On January 24 we took the Supratour bus from Marrakech to Tinghir, a city of around 50,000. Although it was a mostly comfortable ride, the total travel time was close to 8 hours. Surprisingly most of the roads in Morocco have been well paved and well maintained. Upon leaving Marrakech we took the winding roads into the Atlas mountains. The bus leaving Marrakech was not full, so we did not have anyone in the seats neighboring us, which was extra nice. Along the way we made a few stops in small villages for snacks and toilets, as well as stops at proper bus stations. By the time we were arriving in Tinghir the bus was completely full. Although the bus is a national carrier for long rides, it appears that many Moroccans use this bus system and route for shorter rides within their region. Once we arrived in Tinghir our guesthouse manager, Ismail, met us at the bus stop and drove us 15 minutes up into the Todra Gorge to where we stayed for 6 nights.
The Todra Gorge is home to a few Berber villages and nomadic people living above the gorge in the mountains. The villages are small and the “main street” we stayed on was less than .5 miles long. Down in and around the gorge itself, a 10-15 minutes walk from our guesthouse (A Secret Garden), there are a few more guesthouses and restaurants along with little vendors selling snacks and souvenirs. The gorge is a popular stop for tours traveling between Marrakech and the Sahara, and the people living here rely heavily on the daily tourism that comes through. Even though the gorge is small enough to experience in one day, we booked a week stay here for some rock climbing!
When I mentioned to my buddy Foster that we would be traveling to Morocco, one of the first things he asked/ mentioned was rock climbing there. Even though we have plans to rock climb in other countries on this trip, climbing in Morocco was not on our radar. Thanks Foster! After learning of climbing in Morocco, we quickly honed in on the beauty of Todra and the 400 sport rock routes in the gorge. There are a few other areas in Morocco known for Trad and Big Wall climbing, but we will not visit those areas on this trip. There are as many rock climbing stores in Todra as markets (2) and the square footage of the shops might be greater than the markets. In our research we discovered that the owner of the original climbing store, Aventures Verticales Maroc, also owns A Secret Garden guesthouse. Assuming that we would be surrounded by climbers and just talk shop all week at the guesthouse we booked our stay. Unfortunately our assumption was not accurate as the owner does not actually run the guesthouse and there were only 4 other climbers staying there during our week, but we still enjoyed our stay and the friendly staff keeping us comfortable and cooking delicious dinners for us. Through a Facebook group we met some climbers staying at another guesthouse down the road, Dar Ayour Guesthouse, and had dinner with a group of 4 one night. It was super rad to meet other climbers in the area, but we did not get on any rock with them. Dar Ayour was a lot more comfortable and lively than our guesthouse and I would recommend folks to stay there if they do a rock climbing trip to Todra.
The climbing in the gorge is awesome and super accessible. We could walk to the closest crag in 10-15 minutes and the longest approach we had was 30 minutes (to a crag we had to hike a mile or so up the pass to). We purchased a small guidebook from the OG local guide, who has been climbing in the gorge for 35 years, and he gave us tips on which crags and routes to try. Over our 4 days of climbing we checked out 4 different crags. Proceeds from the guidebook go to the funding of bolting new routes and re-bolting established routes, to help keep the climbing in the gorge as safe as possible. The guidebook also indicates which routes have great, OK, and bad bolting; again to help keep you safe. We stuck to only routes with a great bolting indicator, and even doing so we still ran into a few routes that had missing bolts but all of the anchors were clean and safe. Over the 4 days we climbed over 25 routes, and our hands were feeling it at the end! The rock in Todra is a very sharp limestone which makes for mostly stable feet but digs into the hands and takes skins as its tax!
My favorite routes were: The First of Ela – Moulinette, The Bush is on Fire, Qui est Alberto, On la faite, Expérience Innéfable, & Zaragoza. Zaragoza is the hardest route I have ever done outside, where I had to take deep breaths multiple times to lower my heart rate and try to get my leg to stop shaking before continuing up the route. Jen was also taking deep breaths and controlling her anxiety seeing my leg shake uncontrollably 25m up on the wall. The route had a nice mixture of climbing; crimps, cracks, slab, and a small roof. I am proud that I was able to complete the route without “taking” and am stoked to take this win with me onto Italy and Greece for our next climbing adventures. Jen got in more outdoor climbing during the week than she had before the trip, and is getting more and more comfortable with the big differences in climbing outside versus inside. We are dialing in our systems, learning new skills, and excited to learn more in Italy and Greece and get onto some multi-pitch routes later this year! I would have loved to climb a few more days, but our hands needed some rest and our minds were craving a larger city with more variety than the small town provides.
On the cultural side of things, Moroccans are SUPER friendly but as one traveler at the guesthouse said “are always salesmen first”. Since the town is so small and we stuck out as tourists we got friendly with a local named Mustapha, and the owner of the market with a fruit stand seemed to enjoy our daily shopping on the way back from climbing. A note on the friendliness of the people, one morning we got some bread and sweets from a bakery and they did not have enough change for us, so they told us just to come back later and pay when we had smaller bills and take the bread with us. We had a nice chuckle and over 24 hours had debts with 2 different locals in town….haha After a few nights at the guesthouse the manager, Ismail, invited us over to his house to have Berber pizza with him and his wife. Sharing meals is such a good way to learn about different cultures and pizza?!?!, there was no way we were turning down this offer! When the evening came Ismail had to attend to the last minute influx of new guests, so we walked over to his house with Mustapha for the meal Ismail’s wife had prepared for us. Mustapha is probably in his mid 50s and has 4 children. He is also Berber and has lived in the village his entire life. He speaks Berber, Arabic, French, and English. He kept apologizing for his English, but there were no issues with our conversation and obviously his English is way better than our Arabic. During dinner we exchanged questions on life and culture, learned some Berber & Arabic, and stuffed ourselves with Moroccan salad, veggie pizza, meatball pizza, & fruit for dessert. Fruit seems to be the main offering for dessert, which we are loving since it is all very fresh and usually light. On the way back to the guest house, Mustapha invited us to see his carpet production facility (here comes the sales pitch) and we agreed to stop by the following evening.
Since we are traveling light and have no room to expand, we are not too bothered by the sales pitches, since there is no way we will buy a carpet. We stopped by the production site to see how the carpets are made and the variety they have. It truly is amazing how they make them and a lot of them are very beautiful. I believe he said 5 months is the minimum production time, while a lot of carpets take 9 – 12 months to complete. Jen decided to be friendly and purchase a bracelet from Mustapha. He was disappointed that we did not even ask about carpets and continued to try and sell us each time we saw him around town. Even though Mustapha was trying to sell to us, we have concluded that our dinner and overall exchanges were all real and genuine and we will grow and be better citizens of the world knowing more about the culture, lives, struggles, triumphs, and everyday life of Mustapha and the other Moroccans we have met.
