On our first day of hiking out of Auberge Le Festival we tried on our own, with directions and a map of sorts given to us by Abdullah, the host at the auberge. Basically you just follow the trail up the gorge that begins on the left side of the dry river bed located across the road from the parking lot of the hotel.
While the trail is not the easiest to follow as there are a number of trails, you can’t get too lost if you stick to your left at every fork in the river bed. In many spots there is a trail above on the left side of the river and another trail at the bottom that crosses back and forth along the banks of the river bed. If you end up on the lower trail at a fork in the river you may have to climb up 50 meters to find the upper trail.
Just over 3 miles in we reached a point where the trail forked. The left branch switch-backed up to a high plateau and the right branch continued straight ahead into another gorge. We took the left branch continuing to climb higher until we reached the top of the plateau with amazing valley views. From here, on the left side of the valley you can see the trail that goes back down to Tamtattouchte village, I presume. Since we didn’t go down to the village I can’t be 100% sure. We were told that at the village you can get a taxi or hitch hike back to Festival.
March 29, 2013
For links to all the posts in this series see the Morocco page.