The Adventures of Love Flower and Door

We awoke on our second day in Chefchaouen to clear, crisp weather so inviting that I had to sneak out for a run, even though a sprinting woman is an odd sight probably seen only in emergencies in this mountain town. With a pin dropped for our riad on my trusty offline Google Maps, I set off on the winding streets, turning around only for dead end streets. I later learned that the dead-end streets are painted a darker shade of blue, knowledge that would have been very helpful to have had on my run. I headed in the general direction of the Spanish Mosque, where I found a few sweaty and heavy-breathing tourists and a beautiful sunrise. Finding my way home from the mosque was much trickier than getting there, and I was grateful that people on the streets spoke Spanish. Gosh, it felt good to stretch my legs.

In fact, we spent nearly the entire day on foot. After breakfast, we drove to a nearby national park and hiked through the mountains.

Our guide, a Chefchaouen local named Lutfi, was amazing and knew the names of nearly all the plants in Arabic, Spanish, Latin, and English.

He patiently guided us along the tight switchbacks, up steep inclines and around narrow parts of the path. He pointed out or picked a sampling of the flora: cyprus, heather, oleander, juniper, and cork.

Caroline holding cyprus and heather

It turns out that cork is in the oak family and has acorns with little hedgehog-prickled caps. These “corkcorns” are used to make toys for children. Lutfi also commented that Margaret, my mother’s name, was another name for a daisy, and that this flower was also called a love flower (think “He loves me, he loves me not” petal picking). In that moment, my mother’s nickname for the trip was born. We continued our hike, with incredible clear water below and birds chirping up above, until we reached the Bridge of God, which stretches over the river between the two mountainsides.

On the Bridge of God with Lutfi

With Ahmed on the Bridge of God in the background (on the right)

After fortifying ourselves with dates and fresh oranges, we headed back on a different route that wound through a small outpost of a village. Along the roadside, our guide pointed out a cannabis plant and told us that the chickens here are fed cannabis seed which apparently makes them more delicious. I’m not sure any of us knew what to think. The farms along these houses also had goats, donkeys and mules, cows, and chickens, as well as groves of gnarled, ancient olive trees, some of which were 500 years old.

Can you spot both Caroline and Lutfi in the olive tree?

On we trekked until a fork in the road, were our resilient mother and her trekking poles headed off one direction to the restaurant while the rest of us headed out on hike part two. This part headed out to a small waterfall; another big waterfall lay beyond it but was too far to add on to this hike if we hoped to make it back to Chefchaouen before dinner. Hike part two had gentler terrain, with rolling hills and a cool stream gurgling alongside.

The rock face on one side rose steeply and revealed an interesting, porous stone that looked almost pumice-like but which was brown and less sharp and scratchy. Lutfi told us it was from the mud packing down around tree and plant roots until it became stone. The negative space was from the roots that had eventually rotted away, leaving the stone looking so Swiss cheese-y.

It turned out these little holes weren’t the only ones in the rock. Per Lutfi, Morocco has numerous underground cave systems, with over 200 known caves, some enormous. His descriptions reminded me of the cave systems I explored (and the giant ones that I heard about) while in central Vietnam.

This hike was an out-and-back that ended at the smaller waterfall.

Stairs cut into the rock led down to a deck over the river that we could only imagine was perfection on a hot summer day. Heck, it was pretty darn perfect in the middle of winter. We relaxed to the soundtrack of waterfall white noise while peeling fresh oranges and sailing little orange peel boats down the river (after repeated assurances that we shouldn’t throw them out instead). Then, it was time to head back. Just before we made it back, Lutfi remembered he had brought us a present: henna! He wrote our names on our hands in Arabic and taught us that the name Bob sounds like the Arabic word for door (bab). We carefully guarded our hennaed hands on the rest of the walk back and washed them in a fountain just before the end of the hike. Even after only 10-20 minutes, our names were stained dark brown on our skin.

Our arrival at the restaurant to meet our fearless matriarch was not a moment too soon. We made it under the roof and to a table moments before the sky opened up and drenched the park. A few soaked stragglers arrived an hour or so later, after we had warmed ourselves with hot tea, soup, and grilled sardines (surprisingly good – and big!), and we counted our blessings once more.

We returned to Chefchaouen and my sister and I set out to find her a small painting by which to remember our trip. Of course it had to include the iconic blue buildings and blue doors that make Chefchaouen so unique. We wandered along the storefronts in the drizzle, stopping to admire an artist’s work or try on a bedazzled velvet robe (which we later learned is worn in weddings, rather than as the soft, velvety pajama-y robe I desired). At last, we found a small painting that captured the winding streets, shades of blue, and peaceful rhythm of Chefchaouen.

We ended the day with dinner. Exhausted from our day, we tried to stick to our favorites so far but had some unexpected surprises, not least of which was our “fruit salad” dessert. While most of our fruit salads have been cubed fresh fruit, sometimes with a little bit of orange juice, this fruit salad was served as a pool of light green pistachio cream with (we hoped) fruit underneath. Not one to pass up an adventure, we laughed our way through dessert. Not our favorite preparation, but certainly something new.

Spotted 1: peacocks! There were several of these in the Chefchaouen town square, where their owners hoped tourists would pay for photos with the birds. Then, we saw a couple wandering the countryside and learned that they are sometimes used as guard animals!

Spotted 2: chicken-skinned tourists – us. Here in Morocco, people with pale, easily-sunburned skin are said to have “chicken skin”.

Additional photos: 

A dead beetle we found with a shiny green belly and a gold back beneath its wings

My mother demonstrating the art of Trekking Pole Kwan Do, the martial art of hikers

Aggressive terracing to make the mountainside into farmland, reminiscent of Sapa in Vietnam