Wandering Through the Between: Just Go With It: “Morocco” continues! (On the Bridge of God)

May 26, 2013 (Sunday)
Washington, DC
United States of America

So I am home. I only got through about the first week of our adventure in Morocco while actually in Morocco. These things, they happen. I guess getting off four or five posts on the road isn’t too bad. But for now I’ll act like we’re still there, posting as I would have posted, could I have posted if a would post could post wood.

We left off last at Chefchaouen, getting to the quiet blue and white mountain town, and my traditional gommage black soap scrub. That afternoon we left Chefchaouen proper and headed out along winding mountain roads to a lodge in National Park of Talassemtane called Caiat Refuge. The views were pretty spectacular and the wildflowers were all in bloom. While there I couldn’t get out of my head R.E.M.’s “Flowers of Guatemala”… Amanita is the name, the flowers cover everything, the flowers cover everything…

Mount Caiat, with our lodge/hotel in the center of the photo

Mountain flowers near our lodge.

A pretty view at sunset our first night in Caiat.

The next day we got up and had a quick early breakfast, asked for some packed lunches and headed out with our guide, Mostapha, at 9 AM. We drove through town and parked the car in gravel parking lot and headed up into the mountains for an “all-day” hike (it ended up being about two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon; just about what we all wanted – a chance to stretch our legs, get some exercise, breathe some mountain air, and be close to nature).

The goal of the hike was the Bridge of God (Pont de Dieu, Puente de Dios), a natural rock formation created by an underground river that carved out the valley. We started out on a road, which was a bit disappointing, at least from a “hiking” perspective. The valley was still stunningly beautiful with its rolling green agricultural lands. We passed some curious locals and a group of young goats kidding around with each other (pun!).

The day itself was cool and cloudy, so we were lucky in a sense to have that. The next day was bright and sunny and that would have made it a much more sweaty hike up the mountains.

Mostapha stopped at one point along the road and asked us if we’d like to “take a shortcut.” What was the difference? 20 minutes versus an hour. Sure, we say. And we turn off the road, walking down a one-foot wide beaten trail through the farmland and eventually along the side of the mountains themselves, a terrifyingly deep valley on our left hand side, with nothing to hold onto if you lost your balance or tripped or … The mind races. Nothing but thistles and briars all the way down for thousands of feet. Focus on the steps ahead. One foot. The next. Pause for photos. One step. The next. Sweaty palms. The next step. On and on, trying to keep the imagination in check. Photos:

Finally we got to the bridge, which was very clear in real life but is kind of hard to see in the photos. Here are a couple:

You can see a trail on the left and the Bridge of God in the middle of the photo. It’s kind of covered in vegetation and blends in, but the dark red rock in the middle gives it away: that is the space under the bridge: look just above it for the actual bridge.

Bridge of God.

Standing on the Bridge of God, looking down at the stream along the valley.

After we walked across the bridge and took a look down, we headed up the trail, ever higher into the mountains. We kept going up and up, trying to make our way to a waterfall. We stopped for lunch in a pretty little field, and no food tastes as good as food after hiking. The photos sort of slowed down because the view got a lot worse: it was just cloudy if you looked down into the valley from where we were. I guess we had gotten up high enough at this point that we were in the bank of clouds and fog that we had seen at the top of the mountains before we started climbing.

We ended up skipping the waterfall because we were pretty tired and wanted to head back to the lodge and get some rest, but did get some nice views of the river as we came down the trail: