Monkeys in Morocco

            I was in a forest on a foothill of the middle Atlas when my phone rang.  It was one of my fellow PCTs, checking up to make sure that I was growing out some facial hair for the Fes trainees’ moustache competition (or, as we call it, the Stache-off).  Almost simultaneously Eugene (my roommate from Rabat, since we keep appearing in each other’s blogs we’ve decided to use some names for each other) yelled from the front of our group that a troupe of monkeys was approaching us.  Of course, I told the other PCT I had to run, but for a moment I was talking about growing out a moustache while some primates with hair everywhere but their upper lips cautiously inspected my friends and I.  As per usual, the only adjective I can think of is surreal.

            We were in the hills surrounding Azrou, a small Amizgh town nestled in the foothills of the Middle Atlas.  This weekend was one of the only weekends where we PCTs were allowed to sleep out of cite, so a bunch of us from Fes decided we’d explore this other region, which is about an hour by taxi (two or more hours by bus) south of Fes.  Shortly after our morning language session on Saturday we caught a taxi to Ifrane, a town near Azrou and favorite vacation spot for Moroccans.  Ifrane is a weird town, it was built in the 1920’s as a resort town for the French; Moroccans weren’t even allowed to live there until the end of the protectorate.  The architecture there is dramatically different from other Moroccan cities.  It wouldn’t look out of place in Europe.  I now call it “Geneva-in-Atlas.”  It’s a fairly small town, after a few hours walking through the town and surrounding hills and the obligatory stop by the stone lion that a German soldier carved during World War II when Ifrane was a prisoner of war camp we caught another taxi to Azrou, arriving just before dark.

            Both drives were spectacular.  Fes stops very suddenly; one moment there is city, and then the next there isn’t.  Once outside, you drive through a broad and bright green plain until you reach the edge of the mountains (the ones you can just make out in the distance from my photos of the Medina from the Merinid tombs a couple of posts ago).  Up in the mountains past Immozer, you pass through a strange lunarscape that reminds me of Connemare in Ireland, rocky, barren, and breathtaking.  When you reach Ifrane it looks almost Alpine, though this perception could just be a residual reaction to the houses there.  From there you pass by a series of spectacular vistas on the drive to Azrou.  It’s especially dramatic to do this drive just before sunset.

            The word Azrou is actually an Amizgh word meaning “Big Rock,” and the town is, somewhat predictably, built around a really big rock.  With a crown on top.  While this might be the focus of the town it is far from the only giant rock in the area.  Sunday morning we started to trek through fields full of similarly giant rocks.  We’d been told that to reach an area with the monkeys that live in the middle Atlas we’d have to take a taxi and then hike on further, but the PCTs who live in Azrou have a Moroccan friend who said he knew a shortcut up the mountain through a forest.  He told us that in the forest we were just as likely to see monkeys as in the more touristy spot we’d heard about.  These were the monkeys that found us while I was on the phone.  It was really cool to see them in the forest.  Up in the tourist spot the monkeys have no fear.  They come right up to you with an expression that says, “Hey, I’m a monkey, now give me a peanut.”  In the forest they’re still cautious around people, and children aren’t swarming them.  They’re also a whole lot skinnier.  We noticed just one at first, but soon a troop of three or four adults and several babies came up around us.  They pawed at each other and played in the trees, and gave us just a narrow enough berth.  We spent several minutes working on our National Geographic shots and edging our way closer to them.  Then we heard barking and a giant black dog bounded out of the underbrush and started to chase them.  They each rushed up the nearest tree, taunting the dog by swinging just out of reach.  We looked down the trail and saw two donkeys bearing supplies and a man climbing up.  The dog was with him, meant to keep the monkeys from bothering the donkeys.  We climbed on.

            We had our lunch up at the picnic tables near the touristy area.  As I said before, the monkeys there are brazen.  One stole a whole bag of almonds right out one of my friend’s hands.  While they let you get much closer to them I actually preferred hanging out with the monkeys down in the forest; it felt more natural.  From lunch we walked into a cedar forest, the only one in Morocco.  The forest and vistas were amazing though our goal, Arz Gorou, supposedly the oldest standing tree in Africa, was a bit of a bust.  While it is rumored to have been standing for longer than any other tree on the continent it is long dead, the bottom is covered in graffiti, and a terrible tourist trap of shops has grown up around it.  There’s even a road for people too lazy to hike.  Also, the signs around it don’t give any specific dates or information, which makes it all a bit of a disappointment.  However, the route to reach it is really pretty and once again, as in Moulay Yacoub, I got a chance to play my ocarina while overlooking a dramatic vista, so the excursion was worth it.  From there we walked back to town, got an asir avoca (avocado milk), and caught the grand taxi back to Fes.

            Short post this time, but the pictures will do more justice to the hills around Azrou than anything I can write.  As a teaser I’ll say that Monday this week was worth a post in itself.  After morning class we spent our afternoon at an extended kaskrot (tea time) with most of our host mothers together and had a discussion (with our LCF helping with translations) on gender roles, relations and child rearing with them.  It doesn’t fit with this post, and I need a couple of days to process it anyways, but for those of you interested in these issues expect a post on it later this week!