Liz and Jim Patton

Sensory Whiplash

 Morocco is laid out as a group of semicircles facing the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The coastal region, home to Tangier, Rabat and Casablanca, has a gentle, moist climate that grows fruits and vegetables for the country and for export. Back from it are the Middle Atlas Mountains, filled with Cedar forests and fertile valleys. Beyond is the High Atlas region, wrapped by the Southern Oases, then the Sahara desert to the south and west. After our first few days, we cut straight south through these diverse geographic layers.

First to the city of Fez, its medina colorful, crowded and noisy and not changed much in the millennium of its existence. Over 150,000 people live on the pathways that twist and turn with no pattern, and are so narrow that donkeys and mules are the main vehicles. Walking the alleys is sensory overload, you get lost immediately, so we just give up and relax, plan to pay a young boy to take us home at the end of the day. Each turn leads to a something different: a small souk, a street crowded with shoppers carrying loaves of bread, or a lovely square with a teashop. Sounds are varied and musical – women talking, children playing, muezzins calling, and most important to hear, the scream of “balak!” meaning that a loaded donkey is hot on your back and you have to move aside or get mowed down.

From Fez we begin a trek to the desert, through the Middle Atlas Mountains and a culture shock in the town of Ifrane. The French built it in the 1930’s to resemble an alpine village: the roads meet at right angles around parks with fountains and flowerbeds, and there are stands selling popcorn and ice cream cones. In the winter, Moroccans come to ski and play in the snow. The high point for me is a shop with cappuccinos, lovely French pastries and hi-tech bathrooms.

And then, onto the Sahara. After four more hours of driving the mountains give way to a sparse, arid flatness where we turn off-road onto rough terrain. Another hour of jarring ride leads to the edge of the Sahara, which rises suddenly in front of us. The Erg Chebbi Dunes, running for twenty miles and climbing over 800 feet, are colored from beige to red to black cut at their ridges by the lowering sun. Magnificent. The near sand is edged by camels roped in a line and dotted with tent villages and Berbers sitting by piles of trinkets.  Children racing around with shovels and four-wheel drive buggies sully the sand, but the wind is strong and these assaults are smoothed over quickly. We sit on the veranda of our hotel watching and drink hot tea, eat peanuts and feel the sand build up in our teeth, eyes and cameras. A sunset, then a sunrise of photography is followed by a long siesta then a trek into the dunes on camels for more sunset shooting.

The Gorges

From the Sahara we move west into the High Atlas Mountains. To see them close up, we have to take four-wheel-drive vehicles, past silver mines run by the royal family, complete with protestors who want a piece of the profits for some of the people outside that family, then down into the Todra Gorge. This is a steep-sided canyon with pink and gray walls up to 1000 feet, lined with palm oases along the Todra Wadi. After lunch, the vehicles circle back through the Dades Gorge, much broader with sides of dramatically eroded limestone faces and thin towers. It’s much greener along the Dades Wadi – fig, almond and walnut trees, apples orchards and corn are visible today. There’s lots of herding along the wadis and also up in the barren canyons away from the water, where there Berber dwellings scattered every few miles in the rocks – corrals for the animals made of stone with basic tents alongside for the family. It’s the most primitive living I’ve ever seen. At one of these homes, a few of us go up to take pictures. The people are very dirty, don’t want their pictures taken, but offer us tea.

Forced Leisure

 Photography is best done at dawn and sunset so any trip like this has big blocks of time with nothing to do. Some are spent on a bus driving between interesting locations, and some in dinky hotel rooms waiting for the sun to be right, the rain to stop, lunch to be served. Every guide I’ve travelled with has been good at finding events to fill this dead time – tea breaks, walks through a small town, stops at random museums and craft factories, and yet there are still hours of forced leisure. What to do with all of this time?

A quick look around the bus is illuminating. There is one “youngling” with us on the trip – a high school girl with a creative bent for photography and a travelling grandmother who brings her along. Her time is filled with her iphone – wired to its stored music and texting, clearly equipped with some plan that lets her do it, oblivious to everything else happening around her. There are some talkers. The men are always talkers, seeking each other out, opening a bag of peanuts, and jumping right into the latest move Obama has made, who has the worst property taxes, or what’s new in lenses. They’re content, fulfilled. There are some obsessive camera cleaners, blowing off dust, rearranging gear, going through today’s pictures immediately to sort the wheat from the chaff. Some people just stare out the window, thinking, I presume. I retreat to reading books, up to one a day now. It’s getting frighteningly easy – a new recommendation can be quickly scarfed up into Kindle at the next internet connection.