The MIDDLE ATLAS: Morocco’s Largest Souk & Monkey Encounters

Azrou, means ‘rock’ in the Amazigh language, and although only 89 kilometers south of Fes, it feels like a different world. The town is surrounded by rolling hills populated by pine and cedar forests, open meadows, and wildflowers. What was intended as a one-night stop on our way south, turned into a week. We explored the nearby forest to see the Barbary Macaque apes in their natural habitat, visited the town of Azrou, and experienced the massive weekly souk of Azrou.

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Anyway, so it takes a lot of time because people load all their… Not every day you see this hey? Hey little guy! They’re so cute. I know, I lost Lisa. She’s with her family. Which one’s you? They’re so cute. Put up your hand, so I can tell. How’s that inner city girl doing?

Wow, this is something. I mean, we’ve been to a lot of places in the world, a lot of crazy markets, but this is something different. Whoa! Welcome to our channel. We’re Andre and Lisa, a married South African Italian couple, who have been traveling together for 20 years, exploring more than 50 countries.

Since 2018, we’ve been full-time nomads, with our goal being to make travel a sustainable long-term way of life. For the past three years, we’ve been winding our way around Europe with our 21-year-old motorhome, Milli. We’re starting 2024 with an exciting adventure to Morocco, and although our plans for the year might change,

We’re hoping to visit Sardinia for the first time, get back to Denmark for summer, then make our way via Eastern Europe to Greece for the winter. So hit that subscribe button and join our adventure. Good morning and welcome to Morocco. And welcome to… …Azrou. I think it’s Azro.

Now, if you’re new here, we are currently traveling Morocco with our motorhome. We’ve been here for about two weeks. We’ve so far been to Chefchaouen, the blue city. We’ve been to Ouazzane, the green city. We’ve been to Meknes, where we made a mess. The construction city.

And we’ve been to Fes, the oldest city. With the biggest Medina. If you haven’t seen that video, check it out. We really liked Fes. Right now, we actually find ourselves just outside the town city, town of… …town of Azrou. Town of Azrou. Azrou and Ifrane, Ifrane, is actually well known in

Morocco as one of sort of the Alpine towns. These towns are at much higher elevation, and so they’re also known to be much cooler. In fact, last year at this time, there was snow here. The roads were closed. You cannot believe it. That is not the case this year. No, it’s wonderful. Look,

The nights are still quite cold. We will show you where we are. We’re actually staying in a camp site called Camping Amazigh. Now, if you don’t know Amazigh, the original tribal people of northern Africa are called Amazigh. Berbers are a part of the Amazigh people, and they were the original

Inhabitants of North Africa. A lot of them have migrated towards Morocco. We are staying in a camp site called Camping Amazigh. And it is pretty Amazigh. No, it’s a really nice little camp. It’s got pretty much everything you need. It’s very peaceful amongst the cherry trees here,

Although there’s quite a lot of animals around that make strange noises the whole time. That’s domestic animals, donkeys. But anyway, listen. It’s still a cool little camp site. We’ll show you around later. This morning, we are going to hike up into the nearby forest area. There’s actually a nature preserve.

The Cedar Forest, and we’re hoping to go and see the little monkeys in their natural environment. From here, we’re hopefully going to check out Azrou, not today, maybe tomorrow, just have a poke-around there. And then we’ll be making our way south eventually. Remember to hit the subscribe button and let’s hit the road.

Let’s go hike! Gosh, you look like a drum majorette. I’m a very serious hiker today. Or a cheerleader. We were actually thinking of cycling around here, but the roads are actually quite narrow and very busy. So maybe we’ll leave that for when we’re back in France or Germany or Denmark.

Or maybe just off-road Morocco. Off road Morocco? Not on the roads. Oh, okay. Bonjour. We definitely found the non-official path You found. But this is, if we can make it up into this forest, it saves a lot of walking. The park we’re walking in at the moment is called Cedra, Cedra Gouraud.

It’s a national park between Ifran and Azroo. And it was named after a French general, Henry Gouraud. The park is located in the Middle Atlas region and is a natural habitat for Barbary macaque. Macau, macaque! Monkeys. Hopefully we’ll see a few of those.

And I’m not talking about this one in front of me. Macau. Macau, Macau. And this is one of the largest and oldest cedar woods in Morocco. Wow. It’s a big tree hey. It’s a big tree. Whoa, stand and look up. We’ve been hiking for maybe an hour. So far we haven’t actually

Seen or heard a single person. It’s really quite a nice park to sort of explore. It’s really lovely here, beautiful, peaceful. In summer, apparently it’s quite popular for people to come to some of these spots for picnicking. And apparently it does get a bit busy. But today. Wow.

I hear noises up as well. Hello monkey. As you can imagine, monkeys sort of gravitate towards where humans are. Because humans feed them. It’s a bit sad. So if you look at the roads, monkeys hang around there. I would much prefer them to sort of be in the more natural habitat here.

There’s one guy sitting here actually. These guys are very used to humans. Hello. He’s definitely taking a look to see if we’ve got any snacks. But we don’t, Mr. Monkey. Sorry to say. Why are you sitting here all alone? Where’s your buddies? What’s your name? Monkey one. Hello monkey. Monty! Michael! James! Barry!

Roger! Dennis! Simon! Pete! Jack! Jack. He’s scratching his head. He’s like, “Mmm.” What is my name? He’s like, “Oh, you guys are so silly. Leave me alone.” Oh, Jesus. No, man. Oh, no. He’s giving himself a.. No. No, no. Look at them run. It’s a little bit nerve-wracking the way they run.

But they’re not phased by us. They’re definitely just doing their own thing. But there’s loads. Hello, monkey. Look at this little baby. Wow. There’s a baby on his back. Oh. Oh, hey, come back. Look at him climb the tree. Come back. He says, “You little naughty kid. Come back here.”

So, closer to the road, there’s loads of monkeys hanging around. And there’s actually a lot of people giving them food, which is… Hello, little baby. …probably not ideal, but clearly very used to human interaction. Very relaxed. Seemed to be some sort of attraction. Come here. Stop. Give the monkey food.

Leave your litter behind. Because unfortunately, as much as the park is beautiful, there’s spots of it that’s really quite filthy. Hey, little guy. They’re so cute. Oh, no, I lost Lisa. She’s with her family. Which one’s you? They’re so cute. Put up your hand, I can tell. Today is a no-pastry day.

Only today? Only today. Look how healthy we are. Well, it’s still early. Oh he goes for the white stuff. You see, he likes the white stuff. Interesting. Because I think the other side is just too bitter. Okay, monkey five. Why did the monkey cross the road? To go find the tourists.

To ride a horse. Grabbing a quick little coffee here along the side of the road. And it’s just incredible to see in Morocco that all these small little vendors have these incredible, incredible coffee machines. So you get good coffee anywhere you are for 6 Dirham. Proper coffee hey! Where is he now?

He’s literally right above my head. Oh, I’m watching you. It’s my coffee, not yours! Can I trust you? No. Little dude? Cheers. Oh, sorry. I think we’re probably about four kilometers, five kilometers in. I have no idea at least. And we’re going to actually take exactly the same route back

Unless we get horribly lost. So probably won’t be filming much more. Unless something happens like a we discover a lion or something chases us. Like this giant monkey behind us! No, don’t say that. Don’t run. They won’t follow us. See you later. That was quite a quite a trek. Great fun.

If you stay here, make sure you do this little walk. Now, before we actually end this day, I want to introduce you to some fellow travelers. We met this Korean couple actually at this campsite. And they’ve been traveling for seven months. They shipped their van from South Korea and they’ve

Traveled across Mongolia, Russia, into Norway, across Europe. And they’re sort of on a honeymoon, but they have interesting story to tell. They’re now on their last leg, but I’m going to have a quick chat with them. And maybe you find it inspirational or interesting. We always love chatting to fellow travelers.

The pump is problem. This is diesel heater. And I bought this.. local gas. Yeah. In Morocco. This is small water tank. Wow. It’s a 30 litre. It’s full of vodka apparently. I did. So your water pump is not working at the moment. It’s like, sand or something stuck in the filter.

This van has been all the way through Asia. Just shows you what can be done. It’s actually very nice with the wood. It’s very nice. My name is Boyeon and Junyong Hello, we are from South Korea. We traveled like seven, six months. We took a ferry to Russia and we started traveling.

This is like a honeymoon. We met in India 2016. I was a student in India. At that time he was traveling as a backpacker. He was become 30. It has a meaning if you find it. He decided to travel the world. When we go back to Korea, we should settle.

We’re trying to settle now so it could be our last travel for a while. So the idea was to take a break before you settle. Do you think that’s expected of you or is it something you want to do? Something I have to do. Because I’m 47. 47 years old.

She’s 40 but we traveled a lot. We spent a lot of money. So we have to save for retirement. So I think it’s the opposite. Normally people when they’re young, they work hard. When they’re getting old, they retire. But now we are opposite. We travel a lot. It was really nice but now

It’s time to settle in Korea. Now we have to pay back. When he told me that he wants to travel with the camper van with me, I said no. No? Why? We could travel by car, train, flight. We could go to hotel, take a shower. If we want to save money, we

Can go to the cheap guest house. It could be cheaper than the car.. to buy car. And he showed me some video about travel Europe, Asia by car. What I was expecting and how we do is different. And we just got married and we’ve been together 13 years.

But live together in a van. 24 hours. 24 hours. It was a little hard. We had a lot of fights. Arguing, not fight. Arguing. As a backpacker and as a camper van is totally different. I don’t know which one is better but it’s different.

When I travel as a backpacker, I meet lots of people. Always hang around with people. But I couldn’t go to the deep inside of nature. But in camper van, I could go to the mountain everywhere. When I was 40, I traveled with my motorbike. That was very nice.

I decided to shop my bike to Korea and I sold it and I flew to South America. And I traveled as a backpacker and I realized I’m old. And then there is no one in my age. And then there’s all 20s. So I feel lonely.

And then it’s time to move to another step. Maybe up or down. I don’t know. Something else. So I need a different type of traveling because that kind of traveling as a backpacker was not pleasant to me. My era is gone. Good habit. Good habit. Good habit. Let’s talk about it.

We have a small van. So we’re not easy to shower. We cut the exercise time. And we cut the calories also. Which is a good thing. And then we lose a lot. It’s not very good with small van. It’s the disadvantage. But also has a good advantage. It’s easy to park a small

Van compared to big motor home. We’ve been together for a long time. He was a tour guide. So he was normally in Europe. I was working in India and South America. So we couldn’t meet each other. So we’ve been together. But we didn’t really know each other because we just

Short time for a long time. He’s nice. He’s always trying to be nice. He’s quite strict about the follow the rule. That’s a good way. But sometimes it’s too much. So we are now trying to find the balance. Quickly tell us about your plans now from here.

We’re going to leave Morocco? Leave Morocco. Final goal should be Ireland, right? Yeah. We don’t… He’s been almost every place. So he told me you choose. Choose where you would like to go. Where do you see yourself in five years from now? We have to make a decision in this trip.

Where are we going to live? What are we going to do? We are thinking to open some small shop in Korea or somewhere else as a tour guide. But tour guide is I could work more 10 years. He could work less than 10 years. Maybe maximum 10 years.

After the 10 years, now we start a new job or a little more comfortable. Easy way or… Easily or new. If you have some final advice for other people, maybe thinking about taking this year or two years. What would you advise them or what would you tell them?

I met lots of 60, 70. Lots of my customers were 50 and 60 and 70. They feel so afraid to go to travel. I’m not that age. Not yet. But I think they can do that. But they’re just so scary. Everyone can do it. There is no something big adventure.

I knew it and I realized again, you could leave your door. That’s it. I always told them that travel is not a big deal. So just enjoy. That’s all. There’s no goal. Just travel. We are not explorers. We are travelers. We just follow trails when the explorers already did.

So it’s easy peasy. Normal life. They have a normal life. So we’re not going into the wild. We’re not going to the adventure. Just, feel easy. Do easily what you want. It’s a baby cat! He’s so cute! Good morning, another day, another beautiful day. We’re actually late, we have to run.

We decided to stick around another couple of days in this very relaxed campsite Should we walk? Yes, I think we better. Bye! And the weather is actually superbe hey it’s been absolutely amazing! And we found a running route which is awesome! We’re going to try and get a local taxi into Azrou and

Check out the local town a bit. We are running out of food so we do need to get some vegetables, some eggs and hopefully we also see if we can get to our cell phone shop, the Inwi shop, to renew our data for another month. Alright, first mission though. Taxi

Apparently there are white taxis that are running into town, it’s about 5 kilometers. Bonjour! Azrou? Perfect, merci. Very quick, we’re going to go that direction. Actually, we want to try and make it to our Inwi shop quickly, see if we can renew our subscription.

We’re probably going to go to the market area and walk around there for a bit hey? Azrou is actually quite a big town, it’s the largest town in the Middle Atlas. And it’s actually, although not official, it’s the defacto capital, but this is a big town.

It’s also the location of one of the biggest souks markets in the whole of Morocco. They’ll give you another paper. From 15 February until 15 March. The town’s name of Azrou actually means ‘rock’ in the Amazigh language. And that comes from this rock behind us over here,

Which is a volcanic rock quarry right in the center of the town. Well we think it’s this one. It’s actually quite impressive. This looks like the biggest rock and it’s got a giant crown on top of it. Very nice city. This is the old Medina area on the opposite side of the mosque.

There’s another mosque there and there’s also a covered market, maybe we can find that. You want one to eat now as well? One? Like this. One. So what, 10 dirham, which is 1 euro. We got three of these msemens. We got one warmed up to eat now and two for breakfast

And two of these, which look incredible. They’re soft and warm and freshly baked. I don’t know what they are. But I almost feel like I should taste one. We haven’t actually walked into the Medina, but I suspect there might not be much there except for sort of the old living quarters.

We can have a look. I have no idea on what to expect. Quick look. Oh, success. Andre’s happy we can leave Azrou now. The more I look at them, the better they look. I mean, like, look at these guys. Those ones look amazing. Which ones? We were supposed to get fruit

And vegetables, but instead. We got a kilogram of cookies. Feel that. This is more than a kilogram. That’s more than a kilogram. Nice paper. This was 55 dirham. And I just have to show you the selection of cookies. Okay, we might have to leave Morocco asap. This is a problem.

And I just want to say I might be the cookie monster, but this one’s the one who encourages me. You don’t have to eat any of those. This is mine. This was the deal. Let’s leave. Yeah, quickly. This is one of the biggest souks in Morocco.

This is supposed to be a very, very local market. It’s held once a week and apparently everybody from around the surrounding areas comes here to either sell their wares or to purchase things. I tell you, this place is absolutely enormous. I think you can buy anything here.

I couldn’t wait until we got to the market. I’ve got some sesame caramelized peanuts. You can also buy livestock. Should we get a chicken? I was hoping to market to market to buy a fat pig. I’m already fat as a pig. You want one? We can get a chicken for the camper.

Now, this place is absolutely massive. It just doesn’t stop. It just keeps going as far as you can… look, and it’s got distinctive little areas. The area we’re in now is pretty much vegetables and fruits, but interestingly, they’re starting to cover up the areas as the sun starts getting warmer.

At the moment, everything is completely open. You can see everybody’s starting to put shading up. I’m glad we’re actually catching it like this. The quality of the produce here just looks incredible. Everything looks amazing. Beautiful. We’re trying our best to find some vegetables. We actually did find a few things we wanted.

Super cheap stuff here. We bought a little bag of fennel for 3 dirhams. Actually, our struggle is we want a small cauliflower, but the cauliflower here is so huge. I think I found a small one here. Look here. This whole area is dedicated to auctioning off animals, so mostly sheep, goats, from what

I’ve seen. Quite busy and hectic here. Let’s go to the top and look at it from there. Wow. This is just so crazy. It honestly feels like I’ve been transported to an entire other world. How’s that inner city girl doing? Wow, this is something.

I mean, we’ve been to a lot of places in the world, a lot of crazy markets, but this is something different. Seeing the livestock being traded like this just takes you to another place in time almost. Because we don’t realize, we just buy our meat in the shop, it comes in plastic packaging,

And you never think about where it comes from. You were saying? That that’s your beef steak. It’s very sobering in a way. And in a way, if you want to eat meat, then you should actually see this because this is where it comes from.

Look, this is a livelihood for many of these people. Just remember that. Absolutely. And it’s been like that for all time. Lisa’s on a mission. She wants to get to a tagine pot But I said no. So she said, well, let’s just get a lid. No, dude. Oh, my lord. I don’t know.

That doesn’t come close to my pans. Tagine is just a stew really. At the end of the day, if you want to cook it, you can do it in any pot. Clay is ideal because it sort of retains heat better. But I don’t have space for a clay tagine pot.

It would be nice to get a nice dome lid. You can sort of emulate that cooking method. We just need to look. I’m sure we can find something there. No, dude, no. And if not, you can get a nice.. lot’s of other things There’s like a nice blingy ones, there. That looks good.

It’s even in a funky little glass. Cheers. This is chaos. How the hell do they even load it like this? Okay, I think we’re reaching saturation point with this market. Oh hello, mister sheep! Why did the sheep cross the road babe? To go to the market. To get a coffee!

We’re going to have a quick coffee. Nice, freshly brewed, really good coffee. You can’t ask for more than that. Anyway, so we have two options. We can take the green taxi back to Azrou. It’s only about one and a half kilometer, but it takes a bit of time because people load all

Their… not every day you see this, hey. Now, where we are now, we can take a green taxi back to town, but people are loading the taxis full with their goodies. So it’s quite chaotic to get one. And it’s one and a half kilometer to walk back to town.

And from there you have to take another taxi back to our campsite. Or we’re going to just walk, I think it’s about 4km to walk back to the campsite, if we take a crossroad. Yes, hello. Before we leave Azro, I am going to use the fennel we bought today.

We bought this bag of fennel. One, two, three, four, five, six smallish fennels. And that was 3 dirham. 3 dirham. That is just ridiculous. You can’t even translate that into euros because 3 dirham. Crazy. Okay, so I’ve got a red onion. I’ve got some red risotto rice. I’ve got some stock.

That’s all we’re going to use. Maybe some salt and some butter. Wow. Okay, there you are. In these videos it always looks like I’m just eating. Well, you are just eating. Say goodnight. Okay. Goodnight. With our sodawater. That’s really the reason why I’m going back to Spain sooner. I miss wine.

There I said it. Goodnight. It’s going to be zero degrees tonight. Don’t I bring you to beautiful places? Welcome to Sidi Ali. It’s probably about an hour’s drive from where we just left. And it’s the next morning. We were thinking of staying here, but this is at 2000 meters.

And to be honest, I’m less than enthusiastic about the freezing temperatures tonight. Well, it’s not so much about the freezing temperatures from a comfort point of view, but if our water goes to zero degrees, our dump valve activates. So that’s a little bit of a challenge. No, that’s not the challenge.

We are using butane here. Oh, yes. If we go to freezing point. Our heating stops working? That’s a problem. So that’s not really sensible if your heating stops working, if it’s really cold. Anyway, I think we’re going to stop this video here. We’re probably going to have a

Coffee and we’ll decide if we stay. And we’re making our way south to Merzouga. We’ll probably have one stop in between, not sure. But this will be it for this video. So if you want to check our Sahara Desert arrival, please remember to subscribe.

Don’t forget to smash that like button, leave us a comment down below and we’ll see you in the desert. Thanks for watching.