Reading Time: 12 minutes

We started the day on Wednesday with breakfast at the lodge and then hiked into Imlil to the Toubkal Guide office to ask questions regarding our trek for Thursday and Friday.  The office was closed so Mike sent a What’s App message and received a quick response that the office would be open later.  We hiked to the radio tower hill, which we can see from our room.

It took us about 40 minutes to climb to the top from downtown.  There wasn’t a clear path up the hill.  It was rocky, with lots of loose stones.  Because it was so steep we had to try to find something to hold onto to climb the hill, while avoiding cactus plants and broken glass (our walking sticks would have been helpful). We saw quite a few bleached out animal bones along the way, which left us wondering why.  The view of Imlil and the surrounding mountains made up for the garbage and broken glass at the top of the hill.  Mike had read about the hike and was happy we did it.  For me, this hike was the least favorite hike we’ve done together.  I was not looking forward to sliding down the hill on the loose stones, however, we found a different path on the opposite side that was much more enjoyable. 

We stopped and had fresh orange and banana juice before going to the Toubkal Guide office and meeting the excursion coordinator we’ve been communicating with during the past week (Karima).  We were able to get our questions answered.  She told us, “everything is easy in Morocco” and “anything you want”.  She told us not to worry about paying, we would figure that out later.  We can’t even count the number of times someone has answered “no problem” to something we’ve requested.  Our perception is that it doesn’t really translate to “what you have requested will happen” though. For instance, we had asked if we could pay for Thursday night at the lodge and keep the belongings we aren’t taking on our overnight trek in the room, so we didn’t have to pack and unpack.  The excursion coordinator told us “no problem”.  At dinner we were talking to our host and telling him our plan and he said, “no problem”, but kept telling us he would store our items until we get back.  We found out that he needed our room for a group for Thursday night.  Another example is our lodge host asked what time we wanted breakfast and we said “10:00”, he said “no problem”.  When we came downstairs to use the internet at 9:00 he already had breakfast ready for us.  After dinner we packed our things going into storage the next day and packed for our overnight trip. 

Abraham, our guide from Toubkal Guide company, met us at the lodge as we were eating breakfast.  We left the lodge with Abraham and our overnight backpacks at 9:40 am to trek to Toubkal, the highest mountain in northern Africa.  The weather was perfect for hiking.  Sunny (loving our sunhats!) and about 60 degrees.  We hiked towards Imlil and took a path up the mountain looking over Imlil.  We stopped at a shop in the next village up, Aroumd, where Abraham took care of some business.  We passed several Berber women, dressed in their beautiful and bright colored attire, carrying huge loads of long vegetation strapped to their backs (it would have made for amazing pictures, but we respect their wishes to not be photographed).  We learned from Abraham that they were on their way home to feed the family farm animals.  Abraham and his ancestors have lived in the High Atlas Mountains.  He shared with us that his wife died a month ago.  He has three adult children.  We believe his wife had been sick.  Although Abraham can speak some English, much of our conversations would get lost in translation.  We could tell he was grieving as we watched him alone with his thoughts on the trail and during meals (when he would always say “I’m not hungry”). 

About 90 minutes into our hiking, we met Samir with his family donkey.  Samir played a dual role.  He was our muleteer (porter carrying everything we needed to stay overnight), as well as our chef.  He gave us the walking poles we rented (with our limited space we are not traveling with our own) and traveled ahead of us to our lunch location to prepare lunch for us.  As we entered Toubkal National Park, Abraham took our passports and walked up the stairs to the passport control area.  He needed to show proof that he was a guide and indicate who was trekking with him.  I guess they trust the guides that the people on the passports are the people with them, as no one from the checkpoint looked at us to see if we were the people in the photos.  In 2018, a 24-year-old Danish woman, and a 28-year-old Norwegian woman were found decapitated in the foothills of mount Toubkal near the village of Imlil.  It was a terrorist act.  Morocco now requires all hikers to be accompanied by a guide and to stop at the checkpoint. 

We stopped for lunch at 12:20.  Samir is a good cook!  Everything was fresh and delicious.  We enjoyed beef tajine, a beautiful Moroccan salad (almost too pretty to eat), bread, fresh squeezed orange juice, and bananas.  Mike and I were the only people in Abraham and Samir’s group.  Additional groups were at the same location for lunch, so we were able to interact with others and we quickly found out that our paths would continually cross for the next 24 hours. 

We were back on the trail about an hour later and hiked for another 2 ½ hours.  Based on our phone apps, we walked about 9 miles, starting at about 7,000 feet and ending at about 10,000 feet elevation.  There are two refuges at base camp where we stayed overnight.  Abraham gave us the choice of picking a bed inside Refuge Mouflons or sleeping in a 2-person tent. The beds were dormitory style (and on top of each other so you practically had to climb over the person lying next to you to get in and out of bed), the building was crowded with people and it was very dark inside.  We chose the tent.  He told us we could use the flushable toilets inside the refuge instead of the outside hole in the ground toilet.  

Abraham and Samir put up our tent in about 3 minutes.  Samir brought camping mats and sleeping bags for us.  We brought our airplane travel pillows.  Abraham insisted that we go relax in our tent.  We love tent camping and I love camping with the equipment we used to own – a three room tent, a double high queen air mattress, clean sheets, my bed pillow, and a camping toilet in the “bathroom” section of the tent.  We laughed as there was only enough room in our tent for us to lay down and obviously no indoor toilet.  We hung up our clothes to dry and relaxed like Abraham instructed us to do.  Samir brought us popcorn, a few cookies, and mint tea (which they called Berber whiskey).   We decided to take a walk around the base camp.  We chatted with other hikers and watched the mules relaxing after a hard day of work. 

We had dinner at 7:00.  Harira soup, bread, chicken tajine, and honey dew melon.  We chatted with a few people and went to bed at 8:45. Base camp is noisy with people and mules.  Mike did not sleep at all the entire night.  I maybe slept an accumulative of 2 hours, when it was quieted down between 11:00 pm – 2:00 am. 

We met Abraham and Samir for breakfast at 3:30. With our headlamps and back packs on, we left at 4:00 am towards the summit of Mount Toubkal, which stands at 13,671 feet.  We love to hike.  This was by far the most difficult hike we’ve done.  It was almost entirely stones and rocks to navigate over.  That is fine for a while, but we dealt with it continually for hours.  The higher we ascended, the windier and chillier it got.  My hands were freezing (I knew I should have bought warmer gloves for this hike, but I hadn’t taken the time to do it).  About halfway up, Mike said some romantic things to me!  He told me he was thinking two things:  1.  This hike was satisfying his need for adventure for a while (which I told him I was thinking how the hell did I let him convince me to do this and I am not doing anything else like this with him in 2024).  2. He no longer had the desire to climb Mt. Everest or even climb to base camp (which I told him I was thinking there is no way in hell I am climbing Mt. Everest or even climbing to base camp with him).  Too funny that we were thinking the same thing!  When we reached what I thought was the summit, I realized the summit was still about an hour’s hike away.  From where we were standing it looked like a very narrow path to the summit (I don’t do well with cliff edges) and I told Mike and Abraham to go ahead, and I would meet them on their way back.  Abraham took my hand and said, “you are a strong woman” and started walking, tugging me behind him.  We reached the summit at 7:30. The summit wasn’t scary for me (although I didn’t go close to the edges).  Mike and I both said we were running on about 25% of our energy.  Not good considering how much more hiking we needed to do today. 

We headed down at 7:50, both thinking the way down will be so much easier.  About 15 minutes after descending, we passed “St. Louis” and “Hungary” (we named everyone based on where they were from) on their way up.  St. Louis summed it up perfectly!  She said, “this is FUCKING TORTURE”.  Our knees were killing us going down.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to go any further as I didn’t want to risk causing long term damage to my knees (so thoughts of them sending a helicopter for me went through my mind).  And we were both so exhausted, it felt risky to keep going as we could easily injure ourselves.  But we continued and reached base camp at 10:30.     

The two pictures above are on the way down – one looking down and one looking back from where we had just come.

After eating the delicious lunch that Samir prepared for us, we left base camp at 12:10.  We couldn’t even believe we still had 9 miles to hike back to Imlil.  We don’t plan to do this again, but if we did we would stay at camp after summitting and not also hike back to town the same day. It is difficult to believe that Abraham has done the entire thing from start to finish in 8 hours.  We were both thinking, the rest of the hike down from base camp will be so much easier.  Again, we were wrong.  It felt just as difficult.  Abraham walked at his normal pace, which would put him way ahead of us.  He enjoyed his time by stopping and talking with other guides along the way.  We didn’t feel like we could put one foot in front of the other.  We stopped for a break and shared a can of Pringles, and each had a Mars candy bar.  It cost $8 (all supplies go up the mountain via muleteers).  Mike said he would have paid $50 for it at that point.  When we reached the village, that was another hour walk to get back to our lodge, we asked Abraham if there was a way to get a taxi back to the lodge.  He contacted a friend to give us a ride for $10.  I told Mike I would have paid $100 for the ride at that point (but I truly would have paid more!).  Mike made a comment to Abraham about not walking the rest of the way, and Abraham told him, “you are a strong man”.  After hiking 15 miles of mostly stones and rocky terrain, along with the elevation, we were physically and mentally exhausted.  We can’t remember the last time we felt like this.  It was one of the most difficult things we have done.  And this now has become my least favorite hike we have ever done (it made the radio tower hike seem like a walk in the park).  It was beautiful!  However, I didn’t feel like I was able to enjoy the scenery because I had to concentrate so hard on the placement of every single step.  For those who pay attention to step counts, we did around 60,000 steps in 30 hours and we’d guess that 5% of those steps at most, were on flat ground. We are grateful we didn’t hurt ourselves badly (we saw one man with a broken arm on a mule coming back to town).  We each had minor falls, but nothing that a few days won’t heal. 

We, and all our belongings, were covered in dust.  I wiped everything, unpacked, and did some laundry in the tub.  On my birthday, we had made reservations to have dinner at Douar Sarma at 7:00 tonight as we thought it would be fun to have a couple of beers and celebrate our accomplishment.  Little did we know that we would feel like we do.  We both showered and wanted to go to bed.  Instead, we slowly, and I mean slowly, made the walk up the hill for dinner.  Every bone, muscle, hair follicle, and cell on our bodies ached.  It took every ounce of determination to make the walk.  Thank goodness we did as it was so worth it!  We sat on cushions on the floor (this part was difficult in our condition) surrounded by candlelight and talked with our new friends from Devon, England.   One of the things we love about our new lifestyle is meeting people.  And we hit the jackpot with Liz, Andy, Julie, and Richard!  What a great bunch of human beings!  We wish we would have taken a picture.  (Liz, if you read this, hopefully you won’t feel the need to hire a lawyer 🤣.)  It was so fun getting to know each of them, as well as the interesting conversations we had about politics in America and England.  I’m quite sure the six of us could solve all the world problems if we had the opportunity to concentrate on it full time!  We shared a funny conversation we had with Abraham.  Mike told Abraham earlier in the day that he wanted to play a game with him.  Mike would say a word and Abraham in turn would tell Mike the first thought that comes to his mind.  Mike said, “America”, and Abraham’s response was “England”.  Our new friends thought that was spectacular!  In addition to the great company, the food and service were phenomenal from Jacqueline and Mohammed.  The beers tasted great!  The beef tajine, sides, and warm out of the oven dessert was delicious.  Liz, all my brain cells were used up hiking, so I didn’t fully answer the question you asked me about what we miss from Florida.  In addition to our friends, family, neighbors, and restaurants, there are a lot of things that I miss….the consistency of sleeping in my bed with my silk pillowcase pillow, and soft sheets; the convenience of having everything you want and need at your fingertips (every apartment we stay in is stocked with different kitchenware); a washing machine that you know exactly how it works and how long it takes to wash a load of clothes (every apartment washer is different – thank goodness for Google Translate and online manuals); I miss our clothes dryer, although I’m getting used to hanging clothes to dry; riding my bike (we’ve only rented bikes once since we left Florida and I’m used to riding at least once a week); my local gym to lift weights (we try to find a gym to go to locally each week but it’s not always possible and the equipment is always different); grocery stores (it takes a long time to find what you want or a substitute while translating labels); having a set location for our stuff (we are continually packing and unpacking, finding a place to put our bathroom toiletries is the most challenging for me).  I know we are still transitioning to our new lifestyle and these things will get easier with time.  The good thing is that we aren’t as rushed as our former life so we can take our time doing things without the same level of stress.  I have eight personal goals that I want to achieve during our new lifestyle, and I feel like I am on my way to achieving them.  Here are a few of them:  1. To have fewer rules and expectations, to be non-resistant and go with the flow easily.  2. To be less serious, feel light-hearted, and have more fun! 3. To experience less fear and anxiety.  4.  To be consistently present.  5. To be free of feeling stressed and worried about time. 

We somehow managed to get off the floor cushions when it was time to leave and very slowly make our way down the hill.  Needless to say, we are sure we are going to sleep well tonight.