Day 29: The God's Bridge

I started my day by retching my brains out at 7 in the morning. Because of the cavernous nature of the bathroom, I'm pretty sure the entire hostel could hear me vomiting. It was just a bout of food poisoning that I was over by 11 but the bad news was that it meant I missed the 8 o'clock departure for the hike. 

On the bright side, Joe, Tash, and Meredith showed up at our hostel at 11 am to check-up on me. They had arranged through their hostel owner to drive out to nearby Tesseltamane National Park to do some hiking. I joined them on this excursion and we had a blast. The drive deeper into the Rif was even prettier than our drive yesterday and sitting in the front seat, I got a ton of pictures. 

Once we showed up at the park, we hiked along a bright blue river (from saturated minerals like copper) into a valley to see a site called the God's Bridge. It's a giant natural arch that is 25 m (~82 ft) above the valley floor. The hike was only about a mile and a half each way but steep switchbacks were a pretty prominent feature. We took a bunch of pictures on the walk and made it all the way out to the arch pretty quickly. We could stand on top of it and look over the edge. On the way back, we tried to take a small trail that wound along the other side of the valley, but it quickly turned into a combination of hiking, rock climbing, and slipping. After 20 minutes of scrambling down this trail, we decided to cut our losses and go back to the arch and go home the normal way. While scurrying back, we kept slipping down the steep dusty path. It was so bad that by the end of it, Tash had dirt permanently adhering to her butt crack so that it looked like she had crapped herself while we hiked. I'm don't think she has been able to get it all out. All in all, the whole area was gorgeous and we were so sweaty by the end of midday hiking.

God's Bridge is behind Meredith

We got back to Chefchaouen at 3 and cooled off in the hostel. We then ate lunch at a restaurant in the square; this is quickly becoming a motif of this weekend. After lunch, I went back to shower before the other girls got back and said goodbye to Joe Tash and Meredith because they were leaving for Fes at 6. 

The other group came back at 5:15 and had had a great day. They made it to the summit and spent two hours up there, eating lunch and resting. Once we had all showered, we began to look for restaurants off of the main square to eat dinner at. We found one and ate on the terrace but the meal was kind of marred by our position right next to the disgusting bathroom. Fortunately, I wasn't eating so it didn't affect me too much, but I think it added some unsatisfactory extra flavors to the others' food. After dinner, we hung out with 8 international travelers on the terrace of the hostel. It was a mix of British guys, German people, a Lithuanian, and a Norwegian, and it was fun to talk to them. We retired at 11, excited by the prospect of sleeping in after hard days of hiking.

Be sure to check out the pictures I put up yesterday:

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