The rhythm of life here in Morocco - at least, up here in the Atlas Mountains - is genuinely different than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It might sound jaded, but in all or almost all of my travels - even to Ukraine - there was a modern rhythm to life that felt in some sense similar to home. Yes details might be different, priorities change, but the basic rhythm of life felt familiar. But here, life is genuinely different. Maybe it’s the way all the food is natural and home cooked, or the way there’s so much less commercialism and capitalism. It’s not that it’s so poor; things are rural and poor here to some extent, but I’ve been far more poor places that still felt modern. No, it just seems like a place more out of time. The way everybody knows everybody else. The way cars can’t get into the main city so everybody just walks around the narrow alleyways and stairs, or uses the donkeys and mules, which are present everywhere. Things can feel very tourist-y here for sure; we passed a number of tourist groups on the way up to lunch at the sanctuary at 7200 feet, and clearly tourism is an important industry. But underneath there is a real life happening here as well and it is happy and calm and very different than home. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where you can see a man riding a donkey sideways up or down to work while carrying an Android smartphone and texting from it.
Although lots of cool things happened in the last 24 hours, perhaps the star of the show was the Hammam. I have, of course, been to many saunas and spas, including those coming from other traditions, like slavic Banyas. But the Hammam was cool and unique, mostly because of the man who ran it and was our treatment provider/ritualist, a quite elderly and very spry and wiry Moroccan man who spoke not a lick of English and proceeded to throw water at us, sit on us, bend our limbs and slather us in soap with glee and abandon. We got a shampoo, a massage, he slapped us and lifted our legs as we lay on a heated floor in a very wet room. I wish I could have gotten pictures but obviously that’s inappropriate but just imagine a questionably clean but very pleasant white tiled room with a low ceiling and archways leading to other rooms for washing. It was a deeply personal, very masculine (no women were allowed; they had their own separate session) and, if I can use this word, joyful experience. It weirdly reminded me of the “human car wash” from Burning Man. (Oh and it cost about $13).
All the food is delicious and kind of absurdly healthy, which is probably good because of my minor dental emergency which I’ll talk about soon. It’s Whole Foods; rice, potatoes, carrots, olives, bread and jam and peanut butter - everything either raw or cooked on an open grill or in a Taijin on top of charcoal. No Diet Coke to be found. In the morning we had a local village woman show us how they make a traditional bread and we patted out and made some of our own - I burned mine a little but actually it was really tasty that way. They are very simple round loaves of a very simple dough made with semolina; it reminded me a good pizza crust but they just eat it fresh and warm sometimes with butter and jam and lots and lots of tea. She was charming and delightful and covered head to toe in traditional cloathing and also, of course, had a cell phone. Then we went up to a rooftop terrace where we got amazing views of fog rolling in the valley and where we would be hiking.
The hike up to the sanctuary was also very pleasant, across a dry rocky river bed and up winding steps. I am running into trouble just because I am so exhausted - I’m running on probably 3 hours of sleep per night for 4 or 5 nights - but I trudged like a zombie up behind our guide to lunch, which we had surrounded by cats (there are cats everywhere here) in a low slung enclosure up on the mountain. The rhythm of the small mountain village is also quite fascinating; nobody lives there but people work there to support the folks trying to climb the mountain (Mt. Toubkal, which is up at about 13,000 feet) with lunch and water and snacks. There were hoses going everywhere, water flowing through town, buildings built into the sides of the hills seemingly at random, men going to and fro, guiding, cooking, serving, yelling at each other, and donkeys and mules littered around, bothering the cats. It’s a rhythm of life that’s just fundamentally different from home, that’s for sure. It gives you perspective.
The one thing I’m not crazy about - other than being tired and mentally spent from dealing with dental trauma - is the cold. I was not prepared for cold and this house/hostel/waypoint is unheated and freezing, especially at night.
Everyone is very nice and I am feeling really bad that for reasons of anxiety and my fatigue and fear about my mouth that I’ve been really antisocial. I don’t even knokw very many peoples’ names and they must think I’m quite odd and unfriendly but I will try harder to be social and engaged.
