Villages Far From the Marrakech Express : Two Hikers and Their Berber Guides Trek High Into the Atlas Mountains of Morocco

In Paris, my home for the last four years, there is a propriety, a striving for perfection in grammar and style, a beauty and refinement and intellectual sophistication that sometimes becomes too much. Perhaps that is why I went seeking Morocco, a place where I imagined life would be simpler, rawer and more relaxing.

(And it’s true that my whole being relaxed as I walked down the steps of the Royal Air Maroc jet at midnight last May and felt the hot breeze of Northern Africa flapping the cotton skirt around my calves and saw the relaxed faces at the customs booths.)

Morocco is a country which I had feared and wondered about since I went to West Africa in 1980 and heard stories of how women traveling alone or with men in Tangier, Fez and Marrakech were hassled mercilessly by the local men who could not respect their unveiled state.

Twelve years later, a friend, Bob Edmondson, invited me to take a trip with him to the Atlas Mountains.

“Why the Atlas Mountains?” I asked.

“The Atlas Mountains are twice as big as the French and Italian Alps put together,” Bob said. “The peaks are as high as 13,000 feet. From what I can tell, the Atlas is as exciting as the Alps, but much less traveled,” he said.

Neither of us had traveled to Northern Africa before or spent time in an Islamic country, but we both wondered about the individuals and the culture behind the negative images of the mass of Islamic people that American television provides. We knew that Berbers, not Arabs, populated the Atlas Mountains, and that they farmed and lived in much the same way as they had for several thousand years.

Our feeling of excitement grew after reading “The Rough Guide to Morocco,” a standard for travelers to Morocco’s mountains. This book became our bible.

It told us that there are literally endless variations on walking the Atlas Mountains. Some of them require guides and others don’t. Guides aren’t necessary for a trek up Toubkal, at almost 14,000 feet the highest peak in Northern Africa. Situated in the Toubkal National Park, this mountain is the goal of 95% of people who hike in Morocco. It’s easy to get to from Marrakech, and the trail up the mountain is clear and well-trodden.

But Bob and I wanted to get as far away from Western life as possible, so we chose one of the many routes that do require a guide. We arranged our trip at the last minute, too late to write the Provincial Tourist Office of Morocco requesting a guide.

For those who don’t speak French, English-speaking guides are best obtained by writing ahead to the tourist office, whose personnel also will suggest routes and have provisions ready to meet you when you arrive.

We were attracted by our guidebook’s description of the little-traveled dirt track southeast of the mountain city of Azilal, which led to the village of Ayt Mehammed and on into the Ayt Bou Goumez valley. “The Happy Valley,” as the French like to call it, was appealing even by name. This small, sparsely inhabited, agricultural valley serves as a climbing base for the 13,000-foot peaks of the M’Goun, the highest mountains in Morocco outside the Toubkal range.

The flight from Paris to Marrakech took three hours. Outside the airport, we bargained with a thin taxi driver in a checked shirt on the price of a cab ride to the Semiramas Meridian Hotel in Marrakech’s new city. The final, agreed-upon price: 80 dirham, or a little more than $9.

We walked into the hotel and saw how standard and safe, yet lovely, it looked, how apart it seemed to be from the ancient Marrakech we’d expected. Our third floor room had a television set that our young porter immediately turned to CNN. (During our first night in Northern Africa, we watched in amazement news clips of Rodney King being beaten by police and parts of Los Angeles going up in flames.)

The sounds of singing birds awakened me at 6 a.m. and I slipped through the curtains out onto the balcony, where I found them singing from palm trees, bushes, and among the riot of purple flowers that filled the garden below.

After breakfast, we decided to see the old city before arranging transportation to the mountains for the next day.

Marrakech is in the flat desert. Across the street from the hotel, small hills and cliffs of reddish-brown sand cut up into the cloudless sky. The traffic was steady into town: Men rode in carts driven by mules, on bicycles and mopeds.

The sidewalks were full of women sauntering along in robes and veils or scarves. A few of the women wore Western clothes. We saw the ramparts surrounding the old city, the public garden full of big trees and a nine-century-old mosque, Koutoubia, which dominates the city and pulls people three times a day to prayer. In the square known as the Djemaa el Fna, four men seated on a carpet played music through wind instruments. Before them, a coiled, poised cobra lifted its head. We passed a dentist with a small table upon which were piled hundreds of molars. It was mid-day and hot, 90 degrees, we estimated. Unseasonably warm for May. We decided to head back to the pool.

The next morning, we decided to rent a car instead of making the trip into the mountains by bus. Abdul, the guide who had showed us around the old city the day before, told us that while we could rent a car from Hertz, Avis or any of the major American companies, his friends at Sisters Rent-A-Car, three blocks from the hotel, would give us a better deal. Abdul negotiated with the manager of Sisters and got us an old Renault for $300 for six days.

The highway took us out of Marrakech east toward Azilal, where we hoped to find a guide for the mountains. We passed villages with small clusters of pink clay buildings and stands where we stopped and bought fruit and soft drinks. About two hours outside of Marrakech, the road ascended into the foothills and the air grew cooler and fresher.

In Azilal, a town of about 20,000 people, we found the Bureau of Guides on the main street, amid the modern but run- down-looking buildings, but found it was closed for lunch. We looked at each other, sighed and slowly walked next door to the Cafe Tissir. Lahoucine Khallouk, 24, short, lean with deep brown eyes, wire rimmed glasses and thick black hair, showed up as we were543514996 The portly owner of The Cafe Tissir had told him we were looking for a guide.

Lahoucine, who spoke French, three Berber languages and only a smattering of English, listened carefully to Bob’s description, in French, of the trip we had planned, a circuit in the M’Goun chain. Lahoucine inhaled deeply from his cigarette, exhaled and with a serious expression said it was a thing which could be done. He named the price. Bob countered. Lahoucine turned away and walked toward the door of the Cafe Tissir. The owner came out and Lahoucine talked with him. Lahoucine came back and named another price. In the end, we agreed to go with him for 130 dirham ($15) per day.

Within 20 minutes of making the deal, Lahoucine returned with his knapsack all ready to go. He told us we would hire a mule the next day for $8 a day and that the mule would carry our bags.

The three of us jumped into the Renault and drove 20 minutes south to Ayt Mehammed, a small pretty town of dark pink buildings with green and white doors. Ten minutes later, I had my first look at the strong, impressive houses made of earth and straw that would occasionally and suddenly rise out of the valley settlements throughout our trip, several stories high. The sand-colored structures had flat roofs and small windows, protection, I imagined, from summer temperatures that soar above 100 degrees and from winter snows. The mountains behind were austere and stripped of greenery; in the valley, the thick fields of barley, the main local cash crop, semed impossibly lush by contrast, stalks bending in the wind.

The sounds of crickets and birds filled the silence when we stopped the car to study the distant, snow-covered summit of Azourki, about 12,000 feet high. Wide plains stretched out on one side of the road. On the other, the earth cut down sharply to a thin, silvery river. Men and boys wearing earth-colored robes passed us occasionally on mules. Lahoucine sang a song in Berber about a mother who has lost her child. When I asked him to sing another song, he refused, promising to sing his heart out, but only when we were walking on the trail. Bob tried the windshield wiper and the plastic arm fell off. He stopped the Renault 4 and held the useless gadget in his hand.

“The Mafia,” Lahoucine said, angrily.

The Berbers are the original inhabitants of Morocco. They have a history of antagonism toward the Arabs that dates back to when Arabs first arrived in the Northern African nation in the 7th Century and made it their home. Lahoucine was aware that the lovely young woman who rented us the car in Marrakech for $50 a day was Arab. “I hate those people in Marrakech,” he said.

Night fell. I stuck my head out the car window to see a billion stars sparkling in a navy blue bowl of a sky. No sign of a moon. The temperature had dropped and we stopped the car to put on heavy wool sweaters. Then we crossed a bridge that took us over a gorge and came in through the shadows to Douar Agouti, a cluster of earth-straw houses three miles from Tabant, where we intended to buy our provisions for the trip. As Bob parked in the courtyard of a home at the end of town, I made out the shadowy figures of three men, a woman, then some children, com ing out of the house. All of them wore long robes. The woman wore a scarf, but no veil. They greeted Lahoucine with kisses on both cheeks. He embraced the children and lifted a little girl in the air.

An attractive young man led us into a house he told us was a gite d’etape which, translated literally, means “shelter along the way.” We knew the French system of gites well from travels through the French countryside. We now learned that the French had exported the concept of government- price-controlled, clean, welcoming shelters for hikers here. For a suggested $9 each per night, we could stay in beds, dormitory style. The price included an omelet, bread, cheese and tea for dinner, coffee and bread for break fast. Manalai Ayt Abanali, 72, father of nine, grandfather of five, and owner of the gite at Douar Agouti, came to see us off in the morning. Sheep wandered around on the roof of one building, part of his 100-strong herd. His fields, he explained, were of barley, potatoes and wheat. He owned three cows and three mules.

When I asked how long his family had lived in this compound, he smiled, “Always.”

Two of his sons were French-speaking guides. A third son, Brahim, who spoke only Berber, loaded our backpacks and gear into straw saddlebags on the mule. With Lahoucine translating our French into Berber, we contracted Brahim and his father’s mule for $8 per day. Brahim would come along for the trip to take care of the mule, and, I later learned, of us. . By 9 a.m., Bob, Lahoucine and I were making our way along a stream at the bottom of the village. Brahim and the mule took another route, up along the road. In contrast to the desert dryness above the stream, the environment around the water was verdant. Onions sprouted amid walnut trees.

The Berbers irrigated, Lahoucine explained, by digging ditches and diverting streams through the fields. By day, they dammed the streams with rocks. At night, they removed the rocks and the stream flowed through ridges in the fields. We passed cool shaded spots beneath leafy walnut trees then wandered back out into the light of the blazing sun. A bright blue bird swooped down into the grass and three women passed by bent beneath huge bundles of wood.

“The women here work with their bodies,” Lahoucine said, in a thank-your-lucky-stars-tone of voice. “Not with a pen.”

“And the men work, too,” Bob said, hopefully.

Lahoucine laughed. “Ils s’amusent,” he answered. They entertain themselves.

Bob listened incredulously as Lahoucine explained that the men went to market once a week, occasionally built houses and sometimes ploughed. The women worked every day in the fields, drew and carried water, took care of the sheep and cattle, taught the children lessons (less than half of the population can afford to go to school), collected firewood and cooked.

Lahoucine was working his way up to the status of “guide” through a government certified school run by the French. Along with about 50 other Berber men, he had passed the test necessary to work as an accompagnateur . This meant he knew how to scale cliffs, rescue people in canyon floods and find his way easily through the vast network of trails and passes that traverses the Atlas Mountains. In order to receive his certificate as accompagnateur , Lahoucine had to be trilingual and to learn skills as a naturalist; he could speak French, Arab, Berber and some English and he could name the flowers and fauna we passed along the way.

In Tabant, we found Brahim relaxing by a stream at the edge of a meadow where our mule stood grazing with seven others. The streets of Tabant were dusty.

Nothing tame about the town. We continued to the only gite in town, which Lahoucine had recommended for lunch.

Inside the gite it was cool and dark. Branches and mud made up the ceiling. We ate fried eggs, bread, salad with tomatoes, onions and peppers, and pistachios; we drank sweet mint tea. The bill for four was $10. After the meal, we set out to buy provisions for the remaining four days of our trip.

The merchant, Said, sold socks, shoes, aspirin, cough drops, soft drinks, candy, insecticide, ropes, notebooks, children’s clothes, groceries and many other dry goods from a closet-sized booth on the main street in the center of Tabant. Lahoucine chose eight tins of sardines, sugar, cumin, salt, pepper, three kilos each of tomatoes, potatoes and carrots, four round boxes of Laughing Cow cheese, a can of peas, instant coffee and tea.

The bill added up to $25 and would feed the four of us for four days. Bob bought a bag of candy with 100 pieces to give to the kids we passed in villages.

It was late afternoon and we set out hiking across the fields in the direction of a village called Ait-imi. There, nestled between mountains, we pitched our tent on dry, flat land as village children gathered and watched. The sun was sinking, but in the valley women went on working the fields. I compared my lot to theirs as I sat by the rushing source of a stream and gazed at the fertile beauty around me.

Later, Lahoucine told me he knew of no Berber woman who had ever been to college. He indicated that the Berber women, who are predominantly Islamic, were too modest and pious to accept the comparatively free university environment, where, for instance, a young, unmarried couple might kiss or hold hands.

The next day, we hiked out of the valley and up the Ayt Ouhane pass, setting up camp at about 12,100 feet beside the rock shelter of shepherd nomads. It was cold at this altitude. Short, round, brittle bushes spotted the area and Lahoucine struck a match and ignited one. It hissed into flame and he lept over it, laughing uproariously, then lept back again.

This had to be the burning bush through which God spoke to Moses, I thought. I asked Lahoucine what the bush was called. “ L’armoise, “ he said, which derives from Moise , or Moses.

The next day, we hiked up through a canyon reminiscent of Grand Canyon gorges. Lahoucine hurried us up the trail, concerned that the rain which had started to fall that morning would develop into a flash flood and trap us in the canyon. When we reached the top, we walked out onto a plateau that rolled out before us like a carpet of mud to the edge of Lake Izoura, the first large body of water we had seen in the mountains. Laoucine said the mountains around Lake Izoura were good for skiing in the winter.

A shepherd in a dark brown robe, his flock grazing in the sparse grass, pulled his hood over his head and called out to us in Berber, “What time is it, please?”

I looked at Bob in amazement. He wanted to set his watch. I had completely forgotten about time.

We camped that night in a government-owned hiker’s refuge, an empty concrete structure, and built our campfire on the porch. The next morning we awakened to find snow on the ground. I stood at the window gazing out at the plateau, now dusted in white, and the frozen lake. Our last day of the hike. This made me feel sad.

But outside the refuge, my spirits lifted. The sharp air was invigorating. Lahoucine sang his heart out as he’d promised he would that first day on the road. Bob and I sang, too, and Brahim answered in a clear, pleasing voice. I was as happy as I’ve ever been with the rugged path stretching out before us, sun breaking through clouds and the mule’s hooves striking the ground. The snow disappeared as we began our descent and followed the trail down into the valley of swollen streams, shimmering fields and late morning light.

GUIDEBOOK

Morocco’s Atlas Mountains

Getting there: All flights from LAX to Marrakech require a change of planes, and of carriers, unless an overnight stay is involved. Among airlines flying from Los Angeles with connecting flights through JFK, London or Paris to Marrakech are United, TWA, USAir, American and Delta; from those cities on to Marrakech, carriers are Royal Air Maroc or Air France. A 14-day advance-purchase, round-trip fare is about $1,100 now until March 31, about $1,300 March 31-June 1, about $1,400 during the June 1-Sept. 1 high season.

From Marrakech, taxis will take you to Azilal or Asni, the major Atlas Mountain starting points, for about $50 or you can take public buses for $10.

Where to eat and stay: At the high end in Marrakech is the luxurious Hotel Semiramis Meridian (Route de Casablanca, Marrakech, Morocco, from U.S. telephones, call 011-212- 4-43-13-77, fax 011-212-4-44-71-27, telex 826893) for about $100 per night. Make reservations ahead of time by writing the hotel with dates and first night’s deposit. (Telephone communication can be problematic in Morocco, so it’s best to write or send a telex.) Localize and scale down the price by staying at the beautiful but simple Hotel Ali (10 Rue Dipensaire/Place de Foucauld, telephone locally 449-79), a fairly new, small hotel with rooftop sun terrace and excellent breakfasts; $15 per night. Make reservations well in advance by writing with dates and one night’s deposit. In the Atlas Mountains, you will have an array of lodging choices-- gite d’etapes , refuges or private homes--for under $18 per night.

How to get a guide: Write to the Delegation Provinciale du Tourisme, Avenue Mohammet V, Azilal, Morocco, from U.S. telephones, 011-212-3-45-83-34 or telex 23084. They will arrange trips with a guide and mule, from five days to six weeks or anything in between. Be sure to write that you want an English-speaking guide.

For those who want someone else to arrange things, look for a reputable adventure travel outfitter or travel agent with experience in Morocco. High Atlas tours are offered in spring, summer and autumn.

For more information: Contact the Moroccan National Tourist Office, 20 East 46th St., New York 10017, (212) 557-2520. The fact-packed “Rough Guide to Morocco” by Mark Ellingham and Shaun McVeigh is published in paper for about $16 by Harrap-Columbus of London, Chelsea House, Market Square, Bromley Kent BR1 1NA.