From Ifrane, Towards Midelt

April 14, 2024

Into the Atlas Mountains

We departed Fes at 8 am on another sunny day - the weather has been pretty much perfect so far. We headed south to the middle Atlas Mountains.

The virus I reported yesterday is making its way through group. Leslie and Robyn now have coughs. Jordan has been sick, but Hailey says it's because he ate a chicken kebab for lunch that hadn't been refrigerated overnight. Yikes.

We were without Youssef today - he had to go to back to Tangier to receive the stolen bikes from the police. I'm not sure where they ended up though, because he didn't bring them back to us.

We exited Fes via the most affluent quarter of the city, seeing some big houses.

The starting point for our ride was in the very tidy city of Ifrane, just over an hour drive from Fes. It's home to a distinguished private university. Hicham says Ifrane is known as the 'Geneva of Morocco’. I'm happy to report that food is considerably cheaper here than in Switzerland.

I started out the day feeling like I was really struggling to bike. It took me over 8 km to realize that my front brake was rubbing. Argh. I hate wasting energy. We had a pretty tough section of riding between 1900 and 2000 m elevation in a wide open area with a moderate headwind. Everyone was feeling it. Leslie and Robyn’s viruses have them feeling poorly, so they didn’t ride the whole route today.

For the first part of our ride, the terrain looked like a lot of places in North America.

We passed by the Ifrane ski club. The slopes looked pretty tame. And apparently the season lasts about a month each year.

It must snow enough to require occasional road closures.

We left the trees behind and biked through a treeless high plain populated by lots of sheep.

In some places, there wasn’t much for sheep to graze on.

By lunch, we’d ridden 47 km. We stopped at a gas station restaurant just past a village. we were told that none of the village restaurants meet Intrepid’s sanitation standards. I’m glad to know they look out for us. And we lucked out, because the gas station chicken and meatball tagines were delicious. At the end of the meal, we learned that the woman working in the gas station cafe/convenience store had cooked all the food, and we gave her a round of applause. It seemed just to be a husband and wife running the whole place.

Consensus was that this gas station restaurant served the best chicken tagine of the trip. And great bread too. Interestingly, there were no olives in the food or on the table. That’s our first meal in ages without olives - they are usually even offered at breakfast

Yes, it was a very good meal, as evidenced by the clean plates!

We had a nice ride after lunch - 15 km of gentle ups and downs through a treeless beautiful landscape. There was lots of car traffic though, because it’s the last day of the Eid break, so people are heading home to the city.

We are in traditional territory of the Amazigh (Berbers). We saw many people tending their sheep today. In the past all Amazigh were nomadic. But now it’s harder because of modern life and the Sahara being too dry now to support the time they’d usually spend there. The land in this area is owned by tribes. People can only graze their sheep on their family’s tribal lands.

Today was the longest biking day so far, at 62 km with a 720 m elevation gain. Not exactly a long way, but tough in today's conditions. It was a warm day and we all worked hard. The landscape got drier and drier as we drove south. And more hazy too. Sand from the Sahara, I suppose?

A observation- there is not much litter on the roadsides here - I’d say things are better than southern Italy for sure. There are some less good spots though. I wonder who cleans things up?

After finishing our ride, we drove another hour to near the town of Midelt, stopping in town to buy lunch veggies and fruit for tomorrow.

The main street of Midelt was very crowded and busy, with delicious smells from the restaurants grilling meat outdoors.

Our hotel isn’t in town, because previous Intrepid guests didn’t like the Midelt hotel option. Instead, we stayed in a great little hotel in the country. They had a nice swimming pool that was filled only today, so the water was still pretty cold. The Canadians and Irish swam, and all the Aussies declined. There are several other tour groups staying here too - I’m sure this place gets excellent reviews.

There was a pond near the hotel that had a bunch of turtles to see, but I was tired and was happy to just hang out poolside with the others enjoying a cold beer.

Our hotel had a very nice look and feel.

We had another good dinner of couscous, veggies, and chicken, and then an early night.

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 190 km (118 miles)

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