Been a crazy month really, no change there I cry to myself. Busy at work….yes I do work you doubting Thomas bell ends. Run the Royal Parks half, wild camped with my lad in the forest of Essex, climbed the second highest mountain in the United Kingdom Ben Macdui, watched the mighty Hammers maintain 2nd in the league, trained for Beachy Head fell marathon and then I get this e-mail from my mountain instructor
“I am heading off to Morocco on Monday for a 1 week trip to climb Toubkal. Unfortunately one member of the team has had to pull out and so his space is available at the last minute”
My reaction was instantaneous “Wifey, I love you, love love you, love love love you, bestest wifey in the whole wide world kissey kiss kiss”.
12 hours later, huge bouquet, champagne and thank you card duly purchased and delivered to my lovely wife and I’m getting packed to break the back of the highest mountain in North Africa. Get in you beauty!!
48 hours before I’m leaving on a jet plane my rucksacks are packed. Sitting by the front door like a panting dog waiting to go and sniff a pissy lamp post, Jaffa Cake tubes bulging from the side pockets. You know what I think to myself….. I love life!
Monday morning comes and it’s a drive to Gatwick, park and ride, check in, order a beer, kick back and smile. I arrive at Marrakesh airport early. The rest of the crew are arriving from Manxchester and their flight has been delayed. With hours to kill my mind immediately turns to one thing…beer??? Momentarily forgetting Marrakesh is an Arab country with tight restrictions on the purchase and consumption of alcohol, searching for the elusive elixir of life could be problem. It appears not, as long as you go upstairs to the café and are willing to pay £8 for a bottle of Sol you can drink happily away. I’m not a tight git by any stretch but £8 for a bottle of Sol….I made my beer last longer than one of Willy Wonkers gob-stoppers in a Thai whore house.
After a few wasted hours watching Arab men in wizard suits waving name placards at unsuspecting arrivals, the airport begins to clear and out come the floor washing team. Now this is a big sparse marble floored airport so the wishy-washy brigade go about their systematic cleaning. A bloke in a white wizard suit has a big wheeled bowser full of water and a bucket. He randomly throws water everywhere. His troop of oversized broom wielding hoppos then form a line and mop till they drop. Mighty effective if a little primitive.
9.50pm the gang pass through the sliding doors of arrival and we meet and greet. Rob, Paul, Martin, Mickey, Naomi, Steve, Vic and Andy. A motley ensemble of budding mountaineers with an apparent job lot of Mountain Equipment holdalls.
We are greeted by Muhammad, our driver who delivers us to the remote mountain village of Imlil. 90 minutes of pot holed dark mountain roads, hair pin bends and precipitous drops – nice!
We must be near to our accommodation when on an uphill bend the road is blocked by a recently and inconveniently dumped spoil heap. Mohammed utters something about Allah under his breath and backs the mini bus up and orders us out in the rain. It’s pitch black and we don’t really know what’s going on. We’re all startled as a corrugated shed door opens behind us and an overpowering smell of donkey semen emanates. We can just make out a shadow as a bloke dressed like Borat pops out from the darkness of the shed and says "Heello Sexy Ladies...". OMG, does he sleep with his donkeys…..are we sleeping with his donkeys……what the….!
It turns out he is the head muleteer, the man that “loves” his mules, well loves to whack them round the head with a stick to get them moving. He walks us up a dark muddy and rocky path to our refuge. A stone three-storey building. We are greeted with a warm smile and ushered in where we are shown to our bedroom; mine being a sofa clad lounge with massive pillows that I’ll share with three others. It’ll do. Its gone midnight and we’re all a bit jaded.
Before the sleeping bags are unfurled, to our surprise the guardian takes us to a dining room, set for dinner. These lads are gonna feed us first. Top shout! Mint Tea (a sweet mix of green tea, mint and fag butts) Orange coloured soup, goat tagine (probably) and tinned fruit consumed in an elaborately decorated and hand crafted room was not what we expected. A good start by any ones standards (except of course the rich, famous or fussy). By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I was on Masterchef……..haha…
So, fed and watered time for bed. Now if I had known then, what I know now I would have cherished the silence and tranquillity of mild snoring, occasional farting and the 4.30am load speaker wallah wallah man waking up the entire village for morning prayer. This I was soon to find out would be considered a “quiet” night.
Morning was broken by the waking cockerel. Mine was unusually limp; apparently this is due to the adjustment to altitude. Breakfast of bread and Dairy Lea and our mules arrived to carry our kit backs to the refuge Toubkal Les Mouflons high up in the mountain pass at the base of big Atlas 4,000’s.
We needed some basic supplies for a spot of lunch so went to the supermarket. Waitrose eat your heart out. The butcher on the corner was an open plan stone hut with fly attractive meat hanging in the open air, bloodied chopping block and cleaver by his side. The green grocer was a shed full of boxes and random odd looking limp vegetables and the baker, well we walked straight past it….not to be mistaken for just a very small dark stone room with a stone hole acting as a customer service desk. An unmistakable must of donkey piss filled the air. The mini market was small but OK, all tinned and processed produce so we settled for cheese. Bread and Dairy Lea for lunch it is then, again! Looovely……or is that the Philadelphia advert?
We head off up the village, fending off offers of rugs, fake silver trinkets, coloured stones and general Arab artefacts. We head back down the village having gone the wrong way fending off offers of rugs, fake silver trinkets, coloured stones and general Arab artefacts. We find the correct track to the mountain pass and once again head off up the village, fending off offers of rugs, fake silver trinkets, coloured stones and general Arab artefacts.
Once out of Imlil, the route up was amazing. Huge snow capped peaks popping out from low-slung cumulus. Dotted timber huts serving cold drinks, mint tea and local snacks. Giving way only to passing pack mules we sauntered to the refuge stopping once or twice for refreshments. The orange man near the top, eight fresh oranges hand pressed into each glass – sweet, fresh and delicious. I’m loving this! A local muleteer, ancient with few teeth passes us by. He grabs a clean upturned glass from the orange mans tray, collects water from a hose dripping from a low wall, quenches his thirst and returns the glass upturned to the clean tray. Mmmmm, maybe my glass has also been shared with a man who fell out with his dentist 65 years ago and has halitosis rivalled only by a rabid dog that has just lovingly cleaned its genitals.
Eventually, the refuge meets our eyes like a stone prison emerging from the surrounding rock. As we near, smoke emanates from the grey chimney. It’s chilly; a nice room with a roaring fire would be a welcome treat.
We are welcomed and treated to a FREEZER type bedroom room, very similar to Kibo hut at base camp Kilimanjaro. A big stone block with two massive wooden bunk beds eaching sleeping four in a row top and bottom and with touching ½ inch thick mattresses, a window the size of a lever arch file, except the window didn’t have a lever and a small light. We switched the light on…ahhh no electricity…head torch it is then. I took a top bunk up against a wall thereby instantly reducing my chance of getting bummed by 50% and the rest of the crew shuffled into their respective cots. If the room had a star rating, I would say minus two but to be fair I wasn’t expecting to be greeted by two Thai girls offering a body body massage whilst feeding me grapes and sucking the jam from between my toes. This was a mountain refuge in North Africa so deal with it head dick!
After I had unpacked i.e. dumped all my shit on the spare mattress next to me, we went for dinner. Nice dining room, similar to the bedroom but tables instead of beds but it did have a fire….being hogged by Germans as if it was a sunbed, oh well. Food was great, honest….Orange soup and flat bread to start which to be fair by day six become a little tedious helped only by large doses of extra Tabasco sauce to fire it up and make your nose dribble into your spoon. But the mains, seriously they were good, Chicken tagine with figs and dates, chicken tagine with preserved lemon, Couscous (said in a thick scouce accent…luv you Mikey)…..ok so the spag bol was shite. My advice chef, stick to what you know…J
It was a cosy first night, getting to know each other round a table wrapped in blankets donning head torches. It was less cosy getting to know each other in a freezing dorm wrapped in a sleeping bag listening to snoring, coughing, extreme nose blowing and of course farting. It’s a fact no matter how old you are, farting is still funny!
So I didn’t sleep much, in fact I didn’t sleep much the entire trip but when you get up and glance at the mountains you’re about to explore, the tiredness instantly evaporates. It’s replaced by a sense of excitement, adventure, adrenalin and just an awe inspiring feeling of all round happiness in a bubble of tranquillity. That’s why I love mountains!
Well I’m not going to dwell on the individual mountain days but they were all truly special and amazing. From sitting on the top of a col overlooking 100 miles of the lower Atlas and the Sahara desert to topping out on a stormy Toubkal, a snowy Raz , a chilly Timguiza and climbing a snow gully now named “Debbie’s Crack” it was all special. Great company, good laughs and the most breath taking scenery. One word “totally stunning”. Yes I know that’s two words but just “stunning” on it’s own just doesn’t cut it.
I have the most amazing pictures of our time in the mountains so here are a few: I took almost 400!!!
After we had been up Debbie’s Crack, and that’s not a euphemism, we sunbathed in the snow, and oh how we laughed when the lads filled my rucksack with rocks and cross-threaded all my straps. But during this moment of merriment we decided to sack the last night in the refuge and head to Marrakesh for a night of insanity staying at a rhiad in town. My Allah we were not disappointed. For those of you that have never been: Take Covent garden, double it, add 2000 people, half fill it with food stalls selling sheep’s brain tagine and BBQ’d donkeys bollocks (probably), mix in some spice, chuck in handful of dancing cobras, turn the lights off, drive a load of motorbikes through it and you have the Medina of Marrakesh!!!! TOTALLY TOTALLY BONKERS…….it was perfect!!!
We ate; very well I have to say. A mixed street stall BBQ meal of chicken, lamb, beef, shrimps liver with salad, rice and donkeys bollocks (probably). We skipped the sheep’s brain. It looked OK but I was put off by the boiled head staring at me with these big herbivorous gnashers. I swear when they chopped the little feckers head off he was smiling. Probably had one of the locals up him at the time Bahhhh. Jealousy will get you nowhere Mr Small!
We ended the trek as all good treks should end. We got totally hammered! A taxi to the new town, rooftop hotel bar, four bottles of your finest red please treacle….hammer time! Of course finished the night in the usual style, midnight jump in the pool, KFC, lose your wallet, done!
The next morning, my eyes opened about three hours before the lights come on in my head and it was off for some spontaneous haggling in the colourful exotic realm of the covered market. I bought my usual array of totally useful and practical items: A hooded wizard cape, some goat fur and camel pointed slippers, a wooden stick carved like a cobra, some fake silver trinkets, some stuff you rub on you that makes you smell nice but in reality it makes you smell like a prostitute, an imitation amethyst rock, a wooden snake oh and of course enough mojule dates to sink the entire Spanish Armada. Note to self: Don’t go shopping with hangover as you will come home with lots of expensive shit that you will never use (although I did greet the wife in my wizard cape and slippers which was nice J ).
So that’s it really, shopping done, airport, man hugs, home.
Great time, great company, amazing amazing place. Til next time Morocco. ……..The Smallster will be back!
