Flying to Marrakesh has now become easy and quite cheap. You just have to book a flight and you may be lucky enough to find a direct one or to stopover in Casablanca for few hours.

You can immediately distinguish those who have chosen the charming town with the explosion of colors of the souk and the great historic Medina as arrival, and those to whom it is only a starting point for a new adventure.

An organized backpack, hiking boots and a small carry-on baggage with the essentials are some of the basic elements.

On the other hand, to leave Marrakesh for other destinations without private means of transport it is not that easy as it seems. You have to arm yourself with patience and courage and even if it feels like being in “The Twelve Labors of Asterix” you have to overcome all the unforeseen.

Every person you relate with wants to convince you to do something you don’t want to, they begin to tell you that what you have in mind is impossible to do, that your destination doesn’t exist and therefore you’re crazy. The only way to succeed is to go against their thinking and convince yourself that in the place you’re going to, you’ll find exactly what you’ve been looking for, even if everybody tells you the opposite.

No matter how much you’ve read up at home, it is on-the-spot that you understand things and get the needed informations; also because many times, off the tourist tracks, the only source that wrote something about that corner of the world you are going to, dates back to some decades earlier.

Marrakesh has three public bus stations, but the long routes that go from one big city to another, don’t make halfway stops. At the third attempt we find the company willing to stop at some point of the highway, drop us and our backpacks down and show us where to climb over the safety net to access the first village from where our new Altripiani line will start.

Argana is a village on the big road between Marrakesh and Agadir. It rises up on the river Issen and it is surrounded by a bright green that contrasts from the red ground and the brown houses. We meet a lot of kids coming out of school and wishing us a good day, some of them are satisfied with the few words of French they know, some else challenge their friends and come to us to shake hands.

At the only store of the village we try to get some useful information.
As usual, our backpacks are already quite heavy, but there’s always space for food and water.

We walk our first steps among the beautiful Argan trees – famous for their precious oil.
We are carefree and cheerful, it’s like being in a warm color palette. Our eyes seek for points of reference in the landscape, but it’s all so infinite with the mountains and the valleys far away in the horizon.