We packed up in Fes in the rain and headed south in miserable conditions. No way to see the mountains. After an hour we started seeing cars coming towards us with snow on them. We passed ditches spewing flood water into the road, and by the time we approached Ifran all the land was covered in snow. We did a pit stop in Ifran, walking around the snow covered parks, wearing not quite warm enough clothes, before heading off on snow covered roads.
A few miles further along however we were forced to stop in a line of traffic behind a snow-gate. There we stayed for over three hours, not knowing when, or if the road would be re-opened, or whether we should turn around and take an enormous detour around the mountains. When the gates finally lifted we all went through in convoy, with a snow plough in front, and the impatient passing on the blind corners. We passed beautiful snow-covered forests and glimpsed the monkeys, the Barbary macaques, in the snowy trees as we drove without stopping, making up time the best we could. The steep mountain roads took us to a high plateau that seemed to go on forever, and the wind-blown snow there told us why the road had been closed for so long.
For the photographer the beautiful snowy scenes were spoiled by having to see them through the coach windows running in condensation. But eventually we came down from the highest mountains and everything warmed a little and dried out and we went for miles of viewing the High Atlas on our right, before we crossed that range too and continued in the dark to Erfoud for the night. A night of no running water that set the stage for other "adventures".
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