Hello everyone, I’m Bruno Noaro, I’m 29 and I’m a director/filmmaker at La Foret Des Renards.
It was during May 2017 when I got a message from Marco, my fellow traveller, proposing me to get a cheap flight for Morocco from the 29th of December to the 8th of January.
We started planning as soon as we bought the tickets, our idea was to escape from the common areas such as Marrakech or Casablanca, and to visit the wild eastern part from Chefchauen to Merzouga.
I’m used to have my Panasonic kit for doing my videos (personal and clients one) but I decided not to bring it with me since was too much responsibility to take care of it. Just some days before leaving I decided to buy an used camera (Fujica AX-3), it was my first time shooting with a 35mm films so I was very excited.
Our first destination was Fes El Bali, where our flight landed and where we spent our first 3 days.
The culture shift was very intense, you’re assaulted by plenty of locals trying to sell you anything, lead you anywhere, stopping you every 5 meters, italiano? Espanol? French? At some point we started to say “Greek”, the only way to be left alone since they didn’t know any Greek language
Beside that, Fes is a Moroccan must, many people admit that if you’ve seen Fes you don’t need to visit any other Medinas. “Souk” means Market and Fes is a whole big market itself, when you approach the tannery they give you a bunch of mint to smell since it’s quite hard to resist the smelly areas where they treat all the natural leathers.
You’re probably gonna have a meditational journey since you’re gonna find no beers at all in the Medinas, so just go with the Berber Whiskey (the typical Moroccan mint tea).
After Fes we moved to Chefchauen, the Blue Pearl, some of the locals say that Chauen is painted blue because it has to be the same color of the sky, or of the sea, or some others because it’s a color that never get your eyes tired of.
The morning after we moved to Akchour, we hiked the mountains til “El Puente De Dios”, can’t describe the feeling of having a mint mountain tea with the guardian of the bridge, surrounded by little monkeys.
We started our way down to the desert stopping at Meknes, and another must – Azrou with the Ceder Forest, that’s where we got pictures with those little apes and we got to ride a horse into the forest.
The unusual thing we realized there, Morocco is full of Mountains and you’re often between 600 to 900 meters altitude.
We passed through the snowy Atlas Mountains (2000mt. / 0°) and right down to the hot desert (30°), we had the best guide “crazy Omar” who leaded us to see desert foxes, riding us in the middle of the desert, doing the camel excursion daytime and nighttime (yes when you look at the stars you feel like being into the space), visited nomadic Berber families, play music with Tuaregs etc..
Morocco deserves a visit, go there and get yourself lost, without any prejudices, you’ll never understand what it means until you won’t find yourself in there.
Bon Voyage
Inshallah
إن شاء الله
All images © La Forêt Des Renards