We were able to spend time in Azrou for a regional meeting. Widely recommended as a place to visit in Morocco, I thought I'd share our experience when the meeting ended.
Azrou, meaning rock or stone, is a quaint town a short way from popular imperial cities Meknes and Fes. It is known as a destination for buying hand woven Berber rugs and an escape from summer heat. There is skiing and sledding nearby in the winter months. We enjoyed the town walking through the narrow streets of the medina, buying our first cherries of the season there, and seeing the namesake of the town, being a giant boulder with a golden crown on top. While the city is nice, we were more eager to get out. Azrou is nestled in the Middle Atlas Mountains and surrounded by a cedar forest with trees up to 800 years old. We were definitely going hiking.
In the surrounding areas, there are well worn trails to vistas, waterfalls, and natural streams. Many of these require a short car ride to trail heads. We decided to simply walk towards the cedars to the edge of town and keep going. With no better description to give, we were immediately bathed in nature stoke. There were crumbling rock walls, hills of wild flowers, bright red poppies, new butterflies and insects, flocks of grazing sheep, knotted olive trees, a foot and a half long green/ blue lizard, dung beetles, dung beetles, beetles rolling dung, and giant cedars ahead of us on the mountain.
Losing the trail and wandering blissfully aimlessly, still ecstatic about our 30 minute observation of real life dung beetles rolling perfect piles of poop, Zach says, "we've got monkeys." The endangered Barbary macaque, to be exact. We knew they made appearances and pleas to tourists on the main road and picnic areas with people feeding them from their hands, but we didn't expect to see them isolated wherever it was that we were. We saw two on the rocks above us, and set out towards them. Dung beetles and two monkeys, the day was becoming too good to be true. We soon found there were more than 2, counting over 50 and knowing there were more unseen, we sat quietly and excitedly to watch. After some time, we were completely surrounded by families of monkeys generally unconcerned by us. They were grooming each other on rocks, swatting their little hands to catch flies from the air, and enjoying a day in monkey land. That is, until an adorable baby monkey swinging in the trees jumped down abruptly from his branch, surprised to find us only 3 feet away. He scared us; we scared him; he let out a baby monkey screech; the adults heard. All of the big monkeys came pounding toward us hitting rocks and baring their big teeth. I said, "Zach! Don't run!" as I left him and tried to run myself while saying one of the most unique prayers of my life out loud. The largest grandpa monkey was coming quickly and less than 10 feet away when Zach bent to pick up a rock for defense. There are many farmers in these mountains; we think he knew what that gesture meant. It gave us enough space to get out of their space quickly and make a nice long loop around them. On that loop, we came across a monkey carcass. We figure that is what happens to baby threateners.
Seeing more of the beautiful forest and more monkeys in the mean time, we walked until we came to a paved road, were picked up and drove down the mountain, and grabbed a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice back in town. For those looking to escape the big cities for a weekend, this is a good place to go. Just don't tick off the monkeys.
Zach's phone died after excessive filming of dung beetles, so you'll just have you trust me on this one.
Zach's phone died after excessive filming of dung beetles, so you'll just have you trust me on this one.
A special thanks to Ron, a fellow PCV, for hosting us.
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