A Treasure hunt across Morocco — A Participant’s Account
This is the write up by one of 14 participants of a 3 day treasure hunt around Morocco. If you wish to organise this race yourself for your friends, the full instructions can be found here.
Day 1 — London to Marrakech
Though long in the planning by Jan and Lucy (HQ) to mark Jan’s 30th birthday, secrecy had been effectively maintained and we departed from LGW to Marrakesh knowing virtually nothing of what lay ahead.
I thought I had packed economically and according to instructions with backpack weighing in at 12.2Kg. Turned out to be twice the size of the others’. Weather turned out to be brilliant throughout. Warm and sunny by day, cold but not freezing by night.
Arrived RAK 2040, taxi to Main Sq. Eventually found Café Guerrab and early arrivals on roof terrace. Introductions.
Sliced maps of Marrakesh dished out, a clue to establish teams and names. This brought together two techies, former army officer, and me. I was disappointed at being split from my partner, but rolled with it. Our intended Captain, Olga, was unable to make it. Both factors helped in the final result.
The time it took us to work out that our team name was Team “Sultan” became the basis for a “Meathead” reputation. The other teams were named “Berber” and “Desert”. We ate the first of many delicious chopped salad/tajine meals, with plain water, then headed through the medina to Riad Radomon. On the roof we were handed the rules of the game and assigned Roles. Captainless, I was Navigator, Seb was Communicator, Jack was the Pilot and Mike was our Intern.
Hit bed around 1.00 in men’s dorm. Good sleep but 6.45 rise for 7.30 departure.
Day 2 — Marrakesh to Imlil
Early briefing over hardboiled eggs. Whatsapp was established as the Command and Control mechanism. We received a large envelope with a key inside, Maps of Marrakesh on which eleven spots had been marked, and clues as to what to find at each spot. We were instructed to send selfies of all team members to be awarded coins at each location.
Whatsapp channels quickly buzzed. We covered some spots on foot: a fountain, soccer field, tannery, gates to paradise, but resorted to a taxi for Jewish cemetery and made a huge detour to get to Oasis, palace Badit and the horse-cab rank. Other teams more wisely took cabs the whole way. Cut the treasurehunt early to get to airport, but left Marrakesh with less coins than others, which was influential in final stages.
The Airport was not our finest hour — or hour and a half. Initially given a car number plate as a clue, we spent long time in terminal trying to find an agent who had rented cars to Jan. Mike by that time had found the car in the car park, but we lost even more time looking for keys, only to find the car was unlocked, with HQ smirking at us from a car parked directly opposite.
Located a book under my seat which gave us clue to go to Cascades d’Ourika. So, losing five coins on departure, we set off into the countryside. From this point on, all activities were highly Google and data-dependent. Seb made a brilliant communicator, and Jack a cool and efficient driver. Position updating gave us location of other teams. We were just slightly ahead.
We found the Cascades, and ignored locals telling us not to go any further to arrive at parking very close to the trail. This wound steeply uphill among trees and stalls, and over many rocks, with abundant tourists holding us up at stream crossing points. But we made it to the first cascade, took a selfie and returned quickly down.
On arrival back down we bumped into Desert without knowing how far they had got. Cagey smiles and a quick departure. Enforced half hour for lunch found us just downstream at a very nice and, more importantly, fast, food stall. Jack had a fag for lunch. Another tagine (tough chicken) for the rest of us, and we got away almost on the thirtieth minute.
The next clue from HQ was in French: to head to Imlil, find the bridge and a person with a yellow scarf, and receive a present before going to bed. It was 1.30pm.
There were, as it turned out, quicker routes to Imlil, but we took Google’s blue line and drove for two hours on a winding, often petering out mountain road, with fabulous open scenery, and opportunities to appreciate the snow-covered mountain backdrop. At this point we realised the others were significantly behind. We paused to send the others a shot of three bare buttocks set against the mountain range.
16.25 Arrived in Imlil, gateway to Mt Toubkal. Person in yellow scarf on bridge was Lucy. We parked and clambered up the hillside to the stylish Riad Atlas Toubkal. Took a pleasant saunter through the town and a rooftop coffee, wondering whether the others would arrive before dark. Desert arrived at 18.19 and Berber at 18.34. A walkover for the Sultans. Muezzins announced dusk prayers.
At dinner we were introduced to Simo, a smooth Moroccan with mysterious links to the project. After dinner, teams went into conclave with him to persuade him, within 20 mins, to make a gift to us of the next day’s clue. Jack managed it by taking his shawl and offering it back to him as a present. The present was an envelope containing coordinates, a sprig of olive, and a hiking map. It took us some time to work out the reference to a crossroads and a resort called “l’oliveraie de Marigha”. We went to bed assuming that that was where we would drive to the next day.
Day 3 — Surprise on Surprise
But HQ had other ideas. Firstly they revised the starting times, reducing our two-hour lead from Day 1 to 40 minutes. They then “dropped a pin” into a map on a small road in a different valley half way between Imlil and Marigha. Then they took away our car keys.
Three 4x4s were positioned to take us and drop us off at this position. We departed with our 40 min lead and a Moroccan driver.
This road was even more tortuous and precarious than the last. We proceeded slowly up a mountain track, steadily at first, but were then faced with one after another local “buses” coming in the opposite direction with 20 locals heading for market perched on top. Much time was lost negotiating passing spots. Jack had a knack of getting out of the car and saying something to make the other party reverse, but it still ate into precious time.
It turned out, though we didn’t know it, that our driver had no idea where he was supposed to drop us off. We only realised he had gone beyond the pindrop when the road stopped dead at a blank wall at a village. Reversing to the pin drop, we found a house with blue doors, where young women arrived with clear soup. It transpired they were nothing to do with the race. As we left the house, the other teams caught us up and saw that something had gone wrong for us, though we tried to pretend otherwise.
After several conversations between our drive and the locals, we were pointed to a thin track that descended the hillside at the edge of a village.
We thought they must know and followed it along a level terrace for half a mile or so. It then gave out, and two hours of struggle ensued. After traversing gullies and negotiating 2 places where the track had been washed away, it completely gave out, leaving us with nothing but a steep drop and the view down to the river.
We used up time with useless enquiries of locals about how to find a path. We concluded that when they said no to diametrically opposite questions they had no clue what we were asking.
Eventually we came to a place where a bridge was being built across the river, and there found the discarded apple core which told us that the other teams were in front. Very soon the whatsapp messages confirmed that despite being the first out, we were now a considerable way behind the others.
The injustice of this was blatant, but there was nothing to do but slog on. At least this road seemed to follow the valley and there was a chance that we could catch up a bit by being faster on foot. From this point onwards the use of “punches” came into play — powerups and punishments that you could deploy via whatsapp. We were stopped for 20mins by team Desert, who were then in the lead. Soon after, Whatsapp told us that they had reached the final check point before the finish line.
By this time we were looking desperately for motor transport of any sort to get us to the Oliveraie. Several attempts with road workers and villagers failed, but eventually we came into a village just as an ancient Mercedes dropped off a couple of women passengers and picked up others.
Lacking headscarves to disguise ourselves, we were unfortunately spotted team Berber, who had been in front of us, but had split-up. When we finally arrived at the Oliveraie, the Berber car was parked there, and we found a (supposedly) disconsolate Berber Captain smoking a cigarette and saying that with her team disbanded they were effectively out of the race. I believed her.
At the Oliveraie HQ had left a clue via a Spotify playlist with the name of four songs. Downloading it took ages, and could only be done through the hotel wi-fi. Lalla, Taker, and Koust were the first three songs, which we discovered were, strung together, the name of a lake some 50km away, and a fourth song “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
Believing that Berber were disabled and might otherwise not make it to this destination, I gave Berber Captain the name of Lallatakakoust and said bad luck, see you later. Soon after we set off I besought her to use two of her coins to delay Desert, promising a big reward.
Idiot. Within minutes she had driven up the road to retrieve her stragglers and was back in action as a team, with the answer to the clue in hand. We had been stopped again by Desert, now comfortably ahead, as Berber passed us on the road to Asni. We deployed our two coins immediately to stop Desert, the main threat.
But we were still last. As we crossed Asni, Whatsapp showed that Desert were well ahead on the main road to the lake. We decided there was nothing to lose by taking an alternative route. There might just be a chance of going faster. It was a spectacular road, passing high over barren hillsides with occasional villages, with the snowcapped peaks again in the distance. The other two teams were on the other road, but as time went on, and we encountered more traffic and were again punched by the Desert, it was clear that they would beat us to the winning line.
By then the enigmatic Simo had popped up again on a different chat group called “the Captins”. He informed us in verse that we had to meet him at Omar’s bar in Lallatakakoust and get another present from him to know the final destination. Omar’s bar was on Google, so that is where we headed.
No amount of enquiries could establish the whereabouts of Simo at Omar’s bar. The maitre d’ was very perplexed, saying that another group had spent a good time looking for him too. Finally realising we had been sabotaged! We turned our attention to the clue ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and there indeed on the map further round the lake, was a Café Bohemien.
We drove through the turreted gate into a barren compound knowing that we were the last to arrive. I was expecting a lame handclap from the victors. HQ, Lucy and Jan, were sat, cool as ever, beside a red rug spread on the sand. I was exhausted, and not too thrilled to find that there were further challenges to be gone through before we could reach the end.
I gave a piece of my mind to the Berber Captain who was hanging around inscrutably, and we could see other figures scattered around the lake’s edge below. A new instruction told us that we had to locate items in “three tiny vessels”, with a map showing the perimeter of a wide expanse of the inlet in the distance. The other team mates ran ahead as I trudged, unable to go faster, towards the water. We were spread out, out of good communication with each other for the first time. Jack went right, Seb left, and I followed right, looking at the murky lake and anything that might be called a vessel.
There was a floating bottle tied to a piece of weed, and many discarded and half decomposed plastic receptacles which yielded nothing but sandy mud. Then I caught sight of a cracked pot with purple lid, half floating upside down by the water’s edge. It wasn’t tied to anything, but opening it I found a black queen of chess, a sodden sock, a playing card and a stone.
We hurried back to the carpet. The final challenge was to beat Jan and Lucy at their own games. In the first, Jan and Mike wrestled violently on the red mat to steal the sock from the other’s foot. Mike, hero of the moment, did it by a split second. Jack, composed as ever, beat Lucy at rock, paper, scissors. The choice was then between chess and snap, and it fell to me to take on the snap challenge. When two cards match, you have to name something in my shop, and I’m a bakery, said Lucy. I pronounced myself an ironmonger. Within seconds two fours were face up, and my head was swimming. I will never know if Lucy really didn’t know what an ironmonger sells, but somehow I uttered the word “croissant”.
With that all the remained was to unlock “Jan’s magic box”, a wooden chest festooned with chains. Jack calmly took the key that we had received on the first day from his pocket and the Sultans, against all odds, claimed their winning medals from within. The emotion was overwhelming.
To have have managed things so that, after two days, all three teams arrived within half an hour of each other and were completing the final stage at the same time was a huge feat of planning and luck. Time wise, Berbers had completed the final challenges well before us, but Sam had lost the key by the shore; and Desert had never found the purple lidded pot.
Meanwhile a tented encampment had sprung up, with Simo serving sweet mint tea and sticky cakes, while HQ had ever thoughtfully provided the first beer of the weekend. Dinner, two hours later, as the sky darkened and the bunches of eucalyptus leaves blotted a starry sky, consisted of better tagines and even better speeches with medals for all, and tributes to Jan and Lucy’s generosity, fun-giving, and almost flawless planning. And honour given to the varied skills, endurance and subterfuges of all participants.
