Heels On The Hill

DAY 249: One of the dangers of mountain trekking is mountain sickness, caused by the lack of sufficient oxygen to the brain in high altitudes. Mountain sickness (or "altitude sickness") affects different people in different ways at different levels of severity. For example, when I climbed to the altitude of 5681m. up Mount Kilimanjaro with a Japanese guy named Kenji, the thin air caused me to vomit three times and it put Kenji into a delirious, near-vegetable state.

The effects of mountain sickness were bound to happen again as I continued the second day of a two-day trek up to the peak of Djebel Toubkal at 4167m. ASL, this time not with a Japanese vegetable but a Canadian named Sebastian.

A SLICE OF CANTALOUPE CAME AT THE BEGINNING of our estimated two-hour trek from the refuge to the peak, up a steeper trail that sometimes passed through snow patches. Two hours was the estimated time according to the book, and when we ran into Aussie Jess already on her way down, she said it took her two hours too. But for us, we took twice that amount of time, reason being we always managed to follow a trail that we thought was the right way but discovered that it just diminished into nothing. What made it worse was that all these fake trails went up slopes of loose rocks and the entire ascent was a balancing act. One step up sometimes took you one step down in rubble. What made it more worse was when we got up to about the 4000m. mark and the air really began to thin out, mild mountain sickness took its toll on us in different ways.

"You alright?" Sebastian asked me from time to time. He was always about twenty feet ahead of me.

"Yeah," I said, catching my breath. I grunted as my thighs started to burn.

"You're walking like a drunken zombie!" he said, laughing hysterically.

The thin air was affecting us in opposite ways, making me sluggish and tired and making Sebastian all giggly like he was a dentist abusing his supply of nitrous oxide after hours. During one of our numerous breaks for Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches, I attempted to sit on a nearby rock in my stupor, missing it entirely. My ass didn't even make any sort of contact with the stone and Sebastian laughed his head off at me (not with me).

Episodes like this continued as we took our time up to the peak, and it epitomized after we took a break in a area where we could finally see the very top -- up until then the peak was hidden from us with a steep rock face. I got a second wind, sprung up from my seat and started a funny power walk up the trail, my arms swinging side to side like Popeye. Sebastian started laughing so hard that he couldn't move and just crouched down, clenching his stomach in hysterics. I kicked it up a notch when I ran and kicked my heels in the air like in an Irish jig, and he almost died laughing -- literally that is; he was laughing so hard he might have fallen backwards down a steep drop.

We reached the peak around 10:30, after most groups had come and started their approach back down the way they came already. One group of about a dozen French remained, but kept to themselves with their guide and fancy food. Sebastian and I just rested a bit at the top with our Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches, inhaling the thin, but fresh mountain air, enjoying the view, climbing the peak marker, pissing off the side of the top and -- our new simple pleasure -- goofing off with Irish jigs (picture above).

"AH, THICK AIR," Sebastian said. "Should we set a timer?" In the few days that I had known him, Sebastian was notorious for timing things on his stopwatch for fun.

"Sure."

"How much time?"

"Three hours."

"How about three and a half?"

"Three twenty."

"Okay," he said, setting the timer. "So what happens if we don't make it in three twenty?"

"All of Morocco will blow up," I said. This was an amazing goal to set because those were the same stakes when we set a timer the day before over and over, and apparently, Morocco had already blown up three times.

Coming down the mountain from the peak to the refuge wasn't as hard a chore as the ascent, although it was much more of a balancing act walking downhill on the loose rocks. Our knees absorbed the shocks of our weight bouncing down -- except for when we passed through a couple of snow patches and slid down.

After some more Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches and swigs of my obsession, Pom's apple soda, we were back on the gradually descending trail back down to the base of the valley with our big backpacks on. The gradual increase of oxygen only made us go faster than any one else and we overtook about fifty people all the way down, one of which was annoyed with us when we tried to pass her.

"There's something called manners you know," the elderly British hag said with her stiff British accent. "Must you be on my heels!"

"I'm sorry, I'm just trying to catch up to my friend," I said, pointing to Sebastian far ahead of me around a bend. I ditched the old hag and caught up, thinking that perhaps a little Irish jig might have raised her spirits.

"I guess we're obligated to not have her catch up," Sebastian said to me.

WITH OUR OXYGEN-POWERED SPEED, we made it back down to the village of Imlil in two hours, one hour ahead of the average time, saving all of Morocco from total oblivion. We walked across the village, passed its villagers and their livestock -- Sebastian got busted trying to a photo of a Muslim woman, her kid, her sheep and her cow -- and arrived at the parking lot where all the grand taxis picked up and dropped off passengers. We met two French women there waiting for more people to fill the six-person quota for a taxi to Asni, or if it would take us, all the way back to Marrakesh.

"[There are no more taxis here,]" a guy told us as one taxi was filling by some trekkers that reserved it in advance. The shady guy was trying to lead us to another part of town. The French women and I skeptically believed him until Sebastian asked a third party if it was true.

"[He just told me there is another taxi coming here,]" Sebastian told the guy.

"[You are from the toilet,]" he said. Meanwhile, another guy nearby whipped out some Moroccan bracelets and daggers from under his galabiyya cloak trying to make a sale, but we declined.

TWO TAXI RIDES LATER, two Moroccan men, two French women, one Canadian and I arrived back in Marrakesh. "Let's go rock the hammam," I said. After a muscular strenuous day of trekking up and down north Africa's highest peak, a steam bath and massage was in order, no matter how awkward it was to feel the touch of another man's hand near my privates. For my second and Sebastian's first hammam, we decided to rock the hammam not at the Hotel Ali, but at the public hammam in town in attempts to get a more authentic experience. Its authenticity couldn't be more perfect, with wrinkly old guys bathing us in a much more thorough and rigorous manner than Mohammed the Pizza Man at the Hammam Ali. More scrubbing, more lathering and more kneading of the muscles and body contortion "relaxed" us as we lay on the ceramic floor like animals. I put "relaxed" in quotes because it was less like a bath and more like a steamy hot workout.

"I don't know if I'm more tired from the trek or the hammam," I told Sebastian, staggering through the Place Djemaa el-Fna the way I did at the high altitude earlier that day. We went out for dinner at one of the many food stands in the main square. Regardless of my sore body muscles, I was still pretty content with the events of the day and showed it by kicking my heels in the air once again. After all, Morocco was still in one piece.

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Posted by Erik on June 29, 2004 11:01 AM
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