Trekking in Toubkal

Guess what today's agenda includes? If you guessed hours and hours on a bus, you have guessed correctly! Departing Ait Ben Haddou, we were in for six hours of driving to reach Imlil on the outskirts of Toubkal National Park.

After driving through breathtaking countryside and stopping at our usual gas stations or roadsides in the middle of nowhere scenic, we arrived in Imlil. Here we loaded our small overnight bags on to waiting mules and began a short hike up to Aroumd, the mountain village we'd be staying in for the night.

It felt incredible to stretch our legs and walk at a brisk pace, but I think my muscles may have atrophied from too much sitting because I was a swiftly short of breath and wobbly. Ack! Anyone who wasn't up to the task of trekking to Aroumd had the option of joining the locals riding the adorable mules up. A donkey ride looked fun, but I opted to use my own legs this time.

In the late afternoon, we arrived at our gite, which is a basic Berber style home with mud walls, group rooms and simple furnishing. After a briefing and tea, we were set loose and again, charged out into nature willy-nilly. Okay, less nilly this time as we remembered phones, life-giving water, headlamps and to tell someone where we were going.

We were immediately challenged by this chicken. He won.

A helpful little guide showing us the way.

Off we set through apple orchards to a rocky riverbed and up a mountain trail in chase of a glimpse of Mount Toubkal, the tallest mountain in Morocco (and North Africa).

It felt like being home and stomping through the Rocky Mountains on an early spring weekend. I'm by no means a mountaineer, but the more I travel, the more I recognize rough terrain and sweeping mountain peaks as home. And the more I recognize how incredibly fortunate I am to live in such a beautiful country, wild and free. Maybe Ang came to recognize how annoying it is to travel with a wildlife lover for the amount of times I stopped to point and yell "bird!".

At 4,167 m (13,671 ft), we weren't going to scale Toubkal mountain in a few free evening hours before dark set in, nor were we prepared to.

Made it this close to Toubkal!

So we kept a careful eye on the time and remaining daylight, promising to go "just a little further around this bend" before heading back. We also didn't have time to make it the full five or so kilometres to the shrine at Sidi Chamharouch and popular base camp for the full trek up Toubkal mountain. A rock gave us fair warning.

BIRD!

Getting the best view of Toubkal we could in the twilight hours, we started back to Aroumd to find our gite. Walking back in the dark along the floodplain was easy enough. Once we found the town and dug out our headlamps though, we got thoroughly lost in the winding streets. We did take a picture of our gite's sign and had memorized the name. Little did we know, they had recently rebranded so the locals didn't recognize the name.

Wandering up and down stairs, trying to find our bearings, we were soon helped by some local boys who showed us back to our gite. Man those mountain kids walk fast! I could barely keep up! But we made it back safe and sound with gratitude to the kind kids that helped us find our way.

We were in for a cold night's sleep full of snoring (I added my sonorous snorting to the group mix apparently) with a slightly earlier departure time than usual. The group decided to hustle down the mountain and start the four-hour drive to Essaouria early. Which was swiftly spoiled by a 45-minute wait for coffee at the cafe in Imlil. C'est la vie. La vie of the People of the Bus.