Today was a bit of a liminal day - an in between kind of day. The main adventure today was a 25 mile ride through the city of Agdz and a desert area which is not yet the Sahara - I believe we were in what’s called the Draa Valley. It reminded me of nothing more than the terrain of Nevada or Utah, like in Red Rocks.
Riding my bike - even for the roughly hour and a half that we did - was really invigorating because it reminded me of how much I enjoy this kind of cycling. I wish there was a bit more of it on this trip but there was enough today to give me that feeling of the wind rushing past my face on a long smooth downhill through the mountains of a desert. I had flashbacks - in a good way - of all my time on the bike and it made me realize that I think I’m ready for another round. Which is good because I have one coming up in October in the Grand Canyon area! I miss outdoor cycling; I need to get back into it. I was talking with one of the group members Paul about rock climbing and how much he likes it and I realized that things are really fun when you’re good at them and everyone needs a hobby, and mine is long distance cycling, and I’m cool with that.
There was a lot of driving today, and there will be again tomorrow. Morocco is big and we have far to go to get into the desert. I lost my headphones at the last hotel, but maybe that’s a good thing; it forced me to pay more attention to what’s going on around me. There’s a tension on this trip between me feeling like I am here to relax and unwind, and a feeling that I want to maximally experience everything because it’s Morocco and that’s an adventure and who knows if I’ll ever be back. I’m having a good time but I also alternate between feeling lonely and tired and a bit anxious. I need to rest. And so this afternoon I laid down at about 3:30, and we were supposed to go for a walk at 6 but I didn’t even bother setting an alarm, and then lo and behold I woke up at 6:20, so I missed the walk. Oh well. I guess I was really tired.
After the ride, we had a “picnic lunch”; the hotel doesn’t serve lunch I guess. We had gone through a town called Ouarzazate that felt like a mini Moroccan Reno; a city in the middle of nowhere, that apparently was built around film studios, and there’s still two big ones, including one called Atlas Studios where they have film sets you can tour. There was a lot of cosmopolitan services there and we went to a French grocery store called Carrefour, which I’ve been to before. It was weird to suddenly be in the middle of modern convenience and be able to buy tortillas and mouthwash. The music in the store alternated between Moroccan religious music and Adele. It’s hard not to be struck by the juxtaposition of the modern and ancient world here; I’ve commented on it before but it’s striking.
Just as much as the experience of being in Morocco, I’m learning something by talking to my fellow group mates. Most of them are older than me, and it’s really interesting to hear the way they navigate being in their late 50s and 60s, either with kids that are long gone or without kids at all, and just the way they structure their lives around houses and retirement and pickleball and, well, trips to Morocco. I don’t quite know what to think about it all yet but it’s more data.
After we got through the Red Rocks part of the ride today, we ended up riding through a small village next to an area where they grow a lot of dates. It’s a weird landscape because it’s dry and rocky but then there are these oases where they grow the date palm trees. We rode out through a very small village, through the palm farms, and watched a group of schoolkids get off a school van and walk home, chatting and waving and talking, girls separate from boys. I think I mentioned this yesterday but in a world where everywhere can start to feel the same, Morocco is different, and it’s been good for me to be exposed to a different rhythm of life. It’s not my life, nor would I want it to be, but it’s fun and inspiring to see the way a different people live, to remember that the way I experience things in my little world is not the only way to do things, nor is it the only correct way. There are others. Riding down and around the paved path leaving the town and heading out through the palm fields, I really felt that this place was just fundamentally different from home, in a way that even Iceland or Ukraine didn’t feel; that these people, while still human of course, live just a different life from mine, connected by TV and Internet and Cell Phones but still with a different beating rhythm.
Case in point; I was asking Abdul about the doors to our hotel; the doors in Morocco are all elaborate and huge. These doors to our hotel - which is more of a compound than a hotel - are 12 feet tall and solid Cedar wood with iron rivets. They swing wide and are arched at the top, and inset into each door is a second, smaller door. He said that in the old days there would be two different knockers, one for the smaller door and one for the bigger. Family and close friends would knock on the smaller door, and the women inside would know that they did not need to cover up as much, because it was just family. If you knocked on the bigger door, it made a different sound, and the women would know that company was here and they had to cover their face; either that or somebody showed up with something big like a horse and needed the big door opened. Now, obviously, modern Morocco doesn’t necessarily do all these things all the time, but still, you can feel that the heart of that time, and of the religion, is still beating very close by. It’s not the distant past in Morocco; it’s still a part of daily life, just like the donkeys.
Oh, and cats! There are cats everywhere. They even come into the restaurant area and beg at the table. I gotta say that even though it might not be sanitary, it’s pretty darn cute.
And the weather is sublime; I’m sitting outside as. I type this, listening through a window as the staff cleans up from the evening, and speaks in a language I have no hope of understanding, laughing all the while. There are so many different ways to live, and it’s good to be here and see this one.
