6 hrs, 4.3 kms

Day Totals: 14 hrs, 20 .3 kms



Hiking this region is a different feeling than hiking the desert river valleys out east where there's a village every 2 or three kilometres. Here I’ve walked for some 14 kilometers and only passed through one village. It’s more a hike of solitude and contemplation than a culture hike immersing yourself in ancient civilization.

Finally, around another bend, and the sheer cliffs and lush palms of Paradise Valley are spread out before me. All along the steep mountainside are randomly placed homes clinging to the steep slopes. My guess is that I should be able to find footpaths all the way to the bottom… and sure enough, working my way from house to house, I reach the base of the canyon. Here another dry waterfall catches my eye—this one must be even more spectacular than Immouzzer when it has water on it, water crashing over boulders, and sliding down smooth rock surfaces for hundreds of meters . Even without water, it still deserves a video clip.

And then, a little ways down the road, is a sign pointing to a footpath that says "Cascade de Tifrit". OK… no hurry… let’s take our time to enjoy the sights and not just hurry through this valley. So I follow a path through the semi-terraced farm plots, down a sloped, sheer rock surface overlooking the lush palm forest and cliffs beyond… and there it is: Finally, a real waterfall.

There’s not a lot of water, but it’s beautiful, pouring down yet another “rock curtain” into a deep pool. It makes up for the disappointment of Immouzzer—especially since Tifrit Waterfall comes as a complete surprise, unlike Immouzzer which I’ve been hearing about for the last 17 years! All alone, with a waterfall behind me, the cliffs and palm trees in front of me, it does almost feel like a discovered this place… I strum a couple of songs as a fitting conclusion to a beautiful day.

A Language with no Bad Words

 

Typically in rural areas, public transportation dries up early on in the day, and I might already be pushing my luck . With another 28 kilometers to go, I’m clearly not going to make it back to Aourir today, so I go ahead and try to catch a ride. Within minutes a fellow in a private vehicle stops, I figure, do to the amount of tourism there is here, I should find out how much, if anything he’s thinking of charging me. He says 30 dirhams… I offer 20… and we’re off…

As we wind down the one lane road, I can see my driver is getting more and more frustrated. See, when two cars meet on these roads, one of them has to pull off on the bumpy shoulder so the other can pass. The problem is that there’s not clear rule as to who is supposed to pull off.   So usually drivers play a game of chicken—they drive at each other at full speed until one of them chickens out at the last minute and pulls off. Yep. It’s about as dangerous as it sounds… And the law of the jungle kind of applies too—smaller cars pull off for bigger cars, as obviously they’ve got more to lose if/when there’s a head on collision.

Well, my driver is clearly getting angrier and angrier as he keeps having to pull off the road . Finally, when a big camping car does even budge from the center, forcing him to go off the road completely, it’s the straw that breaks the camels back.

“Ashkid! Ashkid!” he yells at the foreign driver. “Ashkid” means “come here” in Berber—but I suppose it might have some alternate meaning. This guy clearly wants to let off steam in his native language he knows full well the tourist can’t understand.

The foreigner, an older French guys responds with a tirade in French, including a reference to fecal matter.

Then something happens which gives me an intriguing insight into Moroccan culture… the driver switches to Arabic, responding with another reference to number 2… and then drives off in a huff.

Suddenly the thought hits me… why did he switch to Arabic? He clearly prefers Berber—and normally people express their anger much better in their native tongue. It wasn’t about communication, since the tourist didn’t understand either language .

I ask several Moroccans about this later, and they confirm what I suspected: Moroccan Arabic is a language very rich in insulting, dirty and derogatory words… but Berber simply doesn’t have any bad words.

What?! How can a language exist for thousands of years and they not be able to come up with creative and vile ways to insult each other? That’s terrible! Can you imagine the frustration of being angry at someone, but simply not having the vocabulary to shock him with a dirty, vulgar expression?

Or could it be that this says something about their culture. Maybe they just didn’t need to insult each other… traditionally they handled their anger in other ways without needing to make reference to fecal matter, genitals or having sexual relations with one’s mother. Wow. That’s a thought… can people actually do that?!

But of course, now, with the arrival of Arabic, they’ve been blessed with another an alternative: a language with an entire dictionary of dirty words and expressions to be used at the slightest provocation…