Praça-Forte de Almeida

Last night, we said goodbye to 5 members of our group (Alana, Issy, Libby, Ruby and Qwinnetta) who were leaving after the first stage and welcomed 3 (Neville & Sandìa from Australia, & Tony from Scotland) who were joining us for the second stage, which is southern Morocco.
This morning we embarked on a small bus for a trip into the High Atlas Mountains, going as far as the road would take us to the town of Imlil. We disembarked and put our overnight bags onto mules (our larger bags stayed behind) and began the 1 hour trek to the mountain Amazigh (the proper name for who have often been called Berber, meaning “free people”) village of Aroumd. On the way, Mohamad pointed out where his wife’s family lived.

We arrived to a comfortable and scenic family-run guesthouse (or gite), and sat down to enjoy Moroccan mint tea (aka Berber whiskey).

The larger part of the group went on a long walk to a pilgrimage site while Larry and Carolyn and Connie and Roel and I hung around the village; we found it was rather an arduous walk just to go from the top of the village to the bottom, where we found a café and enjoyed some coffee before finding our way back to the gite.

It was a peaceful night on the mountain and in the morning we trekked back down by a slightly different route, this time Mohamad showed us where he plans to build his own bed-and-breakfast someday.Read more