry. It only took an hour and a half. Once in Algeciras, the train would take you north to any big city.

One summer I took my vacation in Chamonix.

france chamonix street mt blanc — Downtown Chamonix. 1965. You could still encounter Gaston Rébuffat in the cafés.

france chamonix statue — The Appalachian Mountain Club statue dedicated to the first ascent of Mont Blanc, the beginning of modern mountaineering. Of course, the Brits and the Swiss like to talk about the first ascent of the Matterhorn. A number of other alpine clubs contributed to this statue of Balmat and de Saussure

This was, of course, against the rules, but I didn’t care. It was 1970. Perhaps the rules had even changed by then. The downside of making stupid rules is that no one pays much attention to them. Most organizations, even the most benevolent, have a penchant for making stupid rules.

The French had a special program for kids and young adults under the auspices of the Union Nationale des Centres de Plein Air. You could spend a couple of weeks learning and participating in just about any summer sport imaginable. The French government subsidized it heavily. During the previous year, I had been corresponding with a member from a Club Alpin Français section in the Pyrenees, and he suggested that I try it. I love the Pyrenees, and hope to return while I can still walk, but I chose Chamonix over the Pyrenees (and other Alps sites), because, frankly, Chamonix was more historical (the place where French climbing was born) and more spectacular (the highest mountain in Western Europe, and lots of high, vertical granite rising amid glaciers). I spent a month there, something I could never have done on my very limited Peace Corps budget if I hadn’t been subsidized by the French Government. Remerciements à l’UNCP!

switzerland saas fee allalinhorn — Ascent of the Allalinhorn, above Saas Fée. Another nice thing about Chamonix is its location on the border of Switzerland and Italy. This is Switzerland, of course. The Valais is separated by a low pass from the valley of Chamonix. The border control didn’t even ask where I was from or check my passport. He assumed I was French.

italy mont blanc — Mont Blanc at dawn from the Italian side. Courmayeur is in the valley below. Far below! We got here, above the Val d’Aosta, through the Mount Blanc tunnel, and stayed at the Italian Torino refuge on Point Helbronner. I no longer remember what peak we are on in this photo. We did several easy climbs in the area.

switzerland alps me — My young self, Elizabeth, and Jean, French members of the cordée. The Matterhorn is off in the distance.

france chamonix lunch — Déjeuner sur l’herbe, alpine style. After a traverse of one of the minor “aiguilles.” I think the Aiguilles Rouges may be across the valley.

I will be forever grateful, too, and I am happy to learn that the UNCPA still exists after all these years. Thus I spent a month living with a group of fifty or so French kids, roughly my age, and I had a ball. It was co-ed, and we were housed in comfortable chalets. In the mountain refuges, when the weather was bad, we ate, told jokes, and played cards

enlight82 — The chalet in Chamonix, between hikes. We lived in a communal atmosphere, but most of the time we were outside. It really was a centre de plein air.

The food was fine, as you might imagine, certainly far better than French cité universitaire cuisine. This was a holiday in France! Would anyone tolerate bad food? Bon dieu!

enlight81 — Dinner in one of the huts above Chamonix. I think we were climbing the Petit Pélérin. Wine, bread, cheeses, and lots of good company. The sun is setting over the mountains to the west.

switzerland saas fee climb 1 — Above Saas Fée. In Switzerland.

Now if you are wondering what this has to do with Spain, remember that I was living poor and had few resources. I figured I could save and scrape up enough for the train trip, but fortune shined. Jean, a young French kid from Brive-la-Gaillarde, had been touring North Africa in his Peugeot 404, and was passing through Fes just about the time I was about to leave. He was hoping to find someone to share expenses and driving as he returned home. How he found me, I don’t recall, but there weren’t that many foreigners in Fes, and I worked there. He met someone who knew me and knew that I needed to get to France.

We drove up to Ceuta or Tangier and crossed to Algeciras. It was late, and we were tired and we spread our sleeping bags out on the beach facing refineries in La Linéa.

gibraltar air view copy-1 — Gibraltar. On the left is the bay of Algeciras, in the distance, La Linéa

I would not try this today when crime in the region is a problem. Even then, though it was summer, it was damp and uncomfortable and the lights of the towers and burning gas lit up the beach with an unappealing industrial glow. The next day we drove up the coast, taking time to swim in the Mediterranean before turning inland.

spain mediterranean coast-1 — North of Malaga. 1969.

spain mediterranean coast swimming-1 — A dip in the Mediterranean before a long dry day.

There were fewer roads, then, and even the main north-south routes were not very good. We skirted Madrid, and, after dark, pulled off the road into the stubble of a wheat field somewhere in Castile.

spain dawn castile field sleeping bag copy-1 — My mummy bag in a field in Castile. Dawn.

The following day we continued north, stopping briefly in Burgos to admire the Gothic cathedral.

spain burgos cathedral spire-1 — A spire and part of the facade of Burgos Cathedral. One of the best of Gothic cathedrals in Spain. Spain is a place of beautiful and varied architecture, but Gothic is not Spain’s forte. Much of Spain was still Muslim during the high point of Gothic architecture.

spain burgos cathedral knocker copy — Door knocker on the cathedral door. Burgos.

We crossed the French border at Irun and Hendaye. I had been there once before, when I lived in Pau.

enlight77-2 — San Sebastián Harbor, near the border with France. 1965.

france spain border Pic du Midi d’Ossau. 1965. — Pic du Midi de Bigorre, seen from the Spanish border. Note the armed border guards on the hill. It was 1965 and Franco still ruled. You can see this mountain from Pau, 40 miles away, at the end of the valley of Laruns.

The Mediterranean weather gave way to that of the Atlantic, and, entering the pine forests of the Landes, it began raining. It was now dark and wet, and we were exhausted, so we found a small, inexpensive roadside hotel that had one room left, but with only a double bed. Sharing a bed with a stranger was odd, but not a problem: we were beat, and neither of us had slept in a bed for two days. Outside it was raining.

When we got back on the road the next morning, we were fresh. For Jean it was the homestretch. Brive-la-Gaillarde was only a few hours away.

That day began with some excitement. The Peugeot was beat up, made a lot of noise, and needed brake work. About midmorning, we drew the attention of a gendarme, who directed us off route to a police station. The police, finding that we were returning from Morocco, were interested in whether we were carrying drugs, which we were not, and, after a short interrogation, they released us to continue on our way. The route continued through the Dordogne. I would have liked to stop, but Jean was tired and eager to be home. He had done his sightseeing in Africa. Once in Brive-la-Gaillarde, I caught a train to Chamonix.

I can never think of Brive-la-Gaillarde without hearing the Brassens song, Hécatombe, in my head. Its anarchist message resonated with my younger self, though I am happy that Brassens eventually made his peace with the police in a later song, L’épave. If you can understand French, you may, depending on your sensibilities, find the songs hilarious or offensive. According to Wikipedia, Hécatombe is now associated with Brive-la-Gaillarde throughout France! And, of course, every place in France has something named after Georges Brassens. Rightly so!

So that was another Peace Corps volunteer experience with Spain. The following summer I got a postcard from Jean, who was then touring the Middle East in his car, but we never stayed in touch, which I regret because I enjoyed his good company, and he really had done me a big favor. The train ride home to Sefrou was far less interesting and totally uneventful. But Sefrou was home, then, and it felt good to be back.

What goes up…

scan-110117-0044 copy — Montpelier le Vieux, on the causes north of the city of Montpellier, France. Erosional remnants create a “city” of towers, arches, and other stranger shapes. To repeat an old cowboy line from Bryce Canyon, “It’s a tough place to find a cow.”

Some people have a fear of heights, some of water, others of confinement, and so on. Luckily, I do not seem to have any of them. What I do have is a love of the outdoors and also of novelty. Therefore, as I discovered the mountain scenery of Morocco, I also looked to some of its underground sights. Caves are common where there is limestone, since they are generally formed when acidic ground water slowly dissolves the rock. Morocco has plenty of limestone, as well as the water to dissolve it.

Some parts of the Middle Atlas look much like the causes of southern France, just north of Montpelier, where scrub vegetation, la garrigue, covers the limestone uplands. A variety of erosional features are found there, including collapsed surfaces and caverns.

In Morocco, the karst topography of the area between Azrou and Sefrou is plainly evident in the several small lakes, without inlets or outlets, fed by underground streams.

morocco sefrou daia iffer tents copy — Daya Iffer, karst lake and Berber tents, south of Sefrou

morocco sefrou m atlas daya afrougagh sheep copy — Just south of Sefrou, Daya Afrouga, another karst lake, sheep drinking in the spring.

Springs are common, and sometimes they can be spectacular. The Ain Sebou, a large artesian spring which surfaces beside the Oued Sebou, is a good example. Diving into the cold, upswelling waters is an interesting experience.

Aïn Sebou. Notice how the clear water of the spring enters the muddy waters of the Oued Sebou,

scan-110115-0005 copy — The gorge of the Sebou, just upstream from the El Menzel road. The Ain Sebou is farther up the river, before it becomes a deep gorge.

The clear spring water tumbles over a small ledge into the waters of the Oued Sebou, which are usually colored by sediment from runoff, and the contrast, before they mix, is striking.

scan-110329-0032 copy — The Oued Sebou, where it flows out of the hills down toward Fes and beyond. The Rif Mountains form the horizon.

For anyone not familiar with Morocco, the word oued is dialectical Arabic for a stream. In the Middle East, the word is wadi, and is used for dry valleys as well as rivers. In Spain, you might note that some of the large rivers bear toponymes beginning with Guad-, a prefix that was derived from Arabic, such as Guadalquivir (oued el-kebir) or “big river”. Even spoken in different languages, the name sounds virtually the same.

spain cordoba bridge and mosque — The Roman bridge across the Guadalquivir at Córdoba. The great mosque, la Mezquita, has a cathedral rising out of its center. It is said that after having given permission to build the cathedral, the Emperor Carlos V visited the site and was so taken by the beauty of the mosque that he commented “…they have taken something unique in all the world and destroyed it to build something you can find in any city.”

In other places such as parts of the Rif Mountains, erosional remains such as natural bridges or even true caves give further evidence of water working on the limestone.

B3FA53D7-1758-4F27-8352-748A52C173C2 — The natural bridge at Oued Lao seen from directly below. It was big enough to walk across in those days, maybe big enough for a mule or small car.

enlight75 — The natural bridge seen from the stream, Oued Lao, far below. The water, emerging from springs, is crystal clear.

Morocco has not made much of the tourist potential of its natural caves, and most guide books only mention them in passing, if at all. Some of this scenery is just a bit too far off the tourist track or simply not grandiose enough. Nevertheless, living in northern Morocco, it provided plenty of interest to me and did not demand long or difficult travel.

The city of Taza sits in a place where the Rif and Middle Atlas Mountains come together, about 70 miles east of Fes. More to the east are the plains of the Lower Moulouya River, and even farther, the Oujda and the Algerian border.

Just south of Taza, is Tazekka National Park. Originally created in 1950 to protect the isolated cedar forest on Jbel Tazekka, the park was later expanded significantly. Within it are two sets of caverns, Friouato and Chikker. The latter are considered to be spectacular, but require specialized equipment and spelunking experience. The former cave, first expored by the famous French caver, Norbert Casteret, was developed by the French for tourism, but by 1969 had pretty much fallen into disrepair. It extends several kilometers.

The terrain between Sefrou and the highlands south of Taza, is relatively low. One June evening as I sat on my roof in Sefrou the flashes of lightning from a big storm over Taza repeatedly lit up the mountain skyline. It was much too far to hear the thunder, and there was no rain in Sefrou, but the light show was spectacular.

One Saturday I set off with a couple of PCV architects from Fes to visit the Friouato Caverns. I don’t recall that the drive from Taza was very long, and you exit it on a high plateau surrounded by hills.

morocco m atlas taza spelunking — These wide stairs lead up to a small entrance. They remind me a little of the entrance to the morlocks domain in The Time Machine. A portal to another world. The stalwart Willys Jeep is parked on the right.

Once at the entrance of the Friouato Caves, we found some rather plain and worn concrete steps leading down to a balcony looking into the first chamber which was about 400 feet deep.

morocco taza cave — This was the entrance in 1969 or 1970. Steps take you to a kind of window into the first chamber, lit by an *aven* (circular opening).

taza. collapsed roof — The *aven*, created by collapse of the roof. On hundred feet across, it illuminates the first chamber.

The room was illuminated by a huge aven about 100 feet wide. The view was impressive, but we had to ask ourselves: Should we go further?

scan-110122-0072 copy — Friouato. The stone steps lead to iron steps fastened to the wall of the chamber. The bright spot is sunlight from the *aven* illuminating the wall below.

Descent into this deep pit was by iron steps that the French had secured to the wall. We tested them, and took a chance, slowly descending. The only life we saw was an owl that we flushed from a crevice in the mossy wall. Finally at the bottom, the aven was now just a small light, far above us.

morocco taza cave 2 copy — The *aven* illuminating the first chamber from below, but not yet at the bottom. I have another picture from the bottom where it is smaller. The chamber was 400 feet deep.

We searched for a passage, and found one. With our headlights now on, we descended through a hole down dilapidated wooden ladders through rooms with seemingly bottomless pools. There was no noise, except for dripping water. There were few stalactites and stalagmites, but the rooms were mysterious and interesting. We only stopped when it was clear that our headlamps were dimming. We had no exact idea of how far we had gone, but as we had no extra batteries, we hurried out. We had no map with us, and didn’t have any clue as to how huge the cave system was.

morocco taza caving — At the surface, in the afternoon. My architect friend Dave and myself have just emerged.

The other cave I visited was Kef el-Ghar, which was in hilly land north of Taza, on the edge of the Rif mountains. From the distance, Kef el-Ghar is a dark elongated indentation in a mountain side. Entering it, we followed a rising, sandy path. At some point, we could feel bats flapping about, and, shortly after, I was disturbed to see a footprint of an animal, probably a dog or jackal. What was it doing, hundreds of feet into this cave, without any light to guide it? Despite the paw print, we saw no animals. The cave floor climbed and eventually we could feel the flow of air. After a narrow, winding passage, we emerged on the opposite side of the mountain. The cave pierced it!

On a dumber note, on the trip to Friouato described above, a dashboard light indicated an electrical problem. I ignored it. So driving in the dark, mostly empty road between Taza and Fes, the old Willis Jeep abruptly stopped, and could not be started. The battery was dead. The problem was the alternator, and, without a charged battery, there was nothing to do. One of us had to hitch to Fes, about 45 miles away, find a tow truck, and have us towed back to Fes. It must have been 5 am when we got to Fes. That jeep was incredibly rugged and dependable, but when it needed an alternator, I didn’t listen, and paid the price. In 1968, it cost about $20 dollars to get towed all the way to Fes!

scan-110108-0037 — Taza, in the twilight, looking North. The Rif mountains are in the distance. Taza is the choke point between the eastern plains and Algeria, and the rest of Morocco. If you invade Morocco by land, you must control Taza.

Look Back at Angour

morocco high atlas touring 1morocco high atlas touring 2 — Tableau d’oriention à Oukaimeden

About 50 miles from Marrakech, about 8,500 feet up in a small, shallow High Atlas valley, sits the ski resort of Oukaimeden.

morocco high atlas ouka pano 2 — The ski center of Oukaimeden, 1976, from Angour

Developed by the French when France exercised political and economic control of Morocco, Oukaimeden appears to have languished despite a dramatic setting and special assets.

morocco high atlas ouka — Main ski trails, main lift goes to top at 10,500 feet

Part of the problem may be that it is a little too far from the major population centers, and its trails too challenging.

Only an hour from Fes and Meknes, and only about four hours from Rabat, the Middle Atlas resort of Michliffen and Jbel Henri offer convenience as well as easy trails in a stately, old-growth cedar forest populated year-round by monkeys.

The Middle Atlas is the popular choice for Moroccan skiers. Only in Casablanca, about midway between the two resorts, might the question arise which way one should go.

scan-110130-0013 copy — Slope at Michliffen

morocco michliffen cedar — Atlas Cedar after snow and thaw

morocco michliffen gaylord skiing — Café at Michliffen

morocco michliffen holbrooke — The late Dick Holbrooke and family at Michliffen in 1970

Bouiblane, also in the Middle Atlas, offers more downhill possibilities and snow, but hasn’t really been developed.

morocco bouiblane from ahermoumou — Bouiblane after a winter snowfall, from Ahermoumou

Access to Bouiblane, whether through Sefrou or Taza, remains difficult, however.

morocco m atlas route de bouiblane copy-1 — Crossing a stream, PigPen peers out. An easier part of access to Bouiblane from Sefrou

In fact, much of the foreign interest in skiing centers on touring in the high mountains, a sport for those who are very fit and know what they are doing.

morocco h alas ouka lift — Chair lift at Oukaimeden

I don’t know the exact state of Oukaimeden today. An internet site reported that a Gulf company had proposed a major renovation, with better accommodations, better trails and snow-making equipment, and more lifts. That would certainly improve it, but the question remains: from where would the skiers come?

When I visited Oukaimeden for the first time in 1973, it was early spring. I was traveling with a Binghamton University professor, Dick Moench, who was a skier, and he did not hesitate to take the chair lift to the 10,500-foot-high summit. He made his way down on old, rented equipment, which was a tribute to his athletic ability. It was late in the season, and the trails were rocky.

morocco high atlas ouka moench — Dick Moench on top, ready to try out his rental skis, March 1973

scan-110202-0040 copy — Dick Moench paused for a photo. Note the bare patches

At that time, the main lodging there was the 160-room Club Alpin Français facility which had been built by the Casablanca section of CAF during the Protectorate. Oukaimeden offers challenging skiing. The 10,500-foot-high chair lift was and still is, I believe, the highest in Africa.

morocco high atlas angour ouka — Angour, from Oukaimeden. The long west ridge is an easy descent

A few years later I came back a few times to hike. Directly facing the resort rises Jbel Angour. Angour is a walk up, and the easy descent via the west ridge offers great views. The standard route, when there is not too much snow, uses a diagonally ascending ledge as opposed to one of the gullies.

scan-110326-0002 copy — This diagonal ledge is an easy way to the summit of Angour, providing that there is not too much snow on it

morocco high atlas aksoual — Aksoual views from Angour

morocco h atlas angour w ridge dan — Dan Butler, on descent of west ridge

morocco high atlas angour w ridge — Sunset from west ridge of Angour

More About the Merinids

enlight71 — An old man, resting in one of the Qarawiyyin Mosque doors. The Merinids did not build Fes, but they made it their capital.

The Merinids created one of the dynasties that a contemporary, Ibn Khaldun, was surely writing about in his Muquddimah. As the Almohads lost the confidence of their supporters and allies, the Merinids waited in the wings with fresh energy. By the end of the Almohad dynasty, Al Andalous had been reduced to the Nasirid kingdom of Granada. The Merinids took in the refugees from Spain, but confined their interests mostly to Africa. They made Fes their capital, but left their mark across North Africa.

The Almohads (and the dynasty before them, the Almoravids) were Berbers who came out of the Atlas, full of religious fervor and zeal, to establish themselves as rulers of Morocco and cross the straits to intervene in Spain. The birthplace of the Almohads, whose name derives from the oneness of God, is near Tinmel on the road to Tizi n Test in the High Atlas. Today Tinmel is nothing but a village, but it boasts the ruins of a beautiful mosque from Almohad times.

morocco high atlas tinmel river-1 — The mosque at Tinmel

morocco high atlas tinmel — On the road to Tizi n Test and the Souss

morocco high atlas tinmel mihrab ruins-1 — Camel thorn blocks this entry door. The mihrab is visible

morocco high atlas tinmel mihrab — The mihrab at Tinmel

morocco high atlas tinmel arch — Decoration on an arch at Tinmel

The Almohads left an indelible architectural imprint on Morocco. They built the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech, famous for its minaret, as well as two other massive minarets, modeled after it: the unfinished Tour Hassan in Rabat, and the Giralda Tower in Sevilla, Spain.

scan-110326-0022 copy — The Koutoubia minaret. Approaching Marrakech from any direction, the Koutoubia can be seen for miles and dominates the old city

morocco rabat tour hassan — Decoration on one side of the Tour Hassan minaret

spain sevilla la giralda — The Giralda Tower in Sevilla. Note the fine decoration. The minaret now serves as a bell tower for the cathedral

All are noted for their proportions and fine decoration as well as their size: each is large enough inside for a ramp that would allow a horse to be ridden to the top. The Giralda, in my opinion, was not improved by the Renaissance bell tower, added to grace the cathedral that replaced the grand mosque.

The Tour Hassan was never finished, nor was the mosque it was supposed to serve, and the latter was further damaged in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Nearly 50 meters high, the Tour Hassan was for many years one of the highest structures in Rabat.

scan-110206-0019 copy — Little remains of the huge mosque beside the Tour Hassan, which, like the minaret, was never completed

When I first visited it in 1968, there were no barriers on the top, and one could sit, if one dared, with feet dangling over the edge.

morocco rabata tour mark barr — No fence, just a 50 meter drop. But what a view! Sale is across the river in the background. The minaret far in the distance is from the Almohads’ predecessors, the Almoravids.

morocco qoudaia casbah tour hassan pano copy — There is no finer view of the Ouidayas. Walk through the cemetery out to the end of the jetty, and experience the Atlantic surf. The Ouidayas constituted the chief settlement on this side of the Bou Regreg in Almohad times, and the name Rabat is derived from its fortifications

Unfortunately a rash of accidents and suicides led to erection of an ugly chain link fence on the top of the minaret. What remains of the mosque is simply marble slabs and ruined pillars. On the south end of the site is a newly constructed tomb for Mohammed V, a beloved ruler of the current dynasty, who led Morocco to independence. I wonder if he might have preferred a simpler tomb.

The Tour Hassan has stunning views of the Casbah of the Ouidayas, the Bou Regreg River, and the city of Sale. A fortified enclosure, built by the Almohads, the Casbah of the Ouidayas dominates the river as it enters the Atlantic.

morocco rabat casbah gate — The Almohad gateway to the Ouidayas.

6617C623-8414-46D4-A827-11B51D729B18 — The view from the Ouidayas gate across Rabat

Its massive entryway is another classic example of Almohad architecture. In March of 1973, I became severely ill in Sefrou, and ended up recuperating in the house of friends who lived in the Ouidayas and spent several weeks there. The Ouidayas has a small medina, and it had great south-facing views that attracted foreign residents. There is also a museum and walled gardens below the residential area.

On the Atlantic side of the Ouidayas is a large cemetery by the ocean.

scan-110206-0023 copy — The cemetery behind the Oudayas

Paths run down to the jetties that protect the Bou Regreg. People fish from them, and if you walk out to the end of one, you will be rewarded with terrific views of the Atlantic Ocean swells.

morocco rabat atlantic swell copy — A calm day at the end of the jetty. Beyond the lighthouse is a section of the city known as l’Océan

South of the Ouidayas, the Almohads created a necropolis with royal tombs, known today as the Chellah, on the slopes of the Bou Regreg’s valley.

morocco rabat chella pano copy — The Chellah, a Merinid necropolis

The site they chose was a Phoenician trading post, and later Roman site, Sala Colonia.

morocco rabat chella ruins 2 — Roman and pre-Roman ruins

It had already been mostly abandoned when its Byzantine governor, Count Julian of Ceuta, surrendered to the Arab general, Oqba Ben Nafi in 683. The latter is supposed to have ridden his horse into the Atlantic, calling for God to witness that he had brought Islam to the end of the world. True or not, it is a romantic image as well as one speaking to the pride of Moroccan Muslims.

morocco rabat chella gate-1 — The Merinid gate to the Chellah

Today the Chellah is surrounded by the modern city of Rabat. A wall, built by the Merinids, encloses the ruins of the various civilizations that occupied the site, and the Merinids further endowed the Chellah with a mosque and tombs, now also in ruins.

morocco rabat chella minaret stork copy — The minaret of the ruined Merinid Mosque within the Chellah. Storks winter in Morocco, and often choose minarets for nesting sites

The Chellah is an interesting place to explore. When I was there, there was a pool with eels. Women would come to it and feed them, possibly hoping for success in getting pregnant. Cats often surrounded the pool, begging for food.

morocco rabat chella pool copy — These kids are looking at the eels…

morocco rabat chellah barr cats copy — …and the cats hope to get what the eels don’t.

Rabat was also the home of Barbary Pirates who are often associated with Sale, Rabat’s sister city across the mouth of the Bou Regreg. Sale was founded by the Almoravids. I lived there for a while in 1973 with a Peace Corps volunteer and a Moroccan friend, Ali, who was attending the University in Rabat. Most people cross the bridge between the cities, but there is an ancient ferry service that perseveres and can save time depending where you live in Sale.

morocco rabat sale ferry copy — The Sale-Rabat ferry service, on the Sale side. The Ouidayas are across the river. The ride used to cost pennies

Toubkal

morocco high atlas touring 4 — Tableau d’orientation at Oukaimeden

As I write, the wind is howling. The weather forecast for the night is three to six inches of snow and a wind chill of -15 to -30F° (roughly -20 to -30° C). There is shore ice on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie is rapidly freezing over. Temperature is -20° C.

4423D14C-4A0E-4DE6-A09E-C3D9223AA7A6 — Toronto is across the lake

Sitting indoors, the weather outside invites us to reflect on sunnier climes, both here and abroad. I have been thinking about Jbel Toubkal.

As it is the highest mountain in North Africa, and, one of the most easily accessible high mountains on the entire continent, hikers and climbers flock to Jbel Toubkal. A short bus or taxi ride takes one to Imlil, a large village in the valley below the mountain.

morocco h atlas village sunrise copy — Imlil is below, in the valley. View is toward Tachdirt

Since I first visited Toubkal about 50 years ago, a serious tourism industry has grown up in this area. In my time, other than a stone dormitory building that the Club Alpin Français (CAF) left, there was just a village there, with villagers willing to sell you food, and muleteers offering their services to take you to the CAF huts of Neltner, De Lépiney, and Tachdirt. Today I see that a second hut exists next to the renamed Neltner, that businesses have grown up around Sidi Chamharouch, and that Imlil itself has holiday lets and lodging for tourists.

morocco h atlas toubkal sidi chamrouch copy — Sidi Chamharoush in 1969

Bemoaning commercialization would be mean and selfish. There is no begrudging the living that the locals can make off of tourism. Life in the mountains is always difficult, and tourism is a great addition to the local economy.

There is no pretending that Toubkal is remote. In the seventies, a motorcycle group surprised us at Neltner, getting all the way up to the hut with their large bikes. On the other hand, the hut was never crowded in those days, and, once out of the hut, one hardly saw other hikers or climbers in the mountains.

My first visit to Neltner was in the summer of 1969, with other Peace Corps friends. Mules took our baggage up, while we walked, a good way to acclimatize.

morocco h atlas aremdt 2 copy — Aroumd, looking up toward Toubkal

morocco high atlas asni area — Corn field in Aroumd, the highest settlement in the valley

morocco high atlas trail to neltner — Trail climbing toward Neltner Hut

scan-110326-0005 copy-1 — Group with mules

scan-110208-0010 copy — Trail to Neltner Hut, clouds over Marrakech

scan-110326-0013 copy — Neltner Hut in sight

morocco high atlas mule thistles — Mule eats thistles outside Neltner hut

morocco high atlas toubkal area — View up valley from Neltner

We climbed the mountain by the gulley opposite the hut, an easy walk via a steep scree slope.

morocco h atlas toubkal scree copy — Beginning of trail to Toubkal

scan-110326-0008 copy — Long scree slope up gulley opposite Neltner hut leads to shoulder and summit of Toubkal

John Paulas and I had fun taking giant, gliding steps in the scree, and made it down from the summit in no time.

scan-110326-0047 copy — John Paulas looking down the scree slope. Neltner is below, Tadat is on the ridge across valley

morocco h atlas toubkal sum ridge copy — Shoulder and summit of Toubkal. The west ridge route joins the main route on the right

This is the standard walk up route, and not much of a problem for a reasonably fit person in dry weather. There are good views from the summit.

morocco h atlas toubkal pano sw anti atlas copy — Summit view of Jbel Siroua, a 10,000 foot extinct volcano, in Saharan Atlas. Want an interesting hike? Do Siroua!

morocco louden ginny akioud toubkal — Lounging on the summit of Toubkal, in background, from right to left, Ouanoukrim, Timesguida, and Akioud Bou Imrhaz

The real dangers on Toubkal are snow, ice, and bad weather. In 1970 an ill-prepared group of embassy people had a bad accident, with a member of the Turkish embassy slipping and sliding a long way down the standard route, and suffering serious injuries. Skiers can face avalanches in the winter, too.

morocco h atlas toubkal w ridge 2 copy — View of Toubkal from Akioud

high atlas toubkal west ridge — Tizi n Ouanoums, and profile of west ridge route, from Timesguida or Ras n Ouanoukrim. Jbel Siroua in far distance. The three towers on the ridge are clearly visible.

The classic climbing route is up the west ridge, which starts at Tizi Ouanoums. I found it easy, and did it once alone, and, another time, with an Englishman whom I met at Neltner.

morocco h atlas toubkal w ridge rope 2 — Climbing the second tower on the west ridge of Toubkal.

scan-110326-0006 copy-2 — Setting belay on last tower, west ridge

morocco high atlas w ridge toubkal — Rappelling down last tower on west ridge

I do remember meeting a couple of young French climbers in Imlil on one of my visits, who complained in disappointment that the rock was rotten and that the route was not very challenging. I can understand that. The climbing is straightforward, not very exposed, and the rock could be better. With my limited skills, however, I found it enjoyable, and it is more scenic than the gulley route.

Neltner, at 3,200 meters, also served as a base for other trips: Tadat, Akioud, and hikes to the Lac d’Ifni. Tadat is a rock spur or isolated tower on Tizi n Tadat. Akioud is a ridge between Ouanoukrim and Afella that offers an easy traverse. The Lac d’Ifni is a tarn lake in the Massif of Toubkal, and is said to contain native trout. One simply follows the main valley above the hut over Tizi n Ouanoums, and down to the lake. Of course, if you don’t know where you are going you may have problems. I once stood on Tizi Ouanoums shouting at the top of my lungs to my friends Maya and Dan, who wanted to go to the Lac d’Ifni, but were heading toward Tizi n Ouagane! At least a thousand feet above them, they simply could not hear me, and there were no others on the route to set them straight. They only discovered their mistake when they found no lake at the bottom of the valley! Still they had a great time.

scan-110109-0070 copy — Trail from Neltner hut up to Tizi n Tadat

morocco tadat — Tadat, as sun sets, from shoulder of Toubkal

I ended up summiting most of the highest peaks around Neltner, all of which are easy walk ups. If you are thinking about doing it, go when there is snow on the mountains. They are parched and bleak in the summer.

Tadat. Cover of a special edition of the CAF Casablanca review, La Montagne Morocaine. I probably found this in the suq in Rabat. What a great piece of history.

I always wanted to climb Tadat, but never managed to do it, though my friend Jean-Michel Vrinat, and some other French friends with whom I climbed did it. Jean-Michel was a coopérant, who arrived in Morocco with a carload of sporting equipment (fencing foils, shotgun, etc.) which included climbing gear. I did lead this group, with friends Gilles and Sylvie Narbonne on a traverse of Akioud, which I had done by myself before, and I think that they really enjoyed it.

scan-110326-0020 copy — Akioud bou Imrhaz, from west ridge of Toubkal

morocco h atlas akioud gilles slyvie j m-1 — Traverse of Akioud. Sylvie climbing as Gilles and Jean-Michel watch

morocco h atlas akioud — Jean-Michel Vrinat in chimney on Akioud. Sylvie and Gilles watch

morocco h atlas akioud jean michel gilles-1 — On top of Akioud, Jean-Michel and Gilles Narbonne nearing summit

Gilles and Sylvie Narbonne, au sommet d’Akioud. 1977. Toubkal *à l’arrière plan*.

Akioud is an easy walk from the Neltner Hut, and, done from south to north, requires no rappelling. A rope for belaying and security is useful, but not needed for good climbers.

Finally, a trail leads to the third CAF Hut, Tachdirt, near the village and below the pass of the same name. I visited Tachdirt twice. In the spring, there was too much snow, and I think that we spent a couple of cold days in the hut before going back down.

morocco h atlas tachdirt copy — From trail to Tachdirt in March

morocco high atlas tachdert snow roof — Tachdirt after snowfall. Villagers clear snow from roofs.

A second time, we thought we could walk the ridges between Tizi n Tachdirt and connect to the trail to Neltner. We totally underestimated our physical condition and the difficulty involved. Having climbed from the pass to the ridge of Jbel Anrhemer, we camped out just below the ridge. I awoke sick the next morning. Climbing along the ridge, I became increasingly dehydrated, and needed water, which necessitated descending to the nearest snow patch (of which there were precious few—this was summer.) We ended up returning to Imlil, then walking the trail to Neltner, arriving in the middle of the night, in my case with the assistance of a mule for the last kilometer. What a day!

La montagne n’a pas voulu!

Holidays in Morocco (‎عيد ميلاد)

This article is about Christmas, of course, not the Prophet’s birthday, the Mouloud, which Moroccans, and most Muslims celebrate. This year the Mouloud fell in December, within a month of Christmas, which my wife and I just spent in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her brother and his wife. While there I reflected on the holidays that I spent abroad, though there have not been very many. Of them, the Christmases and Thanksgivings come to mind first, most likely because they involve iconic symbols, and childhood memories. Christmases also fall within a week of New Year’s Day, and often make up part of a larger period involving school semester breaks and intermissions, important in the lives of young people and probably producing more intense and lasting memories.

In Morocco, volunteers would often travel at Christmastime. The Moroccan calendar had all kinds of holidays, and accommodated as well as it could both Christians and Jews. Many foreigners still worked in the GOM in the sixties. If PCVs had vacation time, it enabled them to visit remoter parts of Morocco, or to go to Spain. When my cousin, who was studying in Angers, France, visited me in 1968 or 1969, I traveled with her and Gaylord Barr to Meknes, Rabat, Marrakech, and over the Atlas and across the pre-Sahara to Ouarzazate and Boulemane and Erfoud. Another time, I went to Gibraltar with administrator and volunteer friends.

gibraltar airport don eileen marty gay — On the Gibraltar runway, which had a grade level crossing for cars! Marty, Gaylord, Eileen, and Don. Franco blockaded Gibraltar in a dispute over sovereignty, and one could only get there by ferry from Tangiers or by air (we took a rickety old DC-3 from Tangiers)

Ceuta was still another possibility for those of us in northern and eastern Morocco.

Just as often, volunteers would get together in larger centers and big cities, where they were often numerous, and have parties. Those traveling would look up friends for places to stay and for good cheer. By the time I got to Morocco, there were fewer and fewer churches, and I do not recollect any volunteers going to them to pray.

Actually the celebration of Christmas and Thanksgiving usually had little religious significance to the volunteers whom I knew. Christmas had attained an almost secular status in the United States, and was, and is today, dominated by commercial rather than religious sentiments. Recently some right-wing Republican politicians have argued that there has been a “war against Christmas” by more secular politicians in the center. They point out attempts at what they see as “political correctness” as well as a more consistent effort to keep religion and the state separated, as the Constitution requires, though they do not see it exactly that way.

There is a real argument here over all kinds of issues, and if you are very religious you may be offended. My own opinion is that though most Americans are nominally Christians, government institutions should be secular. Am I making war on Christmas? I say Merry Christmas where appropriate, attend religious services, give gifts, and assiduously attend to the customs associated with Christmas. Do I care if there is a crèche in front of City Hall? Not much. And it certainly should not be there if it offends my compatriots.

Christmas is not the central focus of Christianity. Indeed, many early American religious denominations, such as the Puritans, did not hold Christmas sacred, did not celebrate it, because they considered it a pagan holiday. After all, it aligns with the winter solstice, which was widely celebrated in pagan religions of the ancient world, and it isn’t clear exactly when Jesus was born anyway. The real essence of Christianity, all true Christians would agree, is in the death of Jesus and his resurrection as the Christ, and the redemption of the sins of mankind by his death on the cross. Indeed, these very beliefs set off Christianity from Judaism and Islam. Though most Jews believe Jesus existed, and all Muslims revere him as a prophet the message of Judaism and Islam is elsewhere.

Christmas retains its religious significance for many, but in the United States today, as in the United States 50 years ago, Christmas is largely a children’s holiday involving family get-togethers, food, and, above all, gifts. I came from an Italian family, and my Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill would follow a Sicilian custom, though their ancestors did not come from Sicily, and serve guests a Christmas Eve dinner where seven different kinds of fish were offered. Those who were observan often fasted until after they attended Midnight Mass. Then one could eat and open presents, while relatives and friends talked and drank and often played cards.

The social aspects of religious holidays are so important, not just to Christians, but to Muslims and Jews as well as adherents of other faiths. I remember with fondness the kindness of Muslim friends and neighbors, who invited me to their homes for all the major feasts. Indeed, I think I looked forward to Muslim holidays as much as my Moroccan friends!

As a volunteer in the sixties, celebration of Thanksgiving and Christmas was dependent on mood and who was around or would be visiting. The first Christmas, having moved into the house in Seti Messaouda, Gaylord and I actually dragged a 12-foot cedar up the winding stairway and into the courtyard (where it touched the ceiling), and decorated it with homemade ornaments and garlands. The popcorn strung together in garlands eventually got stale and the hanging tangerines mildewed, and our Moroccan friends probably thought we were nuts or idolators. Only the cat really enjoyed the tree, climbing in the branches, and, there were no more trees after that.There were no religious celebrations, and I don’t remember exchanging gifts, either.

There was also a Thanksgiving or two when we cooked a turkey. One took place in 1970, when a couple of female volunteers, Ruth and Jan, were then teaching English in Sefrou. They lived next door in the house of the Hadja, a widow, so there was, with Jan’s boyfriend, a critical mass of Americans. Seti Messaouda for a while had a small American quarter within it, just within the gate. We invited friends, Moroccan and volunteers, and tried our best to put together a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Two ingredients were difficult or impossible to come by: cranberries were nonexistent and the turkey posed a problem. With more foresight we could have probably got the cranberries through someone we knew with PX privileges at the base in Kenitra.

Turkeys were a different matter. Turkeys were not common in Morocco. They are not part of traditional cuisine. They are harder to raise than chickens and less hardy. Where I lived, they were known as bibi, though in the former Spanish zone they were often called by the Spanish name, el pavo (from the tail, perhaps, as a peacock is el pavo real.) Turkeys have various names in the languages of the world. A late import from America, part of the Colombian exchange, the English named the birds after the country of Turkey. They were exotic beasts that merited an exotic name. In France, India was apparently more exotic as the birds were said to came from India. D’Inde became dinde eventually.

Whatever turkeys were called, they were not common. In Sefrou we were able to get one relatively easily, maybe from Fes, but, later, living in Chauen, I had to scour the countryside, driving to Ouazzane to find one.

Roasting the turkey also proved difficult. We had no oven, and, even if we had had one, it probably couldn’t have contained a large turkey. We decided to cook our turkey in the neighborhood ferran, the communal oven, where Khadija baked our bread daily. We always has a Muslim man kill animals for us so the meat was halal. The recipe called for basting it every twenty minutes with butter. After a couple of hours, the baker, the mul el ferran, said safi, enough is enough. The ferran was busy and it wasn’t helping his business to keep opening the oven and taking the turkey out. Luckily, with the hot temperature of the bread oven, the turkey was properly done, crispy and cooked through.

And so we ate turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and other dishes, and celebrated our American holiday with Moroccan friends. And what was left over, and there was a lot of it, went to the poor outside the main mosque, where excess food often went if Khadija didn’t take it all home.

The High Atlas‎

enlight52 — The High Atlas. Jbel Tazaghart

Living in the eastern Middle Atlas, the High Atlas beckoned from afar. Marrakech required a long bus ride through Kenitra and Beni Mellal or a trip to Rabat and then south to Marrakech. I never got to the Toubkal Massif as much as I wanted, and envied volunteers who lived closer. I did climb many of the peaks there, accompanied by friends, and even family. Perhaps as I digitize more of my old Kodachrome slides, I will get into specifics, but this post is a compendium of a number of trips and a tribute to a spot of the world that was important to me, the mountain named Tazaghart.

Today the High Atlas mountains are served well by climbing and hiking guides, but the main sources in my day were the Club Alpin Français’s long out-of-print guide to the Toubkal Massif, the curious guide book, Villes et Montagnes (a guide to cities and mountains, but nothing else), and topo maps. Today there are any number of tourist organizations that will take you on long walks and climbs. And there are good English language guides to the High Atlas by Hamish Brown and Des Clark. In my day, the heritage of the French Protectorate was a number of huts and a larger dormitory at Oukaïmeden, primarily for skiers. That may not have changed much, but I suspect all are used more intensively today. The route up to Toubkal is much more developed.

I have also noticed more young Moroccans climbing Toubkal, and it is nice to see they take that much interest in the natural beauty of their own country. Nature is always under pressure in the Mediterranean world. Morocco has more than twice as many people today as it had when I lived there 50 years ago.

One of the great charms of the place was that the mountains were empty. One seldom saw another human in the high mountains, and, except at Neltner, below Toubkal, the huts were generally empty. I was there at a time when few Moroccans climbed mountains and the French were still leaving Morocco.

Rather than try to assemble all my memories into a single post, I am limiting this one to Tazaghart, in the Toubkal Massif. Future posts will cover Toubkal, Angour, and some day excursions around Toubkal. As I find more of my old slides, I may add to this collection. I realize that they are of uneven quality, but in my day film was expensive and Kodachrome was beautiful, but slow. Exposure was often a problem. I do envy modern photographers who can shoot without running out of film.

Tazaghart

When I re-upped, I went home to the States by way of Paris, where I spent a few days. I went to Chartres to visit its Cathedral, I discovered that I could speak Arabic to Parisian waiters, mostly Algerians, who were delighted to hear their dialect from an American, and I missed an opportunity to hear Georges Brassens perform, for which I will ever experience a sense of loss.

But, in the cold and drizzle, I discovered Au Vieux Campeur, an outlet for camping, climbing, and other outdoors pursuits, on the Left Bank, not far from the Sorbonne. I invested in an ice axe, ropes, down clothes, and other paraphernalia which I thought I would need to climb more mountains. The memories of crossing the Pyrenees were fresh in my mind, and I wasn’t going anywhere unprepared again. The items that I bought got their first use on Tazaghart, my favorite place in the Toubkal Massif, and, later, more extensively in the French and Swiss Alps.

Louden Kiracofe and I had climbed Toubkal by the standard walk-up route in the summer of 1969, as part of a large group of volunteers. Now we would go to Tazaghart, and climb it via the Couloir de Neige, a steep gully filled with snow. We knew it had a bit of real climbing, and some steep snow, but we were up to it. Or so we thought.

Tazaghart caught my attention the first time I read its classic description: “Le plateau est un désert de pierres, plat, nu, vide, si haut perché qu’on n’aperçoit rien sous le ciel.”

A loose translation might be: “The summit is a rocky desert, flat, bare, empty, perched so high there is nothing but sky.” The name tazaghart is Berber and means “little plain or plateau.” What is remarkable is how high it is: over 13,000 feet. Most of the mountains in the area are lower than this. No others have a summit big enough for a football game!

morocco high atlas tazarghart summit louden — Un désert de pierres: the summit plateau of Tazaghart. Louden.

One has a good view of the Tazaghart from Oukaïmeden and Jbel Angour. At Oukaïmeden, the French put up a tableau d’orientation, which identifies most of the mountains in the massif. I have a better picture of it that shows Tazaghart, but I haven’t found it yet.

morocco high atlas touring 1 — The *tableau d’orientation* at Oukaïmeden

2A05FFA9-56D0-47D1-8D40-9700AF4D08AB — *Tableau d’orientation*: from Oukaïmeden to Tazaghart

You find these tableaus, usually installed by the Touring Club of France, now defunct, all over France and in many parts of its former empire. There is one in Fes, for example, that points to Sefrou and Bouiblane, among other places. Though you can see Tazaghart from Oukaïmeden, the most spectacular views of the mountain are from the valley below it and from Jbel Ouanoukrim.

morocco h atlas toubkal massif copy — Toubkal Massif from Oukaïmeden

scan-110202-0034 copy — Tazaghart, upper part of the Couloir de Neige

We traveled with Louden’s wife, Ginny, and an old school chum of hers, and stayed at Le Sanglier qui fume, a restaurant-hostellerie run by an elderly Frenchman, at the beginning of the road up Tizi n Test.

scan-110326-0040 copy — Toubkal Massif from Tizi n Test. Tazaghart is the large, flat area on the left

Louden and Ginny had stayed there before, after an exhausting winter drive over Tizi n Test, and had been charmed by the warm welcome, decent food, and the fire burning in their room. The owner was Paul Thenevin. Today the hotel is still there, but managed by his son. There was a boar’s head in the dining room, with a pipe in its mouth that puffed smoke.

enlight59 — At Le sanglier qui fume, 1973

It was June, I think, when I first went there. The weather was fine, and we drove to Imlil in Louden’s VW station wagon, and found some porters to take us to the de Lépiney refuge owned by the Casablanca section of the Club Alpin Français. As it happened, they only took us to an aluminum shelter much lower in the valley. I think the spot was Azib Mzik. The place was basic, hot, and stuffy.

morocco h atlas route to lepiney ginny — 1969. Ginny at Azib Mzik

The women must have stayed there, as Louden and I hiked up to the de Lépiney Refuge, which sits in a beautiful spot that offers views down the valley, and across it to the face of Tazaghart. We wanted to see Tazaghart. The walk up the valley was beautiful.

I think that we came back again to do the Couloir de Neige, I can’t say. It’s hard to imagine leaving the women by themselves below. So it was probably yet another trip. De Lépiney was an early French climber, and instrumental in making climbing a sport for all. He spent much of his life in Morocco, and, sadly, died there in a freak accident at Oued Yquem, a spot where climbers from Rabat still rock climb.

morocco rabat oued yquem — Rock climbing at Oued Yquem, just outside of Rabat. That was me in 1976

From the azib, the foot of Tazaghart is reached by proceeding directly up valley on a good mule trail. It follows a small stream through some ancient junipers, past a small falls, and eventually emerges above the tree line, in sight of the de Lépiney hut.

morocco h atlas tazarghart cabin louden — Approaching de Lépiney. Louden on mule. Top of waterfall visible

The de Lépiney Hut was comfortable. It was not heated, which was no problem in the summer. We left the windows open.

morocco h atlas lepiney louden windw — Louden at the de Lépiney Hut. 1969

Situated at about 10,000 feet, it was cold during the other seasons, but certainly preferable to camping in the snow.

In any case, late that day, we climbed out of the valley, up behind the refuge, for a good view of the Tazaghart face and the Clochetons de Ouanoukrim.

scan-110124-0054 copy — Face of Tazaghart at end of day, from above the de Lépiney Hut

Most of the Couloir de Neige can be seen. The only serious obstacle is a chimney, which, when the snow is melting, can become a shower.

morocco h atlas les clochetons 2 — Les clochetons de Ouanoukrim from above de Lépiney

It was late, and Louden had stumbled and cut himself on a sharp rock so we descended.

morocco h atlas tazarghart coulour louden 2 — Couloir de Neige. Louden

Early the next day we entered the Couloir de Neige.

Louden in the couloir. The snow was icy and we needed to make steps.

Once we entered it, we found that the snow turned to ice, and our crampons hardly gripped it. Louden had an ice screw, but neither of us had experience cutting steps, so we gave up. I really think it might have been too soon. I think we could have negotiated the chimney, and, once above it where the snow would have been softened by the sun, we could have continued. We had ropes so setting up belays was not a problem. I wish now that we had tried that, but I always remember St. Loup’s La montagne n’a pas voulu. Better to be safe and sound. You cannot count on being lucky. We left the couloir, and continued up the main valley to Tizi Melloul.

morocco h atlas ouanou tazarghart — Tizi Melloul. The summit plateau of Tazaghart is a short walk up to the right

scan-110208-0025 copy — The face of Tazaghart, from near Tizi Melloul

Five years later, I was back in Sefrou studying, and Gaylord Barr, my former Peace Corps housemate, showed up for a visit. He brought me a new pair of Reichle boots which I had ordered from R.E.I., and we went down to Marrakech to climb Tazaghart.

It was July or August. Marrakech was hot. In the USA, John Dean had just given testimony to the Senate Watergate committee, and President Nixon’s days were numbered.

Morocco Marrakesh Street — Marrakech, Summer 1973

Morocco Marrakesh Procession — Summer, 1973. Procession, Marrakech

We stayed overnight, picking up some supplies, and took a bus to Asni, I think, from which we got a taxi to Imlil.

Gaylord had been to Marrakech several times, and crossed Tizi n Tichka on the way south, but he had never hiked in the Toubkal Area. We hired a mule for the baggage, and left Imlil in the middle of a moonlit night, passing through sleeping villages on the way to Tizi Mzik. The only noise was the clipclop of hooves and an occasional watchdog bark. The full moon provided great views of the valleys and peaks. We reached Tizi Mzik by dawn.

scan-110327-0001 copy — View east to Imlil, Tachdert, Angour, Oukaïmeden from Tizi Mzik

We had good weather. In the summer, bad weather is rare. Just don’t count on finding water along the mountain crests. We stayed a couple of days. The view from the De Lépiney Hut is grand, with a waterfall, an expansive view of the face, as well as pretty views down the valley. I think one can also see the lights of Marrakech far off on the plains below.

morocco high atlas neltner waterfall — Waterfall at the de Lépiney refuge, Gaylord Barr

scan-110327-0003 — Valley below de Lépiney hut

morocco high atlas valley — Looking down the valley from de Lépiney at sunset

Everyone wants to climb Toubkal, but Tazaghart is much more scenic. If one has the time, it isn’t difficult to visit both areas in the same trip, and be rewarded with great scenery.

The easiest route up Tazaghart is up one of the several gullies that furrow the face. We chose one on the right, either Tsoukine or the one to its left. Or maybe the Diagonal. It’s a bit hazy now.

scan-110326-0048 copy — Face of Tazaghart, Louden, Couloir de Neige on left, Couloir en diagonale in center. We took the one to the right, I think

It was easy enough for a local dog, which we had been feeding, to follow us up to the summit, though the dog had to be resourceful to get around a few steep bits. Maybe we did do the Diagonal.

scan-110206-0020 copy — 1973 Couloir. Gaylord Barr. Dog showed real ingenuity

At the summit there were clouds rolling in, and thunder in the distance, so after a brief rest, we descended by way of Tizi Melloul fearing rain and lightning. We got a bit of rain, but no lightning.

morocco h atlas tazaghart gaylord dog 2 — 1973. Summit view looking toward Oukaïmeden

morocco h atlas tazaghart barr dog — Gaylord Barr and Berber dog, on summit

The next time, and last time, I visited Tazaghart was in the late spring or early fall of 1977.

morocco high atlas lepiney refuge — The De Lépiney refuge, Tazaghart

The weather was cold and wet, and I don’t remember climbing anything, but I did witness a spectacular landslide that involved some house-size boulders rolling down one of the couloirs, a good reminder that even easy routes may have unsuspected dangers.

morocco high atlas tazaghart landsid — The block visible in the lower left of the photo was far bigger than a house! That is rock and dust in the Couloir and trailing the immense block, and not a cloud!

morocco high atlas lepiney liz — My daughter, Liz, riding in *shwari* (Morocco saddle baskets)

On that trip we captured a dormouse and took it back to Chauen. When I left Morocco in 1978, a Peace Corps couple in Tetuan took the creature and continued keeping it as a pet. It was cute, but dormice are most active at night. We rarely saw it, but we always heard it scurrying in its enclosure after sunset. It was part of a menagerie of cats and tortoises.

Next installment: Toubkal

ثيشوكت

In the east, the Middle Atlas range ends in folded mountains that contrast with the elevated plateaus around Azrou and Ifrane. In the winter, from any elevated spot around Fes, Bouiblane and Moussa ou Salah dominate the southeastern horizon. Behind them, looming over the upper Moulouya, Bou Naceur is even higher. Access to these mountains used to require a long and rough ride, though they are easy ascents if one approaches them right (more on this in another post.)
Directly south of Fes, just outside of Boulemane, is a third, lower peak named Tichoukt, which I think means little mountain in Berber. At 2787 meters (a little over 9,100 feet), Tichoukt is close to the town, and an easy climb, requiring nothing more than good shoes, lungs, and feet. There are remnants of a cedar forest, and the area to the east of the mountain has now received a special status as a natural area.

We went up to the summit of Tichoukt three times. The first climb was memorable, because the soles on my boots fell apart. I had given them to Jim Humphrey, living in Rabat at the time, to have them resoled. The shoemaker put the soles on perfectly, but the rubber was so soft that the limestone tore it to shreds. I had hardly any soles left when we returned!

Louden Kiracofe was with me. We were disappointed by the views, which were limited by haze and clouds. We just went up the west side of the mountain, which is separated from the true summit by a little saddle.

Gaylord Barr and Karin Carter and I climbed Tichoukt in the late fall, but the best ascent was with Louden in the winter. We approached from the south side of the mountain, climbed to the saddle, and just followed the ridge to the top where there was a geodesic marker.

The mountain had snow, and the view at sunset was memorable. The snow-covered summits of Bouiblane and Bou Naceur were sandwiched between the setting sun and the clouds, in a terrific vista.

Al Maghrib Al-Arabi

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In the sixties, Sefrou had one movie theater, the Maghrib el Arabi, but it was great! On a hot summer night, the roof would retract, slowly and almost silently, and the cool evening air would pour in from a sky full of stars. I went to the movies whenever I could. I loved films, and, frankly, how many things could you do in a small provincial city where almost everyone went home to their families at night, tired from a day’s hard work? Not that the theater was an entirely respectable place. Now, whenever I watch the Italian movie, Cinema Paradiso, I’m always reminded of Sefrou, its movie theater, and the people I knew.

In those days the choice of films was mostly between Bollywood musicals and spaghetti westerns. Occasionally there was an Egyptian feature, beyond the comprehension of someone already struggling with Moroccan dialect, and, sometimes, a recent American movie, and sometimes a classic. I remember watching High Noon, which for me was iconic and for my colleague puzzling, and, In the Heat of the Night, a contemporary drama about the civil rights struggle in the American South. The big cities had a much better choice of films. I saw Space Odyssey 2001 in the Theatre Mohammed V, not long after the film opened in the U.S. Needless to say, the Western movies were always dubbed in French.

But that was Rabat. In Sefrou, I still remember hearing, through the front windows of the house, the sounds of young men walking home through the empty street at night, a darkened medina street lit by an occasional street light, whistling the theme music from A Fist Full of Dollars (https://youtu.be/9uFlE1cO8Fc), and knowing they enjoyed it, but also wondering what they made of it. It was certainly more a part of their America than mine.

Madame Mystery

I remember emailing Gaylord Barr, a Peace Corps volunteer who served in the late 1960s in Sefrou, some questions about Madame Mystérie. I was surprised that he did not recall that my reference was to the first missionary to come to Sefrou, in early years of the 20th century. Her name was Maude Cary (I have a little book about her somewhere, published by a missionary society.) Unmarried, she became known as Miss Cary, which made more sense to non-English speakers as Madame Miss Cary as she got older! Of course, I misheard her name Madame Miss Cary as Madame Mystery, mysterious till I figured it out. It seems that my Moroccan friends also knew her as Madame Mestiry.
Every one tries to take unfamiliar things and place them in a context that makes sense. Near the end of the French Protectorate, when King Mohammed V did not support the French and spoke out for independence, the French exiled him to Madagascar, then a French colony. For many Moroccans who had never gone to school, Madagascar meant nothing, and some, asked about the King, said that he was sent to see “Madame Cascar.” Madame Cary was a lot like that to us naïve Americans.
I think the last missionary, Mr. Jessup, left in 1969 or early 1970. He couldn’t proselytize, and he had nothing to do and spent a fair amount of time fishing. When I told this story to an old friend, Ali Azeriah, he wrote back with his own recollections, and they contain a lot more detail than my own, and his story is interesting.
“Now to Madam Mestiry. She too was part of my childhood. I was eleven years old, and I used to go to a school in Derb l’Miter. My family used to live in Setti Mesouda. At that time (about 1958-59) many Jews (the wealthy ones) began to move out of the mellah and settle in such districts as La Ville Nouvelle, Setti Mesouda and Derb l’Miter. So Derb l’Miter hosted many Jewish and Muslim families living side by side and maintaining good neighborly relations. Madam Mestiry, the American missionary, used to live in a house in Derb l’Miter, it being the ‘Beverly Hills’ of Sefrou then. She was well known in the Sefrou community, and especially among pupils my age and teenagers in general, including those who did not attend school. At six o’clock in the evening when we came out of school, most of us students would pass by her house, and there she would be standing at the door of her house with a big smile on her face. She would ask us to come in in Moroccan Arabic ‘Aji! Aji!’ (Come in! Come in!) And a whole bunch of us (ten or twelve of us) would walk in. She would take us to a large room furnished with many chairs, a piano (the first time I saw one), a cross on the wall, and a bookshelf full of books. She would make us sit on the chairs arranged for the event, and she would sing to us hymns in broken Arabic. I can still remember one half sentence from her many religious songs: ‘something (I can’t remember the word) will take me up to the Lord.’ After about twenty minutes or so, she would stop singing, and give us pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Then she would invite us to the kitchen and give us the thing we cherished most: French bread and cheese or bread and chocolate, one day French bread and cheese, the next day bread and chocolate. Hungry as we were, at 6 o’clock we would flock to Madam Mestiry’s house to be fed food which we had never had at home: Boulanger (French Bread), red cheese and chocolate. We did not care as much about the religious songs or the pictures as we cared about the food, which we, the miserable kids, enjoyed very much. One day my uncle, having found the pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in my satchel, asked me how I came to get them, and I told him the truth. He gave me a thrashing and ordered me to never go to Madam Mestiry’s house. ‘She will make a Christian of you, you donkey.’ I promised him to never go there again. But I did not keep my promise. I just could not resist the temptation of ‘boulanger” and cheese or chocolate.
My generation still remembers Mme Mestiry. I do not know any one (from among the circle of my friends) who converted to Christianity, but I heard of some who did actually embrace Christianity.
This is my story of Mme Mestiry. She was well known in Sefrou.”
Thanks, Ali, for shedding light on the mysterious Mestiry and the Sefrou that was.

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