After the desert, we headed back through the mountains (the high Atlas, then to the middle Atlas range), through Azrou & Ifrane, on our way to Fes. Ifrane is a strange little town, where the king, Mohammed VI has a summer palace. I say strange,because it seems very un-Moroccan; the town was built under the ‘protectorate’, the term used for the period of French occupation/domination/control, as a place for French folk to feel like they’re at home. So the architecture is very european, it’s very clean, seems almost swiss. There were lovely walks along the river, including a walk up to the ‘cascades des vierges’, some waterfalls. It has been such a wet year, the rivers have flooded their banks. Between Azrou & Ifrane are cedar forests (cedar is much valued for use in carving, ceiling and door lintels, in Moroccan architecture and they are home to troops of ‘Barbary Apes’, which I hope are the medium sized monkeys we saw as we were driving through!
