CEDAR FOREST AND MONKEYS




The two are inseparable as the cedar trees are the habitat of the monkeys. Cedar trees grow at altitudes between 1600 and 3000m. When you drive south from Azrou, the road climbs from 1300m to 1800m and as it does, the evergreen holm oak trees are replaced by cedars. Many of the cedar trees are magnificent specimens, growing to over 30m, and the forests cover over 120,000 hectares in Morocco, mainly in the Middle Atlas but also in the Rif and High Atlas mountains.





The macaque silvanus (Barbary Ape, though it’s a monkey, not an ape) is found only in the Atlas mountains of Morocco and Algeria, together with a small population in Gibraltar. When studying in Fez I would often ride my motorbike to the Azrou region, settle down under a tree and study my books, waiting for a troop of monkeys to pass by.



Melon is a nice treat for the monkeys as it has lots of water content. I shot this video in June when the baby monkeys were still small and starting to explore. Azrou is a good place to view the macaques, with three spots that are normally more or less guaranteed to provide a sighting, per the placements on the map below. Orange and yellow routes are asphalt, pistes are white.



Spots 1 and 2: from Azrou head south on the N13 to Midelt. As you leave town you pass an Afriquia fuel station on your right and the road starts climbing. 6-7km after the Afriquia you start to see the first of the cedars. Spot 1 is the crossroads with rock and fossil sellers on the left. 

If there's none here, or if you are coming from the south, the second spot is right at the southern edge of the cedar forest before open countryside.


Spot 3: head east out of Azrou on the N8 towards Ifrane. After 3-4km you'll pass a remarkably ornate set of buildings on the right. 900m further on take a road to the right which is probably signposted Cedar Gourand. Carry on for 4km, the last couple of hundred metres are gravel and park up by the big dead cedar tree pictured below.



The map above also includes a waypoint for Mischlifen shown on a previous post in this thread.



White Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) are small heron that feed on insects disturbed by large mammals

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)