Again, we wake and this morning take a short morning walk around the Ville-Nouveau before we pack, meet for breakfast and load up in the van. We walk the quiet streets and explore the empty markets before returning to the hotel and rejoining the group. Leaving the city, we find rolling country with mountains making an appearance in the distance. Dense forests of cedar obscure much of our views as we travel this long, straight two lane road. Occasionally a roadside stand is set up selling apples, oranges, pomegranates or other produce, most of the stands have an occupant, others are unmanned and an honor system cup suffices as a cashier. As the elevation changes even more we arrive at the Swiss styled village of Infran. Set among tall trees and rolling countryside are high "A" frame buildings, grand fountains, cafes and boutiques. Many tourist buses are parked on the main street, along with a group of European motorcycles and rental cars. Everyone takes turns posing with the giant lion statue in the town square with a fountain in the background. Taking advantage of the opportunity we take many pictures of this non-African looking village. It truly looks like a Swiss postcard without snow, or cold for that matter. As I prepare to snap a picture of a billboard poster of Morocco's current President, Mohammed V, our leader Mohamed quickly intercedes and informs me we are not allowed to take a picture of the President's picture. Looking confused, my objections are quickly dismissed and I reluctantly oblige. After a quick refreshment we're back on the road.
We are still slowly climbing the hills and occasionally drive through more dense forests before eventually stopping at a crossroads. A gentleman with his elaborately dressed horse distracts from why we've stopped here, which is a chance to see the Barbary Apes. We skip the photo-op with the overdressed horse to meet the residents of this forest, the Barbary Apes. The Apes are really macaque monkeys, much smaller in size than apes but big in numbers in these woods, they seem to be everywhere. We buy some peanuts from a nearby entrepreneur and start making new friends. The monkeys are tame so long as peanuts are in your generous hands and we find some youngsters too busy playing chase in the trees to be bothered with scraps from us visitors. Mohamed yells "Ya La", Moroccan for "Let's Go" and we again load into the van and head out, traveling across the Mid Atlas Mountains heading south.
We wind along gorges that resemble the rugged mountains of the American west. Breaking for lunch, we ate at a roadside cafe before continuing our journey, the winding road consumed much of our day but the beautiful, rugged scenery keeping everyone's attention. As we get closer to Midelt the forests becomes more sparse, then the vegetation becomes more sparse until we're in very arid country. When we reach Midelt in the late afternoon, we find rains have flooded the main road into town and traverse a wide but shallow river on our way through town. Once across we stop to watch the locals climb aboard any and all of the vehicles heading their way to avoid the long wet hike to town. Loading back into the van we continue to our riad, which turns out to be located a considerable distance from town. As we near the hotel we find it's located alone in a vast, arid flat, with mountains rising in the distance. Mohamed hurries us to our rooms to unload and quickly meet back in the lobby for a hike before dark. We have little time to explore our rooms, much less the hotel before regrouping and heading out.
After a day in the van the walk feels great, we follow the road, really a gravel path, from the hotel toward Midelt before breaking from the trail and heading toward a small mountain. Spooking a herd of sheep, we continue to an aquaduct spanning a small gorge. As we investigate the waterworks Mohamed urges us on to stay with the group. A short distance later we are surprised to find ourselves on the edge of a huge, deep gorge with a muddy river raging below. As we traverse the cliff edge we soon discover a kasbah in the distance on the river's bank. As we near the kasbah we find many children following us and soon find ourselves in the streets of the kasbah with curious onlookers watching our every move. The children soon are mingling with us, taunting us to take their pictures and delighted to see themselves in the pictures. The villagers all offer us welcoming smiles as we make our way back to our riad. As we leave the village the final rays of sun are dimming and the full moon again greets us. We arrive back at the riad in the dark and prepare for dinner. We buys some Moroccan wine and head to the roof, sampling Morocco's finest under the moonlight. We quickly discover why we've never had Moroccan wine before, and also discover the wine doesn't get any better with the second, third or fourth glass consumed. This is also when I determine I'll stick to Moroccan beer. Although Morocco is Muslim, they are lenient as far as fermented spirits are concerned but we find distilled spirits only in the large cities.
As our group slowly convenes at the dinner table Nicole finds me and informs me Kate is hurt and in our room. I start to think how isolated and remote we are from any facilities that may offer even remedial care as I make my way to our room, where I find Kate lying on the bed with a wet and bloody towel to her head. Sobbing, she explains how she was heading to the courtyard containing our rooms when she tripped on the step, fell and hit her temple on the corner of a column base. She then further explains losing consciousness before waking to a woman hysterically but unintelligibly yelling for help and thinking she's lost her language skills before realizing the woman is French. I quickly assess her injury before finding Mohamed and letting him know what was happening. Following bandaging Kate's injury, I serve her dinner in bed and try to grab a few bites of dinner for myself on the sly. Kate's aspirin kicked in a little and she settled down as the nights' festivities were getting ready to start. Today is Nicole's birthday and Cameron and Mohamed have planned a birthday party with a Moroccan twist, complete with cake, a band and dancers. Kate starts to feel good enough to take part, or at least not to miss all of it, and we join everyone else as the party starts.
Drummers and fiddlers are joined my singers who are then joined by dancers and soon everyone is dancing and singing. There is a sharp contrast between the talents of locals and us visitors but everyone is having a great time. After the first dance Nicole's cake is lit and brought out. We find Moroccans don't celebrate with birthday cake and look curiously as we sing "Happy Birthday" and Nicole blows out the candles and the cake is served. More dancing and singing is then followed by more singing and dancing. A new dance is introduced that involves a man and a woman lying on the floor, side by side, facing each other with a pillow under their shoulders. The two do a seductive dance of hand gestures, followed by rolling back and forth across the floor over and under each other. This new dance proves to be too much for us uninitiated tourists the local dancer soon finds no partners for this particular dance. Eventually exhaustion wins and one by one the crowd thins as everyone returns to their rooms to find rest following the long day.
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