One Does Not Simply WALK into Mordor...

...One hikes there.

So Friday night, November 6th, we left campus at midnight to drive 5 hours (ish) to Chefchaouen. "We" being, me, Andrew, Ben, another American, and 11 Moroccans. The Explorers Club organized the trip. And I should correct myself, we left at 1am. Piled into an AUI van. Rolled into Chaouen at like 530 am, before the sun was out. It was fantastic. And bumpy. We had breakfast at some little cafe/sandwich shop right by where the van parked. Spent the next 5 hours wandering around Chaouen. Took pictures like this:




Chefchaouen is known for being blue. Also known for its hash. But whatever. Which isn't to say we didn't get a bunch of guys asking us if we wanted any. One guy wanted us to go to his farm 35 km away. That would have ended well, I'm sure. Great story though.

So yeah, wandered til noon. I was with Andrew and Tom the whole time. We got lunch at like 11:15 because we were supposed to meet at noon to be on our way to make sure we'd have enough daylight for the hike. Then we found that everyone else was just sitting down to lunch. At noon. We finally left Chaouen at 2pm to hike up to the place we were staying that night.

Protip: When you need AT LEAST 4 hours of daylight, likely more, and the sun goes down around 6... you don't leave at 2. But hey.

The hike kind of killed me. It was really rough at the beginning but at some point it got better. Until my leg rebelled. Earlier in the week I'd tweaked the arch of my foot doing yoga, but it hadn't really bothered me since so I figured I'd be okay. Not so much. Then my knee started bothering me too because I was walking funny. It was great.

Still pretty near the beginning of the trek.

But dude. The views from the mountain were so epic. And then we went into the Shire and Mordor. It was crazy. But like, being that high up was one thing. To be able to see it all was amazing. And at multiple points we were in the clouds. In. The clouds. As in the clouds were rolling right by us. It was ridiculous. And everything was so green and the sky was crazy colors and looking out through the clouds was just... wow. And it's kinda sad because the photos don't really do it justice. The light kept changing and it's just crazy. I was walking with Andrew and Ben and Ben's roommate for the most part, and we kept making jokes about being in Mordor and such because it really looked like that at some points. We lost the game a couple times too. There were all kinds of silly things talked about and stupid jokes and things to remember forever.

Also there was a lot of this:
"Hey guys, let's cut up the mountain!" Because we were behind everyone else. So clearly it's faster to cut up the side than follow the path. Mmyepp. It wasn't so bad, except for the time I fell and high-fived a prickly plant. Above picture is Andrew and Ben. And Ben's Canadian coat.

By the time we reached the actual top of the mountain it was completely dark. Yay. We were under the impression that once we got up we were done. Nope, there was like another 1.5 hours to go down. But there were tire tracks or something weird that had created ruts, so we had to go pretty slowly or risk death. >> Also no one had flashlights. And cell phones didn't help a whole lot. In the end we were all rescued by a Land Rover owned by the people we were staying with. That was a special ride. There were like 9 people crammed into it. It was fun.

The place we were staying turned out to be the house of the people who owned the hostel thing that we were not in fact staying at. The Explorers' Club had been trying to arrange this trip for a long time but it wasn't working out so I guess finally they were like "Can we plz stay here?" And so we stayed there. IT WAS SO COLD. I mean, up in the mountains. No electricity. Coldness. But we had lots of mint tea, and harira (Moroccan soup), and chicken tajine. All of which was really good. And then it was bedtime.

The next morning, surprise, it was still cold. We had an amazing breakfast of bread, olives, tea, awesome coffee, something else?, and some kind of honey thing that was amazing. Again we wound up leaving like two hours later than planned, but whatever. We left just before 10:30am. It got significantly less cold as we kept hiking. Which was almost sad because I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt since the weather forecast had been all "OMG COLD AND HIGH CHANCE OF RAIN." This hike seemed a lot easier. We went up and down a lot, but we stayed in a group almost the whole time because we were walking along a path that was lined by prickly bushes and was barely wide enough for one person as it was. Also there were berries. Lots of berries. That everyone decided they needed to pick from the bushes and eat. And by pick, I mean stop dead in their tracks on this narrow path on pretty steep inclines. We were not amused. The berries weren't even that good. They were weird, actually. Kind of spiky but not? Idk.

Lots of walking and trees and mountains later, we got to the village of Akchour at the end of the trail. And there was much rejoicing. And a little bit of dying. And a half hour drive back to Chaouen, where we had a delicious dinner. Yay, tajine. And salad. Nom nom nom. And then a 5-hour drive back to campus, during which we stayed awake until the last hour. Fail.

And then we had class the next day. And I'm pretty sure we all died a little every time we had to move. It was such an epic weekend though. I feel like this post is way too short for the amount of fun that was had, but most of what happened was things that you had to be there for, either because stupid things were said or done and will always be inside jokes, or because there's really no way to describe the crazy views and they way it felt to be there. Either way, epic weekend was epic, and totally worth the cold and the pain we felt later. Yay, Morocco. <3

Peekchurs!