Driving northeast from Marrakesh puts us on a direct path to the
Middle Atlas Mountains, and Fez, the Imperial city
The road is pretty good, the terrain is quite flat, and we’ve got a long way to go, 450km.
But we’ll make much better time on this road than we did we did driving through the mountains.
Like everywhere in the country there’s many small communities along the main roads. We stopped at a few of them to have a look around, take a few pictures and stretch our legs.
We could see the mountains ahead and to our right, but they’re still a fair distance away.
Fertile valley, Middle Atlas
One of many farming towns
close to the mountains
We’re moving on.
It was suggested that because of the distance the car was going to travel over the next few weeks, that maybe if we were able to disconnect the speedometer cable the real cost for mileage would be sharply reduced.
I wasn’t comfortable with the speedometer idea. I’d prefer to leave the car just the way it is. However…
When we get to the next larger town we’ll stop for gas, get something to eat and buy a pair of vice grips or pliers.
The road we’re on goes right through a larger town named Beni Mellal.
We pull up to the pump for fuel and got out of the car.
There were three or four local men hanging about, they began moving toward us for a curiosity look; the curiosity look from locals was repeated everywhere we went.
One man was checking out Aileen, he was sizing her up like she was fresh meat. He sure liked what he saw and why wouldn’t he, she’s a good looking girl.
His ogling however was making her nervous so she was sticking pretty close to Mel.
Another fertile valley, Middle Atlas
Drive through the lower Middle Atlas
The man approached Mel, and from what we could understand we were pretty sure he was trying to strike some kind of a trade deal with him.
All the indicators had us thinking he wanted to trade a couple pieces of livestock for ownership of Aileen. We all had surprised and shocked looks on our faces; the offer was declined.
We had been told that within Islamic society women are considered the
property of men, and will be dealt with in pretty much in any manner
the man chooses.
There is no gender equality within Islam; they didn’t even understand the concept.
We bought some bread, cheese, canned sardines, and some bottles of Fanta Orange from a local vendor, sat around for a while and had lunch.
Now it was time to see if something could be done about the speedometer.
Fuck; bad idea coming… Mel got some guy at the gas station with pliers to try to disconnect the cable. I thought it would have been a much better idea to just buy what he needed and do it himself.
The guy was trying to tighten it.
Mel was trying to get him to loosen it.
The guy now realized what was going on here, as his smile has now turned into a very accusing look.
We thought this just might be the right time for us to get moving along, and we did, right away, speedometer cable still intact.
As we drove through the villages we saw lots of decorations and various size posters of the king being placed everywhere, they were plastered on almost every building we saw.
It wasn’t unusual to see pictures and posters of the king in most places, that was one of the first things we noticed upon our arrival in Morocco, although this time the posters were all new.
A big royal {maybe a birthday} celebration was about to take place.
With all the posters of the king plastered everywhere, you would get the impression that he was some kind of quasi Orwellian big brother, and he was keeping a close eye on everyone.
But you can be sure the King’s army of police are watching.
They’re always watching.
We stopped in another town, Khenifra, just to stretch our legs. Again, people on the street move toward us; and as always, natural curiosity.
Some will try to make conversation even though language can be a barrier at times; but it’s not difficult to make yourself understood.
Because of tourism many people over time have learned many words and phrases of other languages, English in particular .
Mel questioned one of the men about the celebration and how they felt about their king. The man’s face grimaced and teeth tightly clenched as in anger, said in broken English,
“we love our king”.
Obviously they hated him but were afraid to be openly critical.
Their system of government is a democratic monarchy, but I think the democratic part is in name only. It appeared to be more of a dictatorship.
During our time there I don’t remember seeing even one single example of democracy in action.
In my mind it was just another third world piece of shit dictatorship
This is the most livestock we’ve seen in one place since the camel crossing on the way to Aglou
Stretching our legs before we head
into the mountains
Leaving Knenifra we’re now heading up into the hills. The elevation we’ll be driving is not going to be as high as the other ranges.
The mountains were high, but the road we’re travelling won’t be taking us to the highest peaks.
We saw some beautiful valleys, lots of greenery, quite a few small villages, and lots of farming.
At some point up in the hills we could see a small convoy of vehicles coming toward us. We wanted to see what it was all about. We pulled over and were about to get out of the car when an open top jeep pulls up and stops right beside us.
There were four soldiers in it. One of the solders in the back stands up, he’s holding his sub-machine gun in one hand and holds his other hand up indicating for us to stay in the car.
This is not a good thing man, what the fuck is going to happen to us now?
Just then, two big shiny black motorcycles drive by {we’re quietly laughing to ourselves, could it possibly be the same two stupid cops?} Then a very nice Mercedes sedan with blacked out windows drives by followed by another jeep with three or four soldiers in it.
Once the convoy had gone by the first soldier indicates for us to be on our way…..must have been the king, that was our guess.
Okay, we’re in the clear. We can let now let our tensed up bodies relax,
and breathe easy again.
Kasbah in a Middle Atlas valley
We’ve been on the road for about eight or ten hours, maybe, not sure.
It just seems like forever, and we’re really tired.
We decided to see if we could get a couple of rooms for the night in the small town we found ourselves in. We tried a couple, way too expensive.
We thought, fuck it, we’re this close to Fez so we’ll just keep on going and find a hotel on the outskirts of the city.
Page #14
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