A harsh wake-up call at 4am in order to drag ourselves to the airport for an early flight out- this time for North-Africa, and around noon we already landed on the Moroccan soil. We exit the aircraft on foot and walked to the customs amongst the airport staff (read: gasoline trucks, luggage carriers, etc.) plus all the fellow passengers…needless to say, it seemed like a pretty chaotic arrangement to us. An hour and a half taxi ride later we arrived to a small village Imlil, lost in the Atlas mountain range.
Due to a small mix-up in our reservation, they upgraded us to the finest guest house of the village. It was a magical little riad with authentic patios and terraces overlooking the surrounding snowy mountains. We were greeted with berberian hospitality: mint tea and homemade Moroccan delights. Couldn’t have asked for anything better!
We took a small walk around the village and the hills close around us and marveled at the small distinctive things, such as locals using tree branches for drying out their clothes (we actually saw women washing their laundry in rivers, too). The landscape around Imlil is quite rocky (especially higher up), the houses are built from stone and yet there is surprisingly green flora to it all. As we strolled down the village road, a number of people on their donkeys passed us by, and a group of kids was playing football on the sloping road. They asked us to join them, and so we played along! It was interesting to see how unreserved and genuinely happy they were for that little that they had: only thing they really needed was a couple of rocks on each side to serve as goals and one worn out football.
After a while we headed back to our riad for a delicious dinner that was set truly beautifully by the fireplace (and we were wearing our cosy and warm djellabas!). We crawled to our comfy bed quite early to load our batteries for the next day’s challenge, which would be higher than ever before…
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