Monkey Business

A day trip out from Fes takes you to the cedar forests of Azrou in the Middle Atlas range. There is wonderful scenery and the highest points on the route still had snow patches when we went. But the main purpose of the trip was to see the only area in Morocco with wild monkeys. These are the Barbary apes, which supplied the original stock for Gibraltar. The English university student we met doing a study on them told us they are not apes at all but macaque monkeys. We found them easily enough: or rather they found us, in a picnic area. Simple really, picnic spot = food, and we soon discovered that they’d die for a Pringle, in this case from Jane.

And now the “see no evil” monkey on the roof of the car (remember the three wise monkey) with a glum companion.

Finishing up with a monkey, again on the car roof, who started scratching and bending lower and lower until his head was on the roof. For modesty’s sake, I moved from the rear of the car around to the side to take the photo!

The troupes of monkeys don’t all congregate around the picnic areas to scrounge food; some stay deep in the forest and are quite shy. We fleetingly saw one of these groups later, driving through an isolated area: they were gone in an instant when they spotted us. We ended up at the town of Azrou that lends its name to the forest. It is a pleasant, bustling town, remarkable for its green roofs as the photo shows. From here we drove in a loop back through the Middle Atlas, this part completely bare of trees but with huge panoramas, until we dropped down onto the plain and 30 miles back to Fes. Brilliant day out.