29th of September - Morocco - Getting to the venue

Wont be posting so many pictures these next days. Internet is too slow. Will be adding more as soon as I can.

The day started off super chill. I had set the clock for 07:15 (8:15 back home) and got up at 8. Super rested, as in no traces of tiredness anywhere in my system. Wow... been a while.

Breakfast was French style, jam, juice and coffee, bread and pancakes. Being gluten allergic I have my own bread with me. The coffee at Riad Diana is known to be very good and actually it was. VERY good. No fuss, no explanations to get enough of it for a big cup and not too strong so as not to resemble espresso. Ben if you're reading this, Morocco is where we need to go to get real coffee! And a whole can of it for breakfast.

Last year in the mountains of Italy it took us days to get it right at one of the hotels where we were staying, but to their credit, they listened and adjusted into the biggest cafe lungo ever. It was fun actually.
In the French mountains this summer we went with our lessons from Italy and got double allongé, sometimes three.

Ok, enough of breakfast.
The meetup with the group was at 16:00 at the airport.
I spent a few hours at the Riad reading and working (instead of hiking and sweating in town - will have time for that next week) before heading back to the airport.

There I met up with half of the group. Most of the attendees are from the UK, and a couple from Ireland and the Netherlands. Most are medical doctors, but there's one med. student and one lay person. The other half of the group came later in the evening. I haven't met them yet.

The distance to Kasbah du Toubkal was about 70 km, but took about 1,5 h to drive. The roads were quite rough. It seemed like it had been raining not too long before we passed. There was a river on the side of the road and it was red with sediment. Red like the ground and the mountains around. Fascinating.

Arriving in Imlil the air was a tad chillier than in the lowlands. Wearing a fleece sweater was actually comfortable. Until we started walking that is. There was a short, but steep ascent up to the venue. Luckily there were porters awaiting us with donkeys to carry our backpacks to the Kasbah. It was getting dark and we could hear the local mosque in evening prayer. The air was very humid so the short walk quickly turned sweaty. The short ascent had me totally out of breath and I couldn't help wondering how on earth I would survive the actual ascent to Jebel Toubkal.

Arriving at the Kasbah we were offered water perfumed with rose to wash our hands and a date to replenish the energy we had used on the walk - A Moroccan tradition, of which the rose water was repeated before each meal. And more sweet mint tea of course.
The Kasbah is a very comfortable space hosted by local berber people. They do not want to be seen as a hotel, more like a hospitality center. Local tradition is important and the food served is local.

https://www.kasbahdutoubkal.com/home.html

We spent our nights in dormitories. There were 9 girls in my room. I had one corner of the lower room with Carleen. Dani, Miranda and Hillary had the other side. 5 girls stayed on the upper level. I had an empty bed beside mine where I could store all my stuff. It's funny how quickly things turn into a mess as soon as a backpack is opened.

Dinner was traditional Moroccan style, soup for the pre-course, lamb and vegetables for the main course and something that resembled an apple pie for dessert, topped with ... suspense... sweet mint tea....

Tomorrow the actual course will being. I'm looking forward to it :-)