Onwards and Upwards

Leaving the Zagora site.

…we can go back to the need to cross the High Atlas, and the question of “how?” We could’ve just driven around them, effectively, on the Route Nationale, but where’s the challenge in that? On top of that, we still had to visit our “target” – the village remote enough from anywhere that our self-imposed task of delivering a little bit of medical kit would make a larger bit of difference to someone else.

We 'd had a good day's rest in Zagora. A walk around the local area stretched the muscles a bit, and a very pleasant evening, sharing our beer with two German kindred spirits from Friedrichshaven who shared their last bottle of wine with us - what sacrifice!

'Hannes and Brandt - thank you for a great conversation! They were going south to Mhamid, we north to the mountains again...

So on Monday afternoon (7^th) we set out on a little-used route recently published by Chris Scott. It promised to take us across the mountains via some interesting scenery. We looked up as we approached from the sun-drenched, nay parched, plains to see lowering clouds, rain and on the upper slopes some snow. Not an appealing prospect but this is an adventure, right? We started the climb…

After several hours it’d become clear that we weren’t going to make it “over the top” by nightfall, so we found a camping spot in a dry oued at the end of an impressively narrow gorge.

 We’d normally avoid places like this since, in the mountains, you never know what’s going on a few thousand feet above you. A sudden rush of water at 3 in the morning isn’t going to help you sleep, and might well kill you. See below. Tonight, though, we found a place well enough above the bed that we’d have some notice of impending doom…we hoped, anyway.

It didn’t take long before we had our first “guests”. After that the number of casual visitors increased so that we became aware that far from camping in a remote spot, we were on the main thoroughfare between villages and fields, and everyone for a mile around was coming to inspect The Visitors.

 Jordan’s muesli bars always go down well.

Darkness, though, saw them disappear but not before we’d been made to feel like the newest exhibit in the zoo. We offloaded one of the First Aid kits to some locals who appeared, displaying a number of ailments that they hoped we could cure. This has happened a lot on previous visits to Morocco; luckily Sue has enough medical knowledge to diagnose most obvious things and produce something to help. This time it was burn cream and bandages.

After a very quiet night we woke to see a procession of folk, on horseback, donkey and “Shanks’s Pony” making their way up the oued to work, or wherever. Overnight the rain on the tops had produced a fair stream of fresh, clear water right past our bedroom. Not close enough to be an embarrassment, but easy to see how things can change with no warning. A quartet of riders passed us, and the last shouted out something that Mike heard to be “Have you any bread?” Not wanting to share our breakfast with 4 others he replied that we didn’t and they shrugged and rode on. It wasn’t until a few minutes – and thoughts – later that he realised the guy was asking if we’d broken down. The difference between “du pain” and “depanne” was lost over the intervening 50 yards…ignorant Brit! We caught up with them some hours later – they’d obviously taken a short cut!

Once back on the track and above the area we'd camped in, we could see the extent of the work the locals had done to produce fields of crop varied enough to display every shade of green imaginable. Not only that, the procession of people we'd seen earlier, some apparently dressed for the mosque, were all busy cutting, carrying or stacking. 

Moving swiftly on, and up, we were presented with one impressive view after another, just like on previous high altitude days. Each turn in the track revealed a new and unexpected vista that we just had to stop to photograph. 

 

...going up...

This route would be a nightmare in a group - it'd take hours to get anywhere with everyone wanting to stop to take pictures. Although it hasn't made the latest edition of the guide, it's well worth the effort to download the directions (even of the vital northbound start point is hidden in the blurb at the end of the notes).The climb was long, the track narrow, the air gradually colder, the altimeter slowly winding up until we reached the top of the first pass at 10,000 feet of altitude - a record for Elly, and with no mechanical problems at all. 

 

...looking back down...

We found a group of mountain bikers there too, gearing up for a spectacular descent, who’d been delivered there by a 4x4 tour company…cheating, in our opinion! On the descent we were surprised to see a runner, complete with race number, suddenly appear from the steep slope at the side of the track, jogging along, clearly pretty fit and heading upwards. We wondered what was going on, and later passed the reason:

Given the terrain, it makes our Mountain Marathons at home look a bit tame!

The road stretched back behind us into the last valley and the sunshine, but on down into the next one in murky gloom and snow.

The temperature dropped 12 degrees in minutes on this northern slope and the previously dry track was now a slippery ribbon of red mud. We passed through a succession of small villages with a population as sullen as the weather...

 but eventually reached our target:

The Headmistress

...and some of her students.

We found "our" village after a couple of false starts, mainly due to the fact that the centres of habitation don't always have a "You are now entering XXX" sign on the outskirts, and if they do it's often either in Arabic or mis-spelt so making it difficult to work out exactly where you might be. It makes you realise how effective the WW2 anti-invasion strategy of removing all the road signs in southern England would've been. Anyway, by 1100 we'd made it.The most remote village we could find that we could easily reach.

We'd thought about how to "deliver" our packages...we didn't feel comfortable with the idea that we could appear to be a pair of wealthy people playing missionaries, but knew the need was there...Mike opened the conversation with the Headmistress of the infant's school...

"Is there a doctor in the village?"

"No. The nearest doctor is in Asilah"

"Asilah? That's a long way!" It's actually over 70kms of tortuous, potholed mountain road,

"Yes, it's a problem, sorry! We have nothing here to help you"

At this point we opened our bag of First Aid kits and....

So, for those kind souls who could be bothered to respond to our requests for support, the results are plain. Well, perhaps not so plain as, as usual, if we ask for someone to pose for a photo they adopt a very formal face...once the shutter has fired, they're very different people. We left feeling that we had - all of us involved - made a real contribution to the medical needs of these folk. They were genuinely surprised and delighted that people so far away should care about their welfare. Thank you, on their behalf, to everyone who contributed either in support or material. 

So, out of the mountains and into the foothills - and the rain.