Day 10: October 10

At first, the road went through a valley with argan trees. On one of them, I notice goats. I really wanted to see this in real life — goats grazing in a tree; I thought this only happened in pictures on the internet. But here we were, witnessing it ourselves. It was an amazing sight. And we were so lucky: literally a couple of minutes after we stopped and managed to take photos of the goats in the tree, someone called to them loudly, and they began to quickly climb down from the tree and run off somewhere.

Next, our route takes us through a mountain pass, once again along winding mountain roads. The scenery all around is simply mesmerizing. The soil here is predominantly bright red. Driving past these red slopes, it feels as if you are on another planet.

The road here is narrow, and Volchiy has to pull over to the shoulder all the time to let oncoming cars pass. There aren’t many cars here, but even so, you still get a little tired from driving like this. And there are also a lot of sharp turns here, so we’re driving slowly. It’s noticeably getting colder.

On the way, we visit a restored 12th-century mosque. The mosque is closed, but the owner of the café located near the mosque opens the massive doors, and we find ourselves inside. Most of the arches have been restored, but there are also original ones, with unique beautiful carvings.

We drink tea in a café, and the owner serves a treat with it — homemade cookies. We continue on.

We arrive in Imlil quite late in the evening. The last 15 kilometers to Imlil are on a very bad road, and there are also lots of cars and minibuses. The local people get around by minibus. And the minibuses are packed to the brim. People are also sitting on bundles on the roofs.

Imlil is a small village consisting of one narrow street. The locals almost throw themselves under our wheels, trying either to help us or lure us into their hotel-restaurant. Such persistent attention is a bit unsettling.

It turned out that we couldn’t drive up to the hotel we had booked. Alas, we decide to cancel the reservation. We leave the car in a parking lot in the center of town. We go into the hotel right away. From the outside it looks very decent, and we think the rooms here will be expensive. But inside the hotel looks very shabby.

The room has a bed and a nightstand (the good part is the window with a very beautiful view of the mountains). The shower and toilet are on the floor. It’s cold in the room. But we still decide to stay here because there is Wi‑Fi, and Volchy urgently needs to work, and we don’t really want to go looking for accommodation right now.

While Volchy spends about an hour on Skype discussing work, I sit in the sun on the terrace near the hotel and read. The river is шумing.
Then we go for a walk. For the first time on our trip, we decide to have dinner in a café. The prices here are not low; we order soup, a loaf of bread, and couscous with vegetables and meat — dinner costs us $8.

We return to our Spartan lodging. But there’s a hot shower here. After such a shower, life starts looking up.