Morocco to the Max
I’d just been introduced to Hassan, a slight, mustachioed Berber with the attitude that he runs the place, which he does. When I moved to shake his hand, he offered me his left. The right was swollen like a grapefruit. Kicked in the extremity five weeks ago, he explained, bones broke and tendons snapped. It looked bad. Nonetheless, he mounted a horse named Sakoi and led out without a look over his shoulder. La Roseraie uses Arab-Berber steeds, and both horses had gleaming burnished-brown hides pulled over sinewy frames-the type of beautiful architecture that readily announces itself as Arabian stock.
Only some ten miles south of Imlil, the area was lower in altitude and had a completely different, high desert feel. I’d been dropped off the day before by Christian McWilliams, a British film location scout who lives in Marrakech. Christian said he’d brought Oliver Stone to the area when they were scouting for Alexander and Stone had complained, “It looks like f__king Colorado.” I agreed, but it was a good thing. The rolling red-soil slopes were furred with pines, the sky was flooded blue. The place spoke to me of health and happiness. The mountain sun washes my soul clean in a way the ocean breeze has never been able to.
Hassan took us down a series of deep, narrow arroyos cut into the flesh of undulating hills-the scars of flash floods. The sketchy trails might give pause to a person in a pair of Nikes, but the horses were bred for these slopes. “There’s a spot coming up where you shouldn’t look down,” warned Hassan, the most I’d heard from him yet.
The path led to a verdant valley. Following a series of chest-high mud walls, we passed through groves of olive trees, a field of new corn, and along alleys of spined cactuses. The air was sweet with fragrant wood, and an irrigation ditch flowed high with freshwater. We entered a village of low-slung mud-brick houses, the byways as narrow as our horses. Hassan often disappeared ahead of me around sudden corners. Cars were never meant to fit here, and probably never would. Despite all the wide-open space, the village was designed in the same way as the ancient, crowded medina in Fez. These narrow alleys serve, at least in part, as a defense-no attacker could get very far in this impenetrable maze-but they also very effectively combat the heat.
As we wandered along, men in djellabas nodded their heads and greeted us with salaam, while kids trilled out bonjour. I waved at a beautiful young woman washing clothes in a tin pan. The older woman by her side gave me a narrow-eyed stare as I twisted around on the horse for another look. Turning down a wider street, we caught up with a mute boy riding a donkey sidesaddle. Hassan knew him, and the boy made a lively and lovely show of communication with his hands and various donkey noises.
There is no better way to see these villages than by horseback. The horse is both an emissary and a point of common reference. It provides a natural entrance, with none of the haughtiness of a Land Rover or the gawking awkwardness of a tour bus.
We stopped for lunch at Hassan’s house. In typical Berber fashion, he introduced me to his two small children but not his wife, who’d prepared an aromatic chicken tagine. Inside a small living room decorated with paintings of horses and Polaroids of clients with horses, Hassan and I shared the meal (and a common water glass). Finishing, he told me to put my feet up on the couch, and he shut off the overhead light. I realized that I’d just been put down for a nap.
An hour later we were riding again. I knew that Hassan’s hand was robbing him of enthusiasm. But after passing a salt mine, we came upon a white-specked gravel road-the first real road I’d seen. Hassan stopped. “Would you like to do a little gallop?” he asked.
Pardon?
“A gallop. I don’t care to because of my hand, but you can.”
Yes. Hell, yes. I kicked Kerout into a reluctant canter. He tried to look back at Hassan, unhappy with a rent-a-rider making curious demands. After rounding several corners with heels in his sides, I gave up and waited for Hassan. He appeared on a barely restrained Sakoi, who was frothing to run.
I nodded appreciatively. “How old is he?”
“Six,” said Hassan. He looked me over, and then he asked the question: “You have ridden really fast before, yes?”
It’s funny how you can make big decisions in half a second. I nodded. I had to know if I could handle that horse. Part of any real adventure is putting yourself in situations in which you’re not fully comfortable. I got off Kerout, and we switched. “Keep it short,” Hassan said, referring to the reins, not the length of the gallop. Sakoi was smaller than Kerout, but the arc between hock and flank was all muscle and elegance. I turned him the way we’d come, and Hassan slapped his rump.
I was just registering Sakoi’s perfect gait as we rounded the first turn, kicking up gravel. We were moving incredibly fast. This was the cowboy cool of which I’d dreamed. Galloping around bend after bend, I finally pulled hard on the reins to get the Arabian to slow, and we turned around. But to Sakoi’s equine mind, that was just the first lap.
And then-trouble. Sakoi tore down the road next to the edge, and I fought to right myself. I pulled on the reins, hard. But when a horse is in a mad gallop, simply pulling back on the reins doesn’t work. The rider has to get the horse’s head to one side, and I did, aggressively.
Sakoi came to a restive stop, skittering sideways. I planted my feet more securely into the stirrups as he leaped forward again. The next three bends were negotiated at a hard side-gallop, but I was in control. I pulled Sakoi to a stop at the spot where Hassan was waiting. A narcotic wave of adrenaline pulsed down to my feet and spiraled back up to the tingling sensors in my spine-a feeling that shouldn’t have been addictive, shouldn’t have been so satisfying. But it was.
Hassan looked us over and smiled for the first time today. “He’s amazing, no? My favorite. I want to buy him for myself.”
I’m being dragged off into the Atlantic. This is not figurative. My feet only skim the water, making ineffectual V’s, and the bar I’m white-knuckling is yanking me along with great velocity. The kite attached to that bar is wheeling about in tight, vicious figure eights, providing the power behind my abduction, and I can’t turn the damn thing around. The islands of Mogador are getting bigger, which means I’m moving away from the mainland, and-crack!-the kite catches a gust of wind and kamikazes into the Atlantic, jerking me face-first into water that tastes slightly of oil.
I send exploratory toes down but find no purchase. Too far out. Twisting my head, I can see the shore and the small figure of my instructor, Rachid, shaking his head, frustrated. Not more frustrated than I, buddy, trust me. This is my final lesson on the second day of kitesurfing, and let’s just say that I’m not a natural.
From Rio to Maui, I’ve watched hotdoggers make the sport look easy. It goes like this: Riders are harnessed to four lines that run to a parachute-shaped kite. By using wind power and manipulating the kite, they shoot across the waves while riding a board attached to their feet, one that looks like an aquatic snowboard. In the process, the pros jump over waves and hang suspended in the air for long, contrary-to-physics moments. Kitesurfing would be the perfect bookend to my adventure trip, I figured, and also a fine excuse for spending a few days on the coast of the hippie-happy town of Essaouira.
At least I was right about Essaouira. I’d spent the last three days with genial, Italian-spouting Brahim, traversing the High Atlas to the Atlantic on a phenomenal drive over the Tizi-n’-Test mountain pass. Opened by the French in the 1920s, this scrunched, serpentine road summits at 6,900 feet and is laid out upon the steep slopes in squiggly lines seemingly drawn by an Etch A Sketch. It would easily make my top-ten list of spectacular roads. After dropping back into the lowlands, we’d headed for the ocean, stopping in Agadir for a simple meal of fresh seafood. Heading north, Brahim eventually unloaded the mountain bike he’d rented for me, and I huffed and puffed along the hilly roads that paralleled the shore, passing herds of goats and occasionally being chased by dogs. We’d capped the day with a tagine (of course) and then set up two tents facing the ocean. The next morning, I rose early for a long beach run.
So when we reached Essaouira, a hundred miles west of Marrakech, I wasn’t sure I was ready to be back in a city, with its carpet sellers and insistent “guides.” But Essaouira might be the unlikeliest city in Morocco: It’s got both a traditional medina and a bustling harbor, but the vibe which dominates is that of a beach town. The sand, teeming with youths and continually buffeted by the wind, leads to the mouth of the fortified old city, encased in eighteenth-century battlements. The Casbah, the mellah (the former Jewish quarter), and the medina are as fetching to wander as the streets of Marrakech, and the still-functioning port, with its shipbuilders and fleet of sardine ships, infuses the air with the sound of hammers and the smell of fish.
I stopped at a shop on the beach that advertised kitesurfing and signed up for three lessons of two hours each. I was, however, ignoring two factors: One, I don’t surf, snowboard, windsurf, or skateboard-the four sideways-facing sports that would have helped; and two, I dislike equipment-intensive sports-especially those that involve a multitude of lines which get twisted into impossible knots.
