The Atlas Mountains, Morocco

The Atlas mountains were incredible. I went on a four hour trek, high into the clouds and up to a remote shrine. Just staying in the village of Armed was an experience in itself. We lived with the locals, and saw how they survive in a fairly unforgiving environment. Every day the women use a communal oven to bake the bread, and prepare a tagine of couscous and various meats. I’m in Morocco during the religious festival of Ramadam, where fasting takes place during the day and then food is eaten after darkness. For this reason people seem quite wiped out during the day, but I have a feeling that the pace is petty relaxed here anyway.

The mountain people of Armed were truely warm and friendly, and made us feel very welcome in their village. We stayed on the top floor of an old house, with sofa style seating around the edge that we slept upon at night, and a balcony that looked out upon jagged mountain scenery. The family cooked us three meals a day, of the freshest most beautiful produce. Lunch consisted of a wide variety of veg, with cheese, eggs and fish. Evening dinner arrived in the form of a spicy soup followed by a communal tagine, brimming with rich flavours, carrots, sweet potatoes and chicken or mutton, as well as a large selection of bread. Fresh oranges or melon was provided for dessert. Every meal was followed by the most aromatic sweet mint tea. Even the smell was moorish.

An hours drive followed two nights in Armed, where we hired a mule to take our bags back down the hillside. We took a mini bus to Ouirigane, where we stayed in a really lovely Moroccan countryside hotel with beautiful pink walls covered in lucious green vines, a spacious garden and pool.

That afternoon we had lunch in a traditional Berber house, where we were invited to see how the bread was made, and were shown around the house until we settled in the living room and were served a delicious three course meal. The tables here are very low down, with soft padded cushions to sit on and lots of colourful fabric to adorn the room. Our hosts were wonderful, and we sat around chatting for a couple of hours.

Later that afternoon most of us went on a walk into the hills, across to neighbouring villages, with a local guide who pointed to new electricity pilons, and proceeded to tell us that electricity had arrived for these people just two weeks ago. There were many very old mud brick houses, set against furtile red soil. The villages resembled an ancient civilisation, unchanged for centuries, and was like nothing I had ever seen before.

That evening we had a meal at the hotel, which was lovely but we were surrounded by many tiny cats who fought each other over scraps of food. We later found out that cats are sacred here, as there does seem to be more of these wild ‘cat like’ creatures than people, many of them in a bad state. Anyway the meal was particularly satisfying and after a few rounds of cards I went off to bed, ready for Essouira the following morning.