Morocco, Pg 8

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Got up early to start the new day. Noticed that Amon’s tent was gone.
Amon has left the building, he’s off to the next community to sell his “Double Zero” happy cough.

Another shower this morning. I’m loving these regular showers, followed up by a good breakfast. awww, life is good
I think Eve and Aileen were going to do some more laundry.
While the girls were busy us guys went for a walk down to the beach.

I’m not quite sure but I think it was right about this time that ‘Ron the Inconspicuous’ had left the collective, he’s on his way to somewhere in Europe; they probably won’t even notice that he’s there. Take care Ron.

We were just strolling along, very few people around. We noticed a couple of guys a fair distance away walking toward us, they didn’t appear to be locals. When they got close enough to see their faces, Mel and Al’s faces lit right up.
You’re not going to believe this man. These guys were from Brantford, I’m not shitting you either, this is for real.
One guy was Bruce, but I don’t remember the other guy’s name.

These guys were all high school buddies, they all went to Pauline Johnson together, I couldn’t believe it man. You travel 4000 miles away to a North African country, the last thing you expect to see are high school buddies; this was a fucking mind blower.

mind blower, awesome, blown away, holy fuck Wow, and far out, these are terms that will be repeated many times throughout the story of our adventure…there just didn’t seem to be any other adjectives to use to describe many of the things that we saw and did, or things that happened to us

We all hung out for quite awhile talking about where we had all been, and things we had seen.
Bruce was a coach for kids football back home, and through the course of our conversation we came to the realization that he was Chris and Ron’s football coach.
How’s that for a total connection.
In the grand scheme of things, believe it or not, it would appear that everyone is connected to everyone in some manner; no matter how remote.

This all seemed too unbelievable, [the stuff of Twilight Zone]
what are the odds of this kind of thing ever happening?
I was completely blown away, we all were.

We all chatted and laughed for quite awhile about how far out and bizarre this encounter was. But now everyone has to get going. We shook hands and “see ya later man”; and we all went on our way.
I could hardly wait to tell Eve about this encounter…
and yeah, she was blown away as well.

The girls were finished the laundry by the time we got back to the camp so we all went back to the beach to spend the afternoon. It was hot and about 80F.

The waves were huge and really noisy. We had a killer day, lots of fun, also got a bit of sunburn.
Once we had all the fun we could handle for the day, we all left the beach and went back to camp and hit the bar.
It was air conditioned and the beer was really good and cold, so we hung out there for quite awhile.

I had maybe three beers over a couple of hours, and I was getting way too good a buzz for these few beers, I felt kinda drunk, really, on just a few beers?
I looked around on the label for the alcohol content.
Holy shit man, 12%, no wonder I felt drunk, even their vinegar has 6% alcohol.
Got some food into me and went back to the tent for some sleep. Hope I don’t have a headache in the morning.

It’s morning, no headache, but I’ll have to be careful with the beers from now on.

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We’ve been in Agadir for almost a week now. The beach and bar have been great but we needed something new.
We decided to rent a car for three or four days, so off to the rental agency we go.
In Marrakesh we didn’t really need a car to see or do things, we were living right in the middle of everything we wanted to do.
Agadir in 1975, certainly not a big town; and very limited as to what we were able to do for entertainment.
Our only entertainment choices were the beach and the bar. The Kasbah mount wasn’t about entertainment, but it was was the only additional point of interest for us.

Now we’re going to have wheels and can go wherever we want, and there’s a lot we want to see and do.
We rented a Renault 4, it’s a little car but with a bit of a squeeze it was just big enough for us and our gear.
Where to go first. It was decided we would drive south to Tiznit, a small walled town about 80km away.
For a reason that I don’t recall Al decided to stay in Agadir for the day, maybe he just needed a home alone day.

Heading south from Agadir the terrain began to change, it began to take on more of a desert look, very little greenery, lots of sand dunes and hot.
There were several very small, likely family communities, scattered about way off the road, each consisting of up to three or four dwellings.
This seemed to be the beginning of where urban development has almost come to a complete halt.

We could see Tiznit off in the distance, it was completely closed in behind a ten foot high defensive wall with just a few out buildings a few hundred feet away.
We drove through what was once a gated archway into the town. Very cool looking town but not so very old [Est. 1880].
Went to the Medina, checked out some of the stalls and shops looking for small souvenirs. Hung out for awhile, had a bite to eat and smoked a bit of hash.
As there wasn’t much in Tiznit to keep our interest for any longer than it took to walk around the Medina, so we decided to head east to the Anti Atlas mountains.

And now for another historical fact. This is about the people who live in the Anti Atlas range.

The communities in this range have had the least amount of development of any kind in the entire country.
During our tour through the country we encountered communities in some areas where life has changed very little in the last five hundred to a thousand years.
The higher up the mountains we went, the more primitive the ways became.

For some mountain dwellers, to own a new wheelbarrow with a steel wheel or a new shovel would make the owner the envy of his community.

More than 90% of the inhabitants are Chleuh Berbers.
[Berber is a 3000 year old Roman word loosely meaning barbarian]
This branch is said to have the purist of the Berber blood lines, and have purposely kept it that way for well over a thousand years by rarely intermixing with other tribal factions. Apart from their chosen way of life they’re very friendly and communal.

…and away we go, straight ahead to the Anti Atlas mountains.
All along the way there are several little communities dotting the landscape. The mountains are about 100km away; but won’t take long to get there.

As we drove into the foothills we came into a town called Tafraout. Not a big town but larger than most of the communities in the immediate area.

Quite a large number of tourists come to this town. It’s a small town, and as the area didn’t seem to be suitable for any kind of real farming, just some plots of land for medium back yard size gardens.
There didn’t seem to be any real substantial way for the locals to make money, so they rely largely on the tourist trade, as a result the prices for goods in the Medina are a bit high; not unlike us.

We continued further up into the hills. The communities were now much smaller, more like family communes.
We stopped at a few just to have a look around. It was easy to see that a lot of things were quite different up here in the hills.

For example: we were advised to not go walking in any little grassy areas, particularly in the evening, that’s where some of the local men go to have a dump, just like dogs.

On the streets, which is just hard packed dirt, we observed that it was not uncommon to see a man hike his djellaba a little and squat down and piss, it would trickle away and absorb into the ground and no one gave it a second thought; this was perfectly normal behavior.

As we drove along the road we would see women in their long robes carrying baskets of whatever on their heads, when they saw us coming they would pull their veils over their faces and their hands up into their sleeves.

Although we had seen many women in Casablanca and Marrakesh wearing face veils [niqabs] this is the first time since coming to Morocco that we have encountered socially undeveloped communities to this degree, it all seemed like very strange behavior to us.
However, looking at the behavior picture from their side of the coin, we were in fact the strange behavior in this picture.

Up to this point the main road has not been too bad, parts of it was even paved, very coarse pavement, but paved never the less.
We decided to go further, so out of the foothills and into the mountains we go.
The pavement has ended, the road has become what was probably the original hard pack caravan trail, much narrower and a bit hazardous; this was a result of absolutely no infrastructure advancement.

To see these valleys in real life absolutely takes your breath away

We’re now well out of the traditional tourist area. The further into the mountains we went the more treacherous the road became. At times it would wind around out onto the face of a mountain, which would expose you to the view of a valley, which would be just one of many that we would see.

This valley we’re approaching is going to be my first mountain valley experience.
As we were slowly going through the turn the valley began to come into my view.
I felt the excitement rising within me.

WOW! I can’t believe how huge this valley is. I’m absolutely thrilled, blown away, and having rushes.
It seemed to be big enough that you could build an entire city within it.
It could have been miles long and miles wide, It was impossible to accurately judge distance because of it’s immense size.

It looked like a hundred feet almost straight down in spots, then rolling out into the valley below, which was another hundred feet down.
At the very least and by any measure this valley would be considered absolutely gigantic.

We could also see a few small settlements dotted throughout the lush green valley below, which also had a stream flowing through it. It looked just like a landscape painting anyone might have hanging on their living room wall; it was breathtaking and absolutely beautiful.

I can’t even begin to tell you from a real visual perspective just how vast this valley was. From our slightly angled vantage point, and being so high above it, you only had to turn your head several degrees to see the entire valley.
It was so beautiful, so magnificent and awe inspiring that I forced my eyes open as wide as I possibly could to take it all in.
I had never seen anything before that was so majestic that it had the power to move me as much as it did, I was so thrilled beyond belief that it gave me goose bumps and made my arm hair stand.

I was experiencing a feeling I had never felt before. Could I be having some kind of a spiritual experience, or at least a very powerful emotional moment, a sense of feeling there was something so much greater than ourselves, a scale so grand it was absolutely beyond what I could have imagined? What I was feeling was so real and genuine, yet at the same time seemed too unbelievable, or surreal.

This experience impacted me so much that to this day it’s still quite powerful within me. All I have to do is close my eyes and think about it for a moment and I’m there. Even forty plus years later thoughts of it can still give me goose bumps and make my arm hair stand.

This experience has given me an incredibly wonderful ‘remember when’ point in my life that will never be forgotten; it’s always with me and I’ll always be grateful for that.

I’ve never had a feeling that I can ever remember that I thought was spiritual in nature.
If that’s what all of these feeling are, then it certainly is my first time.

maybe there’s more to the spiritual side of things then what I originally thought.
Or could it possibly be that all the feelings and rushes I’m having from this experience was just the biggest rush of my life
don’t know, and can’t say; but I sure wish I knew

page #8

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