High Atlas Mountains, Morocco (Post #56)
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005Mike and Michele write…
Today is October 12 and in the next 1-2 hours we will head for the Marrakech train station to ride to Casablanca where we will catch our plane back to Valletta, Malta. The next day we will take another plane to Athens…
At 8 a.m. Friday morning, Oct 7, outside the Sahara Expeditions office, we met the guide, cook and bus driver for our trek through the High Atlas mountains to Jebel Toubkal (highest mountain in North Africa). We had packed everything we thought we would need for this trek into Mike’s pack and left everything else behind in Michele’s pack in the Sahara Expeditions office luggage room. The bus ride to Imili, the Berber village where our trek began, was just about one hour. In Imili, we met our mule and mule handler and began a moderately easy 4-hour trek to our first overnight stop. One thing we (or at least Michele) learned is that a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey and mules cannot reproduce. So, the only way to get more mules is by breeding horses and donkeys together. Our guide also explained thqt a mule can carry up to 450 pounds of stuff. Our mule was carrying all our food and cookware and the gear for five people over four days. Here is a picture (taken by our guide, Tariq) of Michele; Mike; our cook, Mahmoud; our mule handler, Hamid; and our mule.
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Michele Harmon