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| The Dry river valley we followed for a lot of the trip |
Took advantage of the
long-weekend that we got this past weekend and headed south with one other guy
where we had ambitious plans to hike from Todra Gorge, which we’d already been
to during our spring break road-trip, over to Dades Gorge, which we never
managed to visit on our first time through the area. According to google earth, the distance we would have to
travel was around 30-35 km or so, so we planned to try to make the trip in
three days. Finally made up our minds about actually doing the trip Thursday
night, so Friday was kind of a scramble as we packed all our stuff up,
consulted some google earth topographical images of where we’d have to hike
thoruhg, armed ourselves with some print outs of google maps of the general
area as directions and headed south for a good time.
Got down to Errachidia where we
jumped onto a chicken bus and headed west towards Tinghir. I don’t know how they got their names,
other than maybe packing people onto them as if it was a massive crate and we
were a bunch of chickens, because it was pretty crowded by the time we finally
pulled out of the station and started our way towards Tinghir. The ride itself was quite uneventful
for the first half. It was super
hot so felt pretty gross and sweaty after only a couple of minutes. Didn’t help that I had my pack on my
lap, but thankfully we’d bought some water before we’d left and it was still
cool, so we tried to lower our body temperatures by sticking them our
shirts. Worked for a little bit I
guess. Somewhere along the way, at
one of the stops that we made an interesting character got on, who ended up at
the back of the bus sitting next to me, sipping red wine that he had not very
well concealed in a black plastic bag.
Quite loud and on a number of occasions tried to convert me to Islam or
just entertained himself by asking me random questions like when my birthday
was or whether I was single or married.
He seemed quite excited and got pretty loud announcing the fact when I
told him that I wasn’t married. I’ve
never considered it before, thinking only girls got harassed about such stuff,
but it might not be such a bad idea to carry a ring around, keep some creeps
away when needed. It did help to
pass the trip though, which definitely lasted longer than was hoped and it
wasn’t until around 9:30pm or so that we finally rolled into Tinghir where we
then headed out to find, first a place to eat, and then a place to spend the
night.
We found food at a small
café restaurant place that was still open where we got some sandwich poulet and
jus d’avocat, definitely a good start to our trip. Once finished with our food we moved on to the next thing on
our schedule and managed to find a place to spend the night nearby in a shady
establishment that gave us our moneys worth for sure. We paid 45Dhs each and got a bare room with three small beds
in it, (one with a blanket on it and two with pillows, though we did end up
getting another blanket later) a small sink a towel rack that fell off the wall
when Christo hung his shirt on it, and a faded sign on the back of the door
that had a list of instructions for all patrons of the place to abide by
including, “no noise after 11pm,” “No alcohol in the rooms” and “no doing
prostitution in the rooms.”
Thankfully we didn’t have any problems with any of the rules and went to
sleep pretty fast. Chirsto refused
to use the blankets and pulled out his sleeping bag, but I just ignored the
spots and fuzzy patches and went to sleep wrapped in my blanket anyways.
The next morning we grabbed a
breakfast of omelets, bread, tea and some yogurt before finding the marche
where we loaded up on enough food and water to hopefully last us for the three
days that we’d be gone; bread, happy cow cheese, figs, chocolate, almonds,
sugar covered peanuts and 6 liters of water each. We went back to the café where we’d had breakfast and
ordered a couple more jus d’avocat while we repacked and organized our packs
and got them ready. Packed and
full of omelet jus d’avocat we grabbed a taxi that took us up to the gorges
where we officially began our hike.
The next several hours were spent
hiking in what we hoped was the right general direction, and eventually, after
a couple of wrong directions, where we had to backtrack, we made it into a dry
river valley that ran in the right direction and that we hoped would take us
all the way across, or at least deposit us somewhere not too far off from where
we should be. We were literally on
our own out there, and after a couple of hours of hiking we lost cell phone
reception as well. Fastest way out
of there in case of emergency would probably have been finding the nearest nomad
that we came across occasionally in their mud huts and tents huddled along the
mountain side with their flocks of sheep and goats and camels living off of
who-knows-what and getting them to carry us out on one of their donkeys. Not an altogether relishing thought
knowing the terrain that would have to be covered, which no doubt would not be
all that pleasant riding on a donkey, even if you weren’t injured or in
pain. We tried our best to not get
hurt. Hiked for most of the day,
stopping for a couple of breaks for lunch of bread and happy cow cheese washed
down with water and snacks of figs and almonds. with Further along, in the afternoon, we came across a small
creek that steadily grew bigger the further we hiked up the slightly narrowing,
now more rocky river bed until we finally stopped for the night in an area a couple of trees and a relatively flat, less rocky area where we decided to
spend the night. Despite the less
rocky aspect of the area where we chose to spend the night, it wasn’t very
comfortable and ended up getting colder during the night than we had
anticipated. After a supper of
less-than-fresh bread and happy cow cheese improved slightly with some figs and
mars bars we bedded down and tried to get as much sleep as we could. I can’t say that I slept a lot, but the
night did go by faster than I thought it was going to at first, so I guess that
means I got at least a couple hours of sleep before the sun woke us up.
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| Our awesome place where we spent the nights trying not to destroy our bodies on the rocks |
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| Quick break before turning back after the gorge rejected us |
Packed up and filled with more
bread and cheese we moved further up the river valley, only to discover that it
increasingly got narrower and narrower the further we hiked up, until it
eventually ended in a dead end gorge with no way through, except over the top,
which was out of our reach. We
took a break, indulged in a couple of mars bars and decided to head back to
Tinghir instead of trying to go back and looking for a different route that we
couldn’t be sure would lead us in the right direction. We established after the first couple
of hours into our trip that our maps were pretty much useless, so didn’t want
to try anything stupid and actually get lost out there without cell
reception. The hike back was
pretty straight forward, retracing our footsteps the way we had come the day
before, and knowing we weren’t going to run out of food or water now, we
definitely used up more than one days rations giving what we had left
afterwards to a Berber women near the end of the hike who we followed for the
last stretch back to Tinghir. It
felt good to get back to the gorge, especially knowing that we weren’t going to
have to spend the night on a bed of gravel again. We hitched a ride with two young guys in their Mercedes back
down from the gorge and got them to drop us off at our friend Ali’s hotel where
we’d stayed at during spring break.
Met up with Dylan and Guilia there and spent an awesome evening, having
tea overlooking the oasis, later cooking our own tagine for supper and messing
around with some drums and Berber music.
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| On our way back looking down to the Todra gorge valley and the road running through it |
Went back up to the gorges the
next morning after breakfast, hitching a ride in the back of a semi-truck so
Dylan could check out the gorges and shortly after that around noon started our
trek back to Errachidia and then northwards back up to Ifrane, which we reached
after about 7 hours of traveling in three of four different grand taxis that
each took us one step closer to our destination. Definitely a good trip overall, and well worth the sunburn
that I managed to get.
