On a Bike and a Prayer
day 15. monkeys in the mist
We woke before seven, and there was still no water - although at 7.30am there was a gasping splurge through the parched pipes for thirty gurgling seconds. I managed to brush my teeth and joined the others for breakfast. Ouzoud lay twenty-six kilometres of freewheeling away, (our reward for yesterdays climb). We covered it in 45 minutes.
Ouzoud is a deep canyon, cut by several white blades of
foaming water piercing soft brown sandstones. Mosses and ferns sprout from the
banks, and long-armed, grinning golden monkeys swing and laze in the mists.
There were several camp-sites slung hammock-like on the steep terraced edges of
the gorge.
We chose one of the lowest on the recommendation of a policeman in Anzilal. It cost only 2Dh to stay the night and when we asked for a menu, the fifteen year old waiter explained that anything was possible. Sadly it wasn't and the menus still only had tajine, couscous or omelette on them. We paid and ate an omelette for lunch.
The camp-site was owned by an enterprising 21 year old who had bought the site two years ago for 30,000Dh after the rent started to rocket up. He spent the winters making olive oil and selling it to Berbers in the High Atlas villages we'd past the week before. In exchange for the olive oil he got their silver jewellery which he sold to the tourists. Some of the silver bracelets were antique - over 200 years old and originally sold to the Berbers by travelling Jews. For such a piece he would swap twenty litres of olive oil at 7Dh a litre. The tourists would buy such pieces for up to 600 Dh giving a 400% profit on each piece. And so his years revolved - summers in this idyllic paradise of misty monkey canyons and winters travelling the High Atlas.
For his pains, and his economic wizardry he had saved enough for a three month tour of Europe - with his German girlfriend. The problems he said were not from the money, but the passport. By-passing the bureaucracy had required countless forms to be filled in, and a myriad of people scattered across the most inhospitable mountain villages to be visited. It was a logistical nightmare which made cycling over the region look easy.
We spent the afternoon lazing by the pools. I went for a wonder up the canyon to watch some children strategically building and breaking dams to control the flow of water to their terraces below. They worked like engrossed little engineers - their toy-tools - plastic sheets and rocks.
In the late evening an overwhelming tiredness hit me as we discussed the route for tomorrow under the squinting glare of a Calor gas light. I kept dozing off as we ate a giant vegetable couscous like a jet-lagged trans-Atlantic traveller. In my dazed state - I turned in next to a tethered cockerel which stood silent and blinking in the torch light.
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