Volunteering in a hostel called Riad Baraka in Chefchaouen, Morocco meant that I got to meet some of the most interesting people from all over the world. One week we had a Swedish guy called Buster staying with us, who was hitchhiking from the south of Morocco to India. We both got talking about camping and hiking in the area and two days later, I was rolling up the foam kitchen flooring to take as a makeshift camping mattress and anchoring it to the outside of my pack.

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We had organised one of the local waiters, Mustafa to show us the way to a village in the Talassemtane National Park called Azilane. Rather than us take the usual path, he said that he could show us a much better track up through the Rif Mountains. The normal path is about 20 kilometres, predominantly uphill but Mustafa said since we were heading up that high we may as well summit the mountain and get views all the way across the Mediterranean Sea to the Spanish coastline.

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We set off early morning and started the long walk uphill. It was a sunny day, but we had weeks of torrential rain prior, so the water was streaming down the rocky mountains across the fields. It made for a pretty sight. We had walked for close to 6 hours, through remote villages, with the locals offering us piping hot bread straight out of their clay ovens, and we kept a few angry dogs at bay long enough to escape their territory. The Rif Mountains are Morocco's marijuana growing area, so there are vicious guard dogs all across the mountain sides, all trained to keep people out of the hash farms.

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It was next level uphill from here. Mustafa pointed up. This wasn’t a track; this was a scree slope/ravine with water cascading down that seemed to just go on forever. But crazily we just went alright let’s do this challenge. We were near vertical climbing over boulders, at many points climbing up on our hands and knees, doing everything we could not to slip. Mustafa like a mountain goat, just powering on off into the distance, leaving Buster and I far behind. Out of nowhere the weather changed and we now found ourselves amid a white out just minus the snow. We couldn't see more than a metre in front of us. Now both calling out to try and communicate since we could no longer see the other.

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We were in our seventh hour of uphill climbing, and I was getting pretty fatigued. Mustafa called out that we were nearly at the top. Except how would he know, we couldn’t see a thing. It started raining heavily and I started to get a bit more concerned as the ravine we were climbing had more and more water was rushing down it. Yelling out to each other Buster and I make an executive decision to call the climb off and start to carefully make our way down. It just wasn’t safe, and if we got to the top we couldn’t see anything any way. We were disappointed that we were close, but I think we were both a bit relieved. Another hour back down and we decided we would have to camp somewhere for the night. Not wanting to camp on anyone’s farmland, we find a thick of bush to hide in and head in there to set up camp. Mustafa deciding to hike back to Chaouen that night with only his phone torch as a light. 

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Buster and I mad a fire, cooked couscous for dinner and retired to bed exhausted. Both giving each other props that we were now camping somewhere in the wild on our own in Morocco, unafraid. Agreeing that this was the type of adventure you can't plan but the type of adventure that you love.

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Realising our hopes of getting to Azilane were over, we packed up and spent the morning hiking down through villages before we met a main dirt road which would lead back to Chaouen. Walking through one village we stopped and asked if there was a general store where we could by a drink. Instead, the man asked us to follow him and he took us into his own home and got his wife and daughter to cook us a feast for lunch. It was so special, to be welcomed in as strangers and fed without wanting anything in return.

 

After lunch, the father wanted to take us to visit his family’s farm and us being in no hurry decided to go along. Never did I imagine an hour later I would be sitting in a secret back room of an empty unfinished brick house, surrounded by sacks and sacks of marijuana. Sipping mint tea with a few local men dressed in their djellabas, smoking their long hash pipes and grinding up the plants to make hash. How is this my life right now? I questioned. How naive was I to not even think this would be the type of 'farm' we were going to.

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For them this is normal life, for me this was anything but normal. Pouring rain outside, chickens now in with us too, we were going to be in this room for a while. The randomness of the situation I had found myself in now so amusing. I got quite the education here. I learnt how to drum the marijuana to separate the hash and roll it into balls. I learnt that this empty unfinished house was just a front, a lookout as such, perched on a hill with direct view of the main road into the village in case police came. Except the police were totally corrupt.

 

From the outside it’s a house, but behind the scenes and the sacks of potatoes, this was a marijuana distribution centre and I was standing in amongst hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of hash if not millions. I questioned who buys his products, silly me thinking locally. Rather being informed that he exports all his hash up into Europe. So this casual looking man living in such a small modest home is no doubt rather wealthy. They don't trust the banks with their money either, instead all using a small safe somewhere in town to keep their cash. 

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What I would learn months later is that these mountain villages were popular for having really good seafood. ‘Fish? In the mountains?’, ‘Yes, really good fish’ the men told me. I was then told to look on google earth and what I found was a dirt road link through the mountains to a port on the Mediterranean coastline. So, there was the ideal trade link to get marijuana grown in the region out and over to Europe. The perfect fish and hash exchange.

 

After declining a go on the pipe but probably still getting high on the smoke, Buster and I said goodbye to our merry men and continued on hiking back to Chaouen, taking in all the wonderful local village life along the way.

 

I was pretty impressed with what Buster was doing by hitchhiking his way to India so I made sure we kept in touch after he left Chaouen. Comically, Buster hitchhiked out of Morocco and across Spain without any incidences. It wasn't until he was in France walking across a pedestrian crossing did he get run over by a car. His last hitchhike in an ambulance on his way to hospital. He was ok and only broke his leg but that was the end of his epic adventure.

 

Mine continued; and I kept hiking in these mountains often. My time hiking with Buster giving me the confidence to do it alone. I would often set off for day long hikes on my own to summit Jbel Kalaa or just hike until I found a village and stopped there for lunch. I simply loved being outdoors and wondering just what everyday scenes I'd get to see or who I'd run into next. A lot of the times I'd bump into girls out shepherding their goats of which I'd talk to them in Arabic, to their surprise and I'd no sooner be invited back to their home for tea.

 

It's funny that the days that I would set out with no goals or expectations were always the days I would discover so much. Being completely comfortable with my surrounds or just having the confidence to be myself enabled me to be open to people I'd meet, even if it meant communicating in a different language. While most people look at the mountains and just think they're mountains; I look at them and think of the possibilities.