Morocco Uncovered, Day 6: Midelt

Day 6 of the Intrepid Tour” Morocco Uncovered”:

Every evening our guide would send a message via Whats App with all the info we needed for the next day. I thought I’d share one example today, so you can see what this day was like:

“Salam Alaikum all…Reminder of the program tomorrow. Breakfast starts 7 am. We will put our luggage down in the reception at 8:45. 9 am departure towards Midelt city.

First stop in supermarket to buy picnic lunch…Second stop in Ifran city, Switzerland of Morocco. Some free time for about 45 min to enjoy a walk in the park or just enjoy the beautiful green town, also snowy town.

Then we will resume the drive. Drive along the cedar forest. Stop in a place to eat picnic. Then we continue to our hotel not far from midelt.

Once we make it there we will have some time to relax before we head to a village to have some tea with family and a 1 hour walk through the fields of apple and other crops that people grow…

Back to hotel, and dinner will be at the hotel as there isn’t a single restaurant in the area.

Thanks for your time. End of the program…see you guys tomorrow.”

Every evening we would get a detailed message like this, which was really nice and helpful. I should add that I have Tmobile which gives me internet everywhere as well as unlimited texting. We had wifi in most of the hotels, but it wasn’t always very good in the rooms.

So, how did it work out in real time, versus the plan? Let’s do the details with pictures!

I woke up and met with Barb and Graehm, as well as other later comers to breakfast. It was a fine breakfast, nothing to write home about. Then I finished packing my bags and headed to the lobby. There was an atm right across the street from the hotel so I went over to take out more cash. We took the bus to the grocery store, which was a chain brand we hadn’t tried yet, and was as always, fun. I got cheese and olives for lunch and was going to share a baguette with Sabine (the other solo woman on the trip.)

Our first stop was the town of Ifran, called the Switzerland of Morocco. It had a lot of French influences and was a skiing town, I guess? We had some time to walk around and I bought some nice roasted nuts from a vendor.

They had a giant lion statue, which reminded me of University City

You can see the architecture is quite different from much of Morocco.

We continued our drive then, along a very snowy area. We were getting into the mountains.

We saw monkeys along the side of the road!

People were pulled over and it looks like somebody had given the monkey some food. Questionable.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at a rest stop, where it was unheated, and we basically froze in a little room. It was a tossup if it was colder inside or out.

People sledding on the hills. We would drive along and then be stuck in traffic with people parking to get out and toboggan.

We got to our accommodation for the evening which was outside the town of Midelt. The rooms were old and traditional, but large!

After we got settled in, we got back on the van and went to visit a nearby village and apple farm. We met a man who lives there and we walked around for about an hour. The views were incredible!

I believe these are the High Atlas Mountains.

The guide said this stork’s nest had been started nearly 50 years ago, and was still being used. Every year the storks would repair the nest and use it again.

The village was very rural and it really made me think about what a different life the people living there led. The man guiding us said that he had moved away for many years and lived and worked in places like Abu Dhabi, Russia, and Saudi Arabia in restaurants, and was a restaurant manager. Then when his parents needed him to he moved back home. The first year was hard but now he is happy: giving tours plus doing the orchard. He said life is simpler and better in many ways. That being said, I would not wish to live there, but it didn’t seem all bad, and especially the views were lovely. And they are near Midelt where they are many modern services.

After the walking tour we had tea and Moroccan crepes with jam and cheese. We had seen the crepes at breakfast before, but these were the best we had had by a longshot as they were hot and fresh. I didn’t get a picture of them but this link looks like the same thing.

You want to pour the tea from up very high!

We headed back to the hotel and had a little break before dinner so I went for a walk to a nearby lake.

We had dinner at the restaurant. We had ordered our dinner earlier in the day and they had it ready for us. I had a whole trout with various sides. Sabine and I split a small bottle of a Moroccan white wine, which was hmm… not my favorite but fun to have tried. I then ordered a beer afterwards which was nicer.