Since we had a long day of hiking ahead of us, we figured, we would skip sunrise on the morning of day 3. Jetlag decided otherwise for me, so day 3 started bright and early!  I headed out to the nearby patio, still dazed and confused to find that the moon was out on this clear night. I quickly grabbed my gear and setup for a few quick shots of the village under the stars and moonlight. Apparently, I wasn’t alone getting up at an insane hour, as an early (and presumably lonely) driver provided the extra light for my shot.

After a nice and heartwarming breakfast, we packed our gear and headed down to meet our guide Abdou and muleteers, Mohamed and Ali.  The mules were loaded at lightning speed (I now understand why they call them beasts of burden…those things are unbreakable) and headed off on the trail not to be seen for a long while. Our path took us across the entire Ait Bougmez valley into the neighbouring valley of Ait something (can’t quite remember frankly, a nice one though). The first leg of the trail was fairly flat with little to no elevation gain. We stopped for lunch in a tiny village under the cool shade of some beautiful oak trees and even enjoyed a quick nap (you should know I am a sucker for naps). Quickly after we took to the trail, the scenery started changing drastically, to my delight. We crossed some stunning canyons and gorges, flowing with melt water. Red and bright orange walls paving the way up the now steeper trail.

As we progressed deeper in our journey, the landscape was radically transformed, from farmlands surrounded by round hills, to complete alpine wilderness surround by jagged peaks. After fording a raging river with barefeet, we embarked on the steepest part of the trail, which took as along the river bed, then, up, up and higher. The scenery was simply gorgeous. The patterns drawn by the occasional layers of clay in the limestone-dominated landscape providing some fantastic designs.

Our hike ended a little after 4pm, after an ascent of roughly 450m over the last half of the distance. A nice warm up day for the trek ahead of us. We set out camp right outside of the remove mini-village (literally 2 or 3 houses) of Ikkis n’Arous. The almost lunar landscape was dominated by scree-covered slopes and amazing juniper trees. After setting up camp, I decided to take a little hike and explore the area for sunset and the next day’s sunrise. The altitude, general lack of fitness and end of day fatigue combined to make my trek across the scree-covered slopes exhausting and painful, with several falls and near misses. As I settled atop a little overhang, panting and out of breath, I turned around to watch this woman, walking across a higher overhang, wearing nothing more than little platic sandals, whistling and singing about, like there was nothing there. Needless to say that my embarrassment was only complete when she started laughing as I was scrambling about .

In the next instalment of Morocco, trippin’, the “real” alpine trek starts with some tough but amazingly rewarding scenery to go along with it. Stay tuned…