My senses were in overload, the result of two weeks in a kaleidoscope. I decided not to venture beyond the luxurious excesses of hotel La Mamounia's ramble of pink stucco arid 12-acre gardens into Marrakesh's guide-insistent, traffic-treacherous streets. That was for yesterday, the final day of my trek with Country Walkers.

Country Walkers, a Vermont-based touring company, promises a unique view of the world - one step at a time. It takes its name seriously, out in the countryside with boots laced up. Our journey ended in Marrakesh, for not to have done so would have been, to those who whisper "Marrakesh" in the same breath as "Morocco," akin to skipping the Mona Lisa on a visit to the Louvre.

The previous day we'd traipsed through the city's tourist-packed palaces, museums and gardens, breaking to lunch on wedges of pastilla, a fantasy of minced pigeon and almonds layered between fib pastry leaves. At dusk we wandered into the famous marketplace Djemaa el-Fna, a rollicking circus of acrobats, food stalls, clever monkeys and writhing cobras.

Continuing on, we plunged into the alleys of the medina (old city) to reach an unmarked door in a shadowy square. A knock, and we stepped into "The Arabian Nights": a one-time palace, with a courtyard open to the stars, and now a famous restaurant, Yacout. Rose-petal-strewn tables surrounded a rose-petal-strewn pool. Musicians played on ancient lutes. Waiters in white djellabas attended to every want. It was a fitting grand finale.

Morning came with my companions already winging home. My air connections to San Francisco could only happen the following day.

Lounging at poolside, I opened my guidebooks -- the trek had allowed little time for reading -- and began to sort the images of an extraordinary journey.

The call

It was a destination I had decided upon months before. As I flipped through Country Walkers' wish book of unusual destinations, "Morocco: Exotic Charm from Medinas to Mountains" stopped me dead.

"Exotic charm" offered unquestionable appeal, as did the opportunity to lose myself in the labyrinths of medieval medinas, including that of Morocco's spiritual and intellectual heart, Fez.

It was "mountains," however, that captured me. We would cross the Tizi n'Tichka Pass, the highest in the country, continuing on hairpin-curve roads into the heart of the High Atlas. While a smattering of tour operators offer trips into the area, Country Walkers claims to be the first to trod the remote paths of the Mid and High Atlas - Berber territory.

When the Romans arrived to colonize the North African coast, the land was occupied by the Berbers, a handsome and ancient people. Berber guides would lead our mountain treks.

Fez

We began in Fez, a city that holds tight to its medieval past, with our meeting place being the only hotel that. opens directly onto Fez's medina, the Palais Jamai, once a 19th-century palace. As dawn colored Fez's surrounding hills, the wail of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer jolted me awake. Clearly I had entered another world.

We gathered in the Palais' opulent lobby, where Jeff Albert, a classical timpanist when not bounding over mountains as a Country Walkers guide, outlined the days to come. Saida Ezzahoui was introduced as our Moroccan expert. Together they presented the itinerary for 10 would-be adventurers.

"Yallah!" is an Arabic word translating to "Let's go!" With Saida leading the way, we entered the medina's labyrinth of cobbled alleyways. "Balak!" We added another new Arabic word to our vocabulary -- "Watch out!" -- the cry of donkey herders, leading laden animals through the medina's maze.

Saida grew up in this twist and tangle. We followed her down streets packed with souks, tiny shops no bigger than closets. The scent of cedar-wood took us to the woodworking alley. A cacophony of hammering told us we were nearing Place Seffarine, an enchanting square where metalworkers ply their craft.

A haunting sight was the tannery. From an overlook we watched young men, pants hiked above their knees, trampling skins in stone vats of color - brutal work, unchanged for 700 years.

Our tour ended at the "Blue Gate" entrance to the old city where a wedding procession was taking place, the bride carried high on an ornately carved platform.

The countryside

The next day we headed into the countryside -- a land of kasbahs (forts), ksours (palaces) and remote villages.

In the Mid Atlas we followed Yezem, our local guide, along a red-earth track to a high plateau forested with oak and cedar, a favored spot for nomadic Berber encampments. Descending, we entered a lush valley of apple orchards, patches of lavender and shoulder-high corn.

Here Yezem stopped to talk with a woman plucking mint along a stream. In short order, rugs were spread out under a pomegranate tree in front of her clay-brick house where we unwrapped lunches carried in our day packs.

Mint tea appeared, the just-plucked mint steeped with green tea and poured into small glasses stuffed with still more mint. Such warm hospitality, including gallons of mint tea, followed us throughout our days.

We walked through areas rushing with streams where Berber women gathered at pools to scrub laundry and staked cattle munched on watercress. The women, brightly dressed in multicolored garments, reached out to touch our hands as we passed. Berber women, Saida told us, have never worn the black, head-to-toe haik or restrictive veils seen elsewhere in the country.

Other days we walked through country suffering from drought, following dry riverbeds that normally dash with trout. In the shadow of dramatic pink and red sandstone formations, even cacti drooped.

On our highest trek, one that began at 8,000 feet, surrounding mountains endlessly unfolded. Below -- so abruptly below that to peer over a rocky ledge was to invite serious vertigo -- lay a steep-edged valley, lushly terraced, row after row descending toward a shimmer of river running through the valley's distant, narrow "V."

French and Berber

We followed a rocky trail toward a village stair-stepped into its surrounding terraces as if hanging on for dear life (not that it was likely to lose its hold before our very eyes -- Berber families have farmed these almost vertical slopes for over 300 years). Nearing the village, we were startled by the sudden appearance of a little boy from behind a rock wall. Bright eyes shining, he greeted us with a whispered "Bonjour!"

For 44 years, ending in 1956, Morocco was an unwilling protectorate of France. In that brief moment in history, the French made tremendous impact on the country, ad ding new towns of wide, tree-shaded boulevards outside medina walls and engineering water systems and roads throughout the land. Astoundingly, the language they imposed on the population has endured, albeit Moroccans talk to each other in Arabic, Berber and French combinations.

Our Berber guides all spoke French, although the songs they softly sang as they led us along the trail were in Berber.

"What is your song about?" I,d ask in French, having skipped ahead to practice my language skills.

No matter if it was Yezem, Lahssen or Abdelali, the answer was the same: "Nature, the mountains, the woman, peace in the desert."

(Lahssen added a bit of trivia: desert songs differ from camel songs in which each phrase ends in an "oop," illustrated with an upward sweep of his arms, "to keep the camels going.")

Into the Sahara

The desert presses hard against Morocco's mountains. Following a route once notorious for raids upon travelers, we entered the desert plain.

We exchanged the mini-bus in which we'd been traveling for Land Rovers. Gradually, the paved road we were following began to disappear under swirls of drifting sand until there were but trace tracks into the enormity of the Sahara.

Our destination was a tented camp at the foot of Erg Chebbi--erg in Arabic translates to "great dunes."

There we were greeted by "Blue Men" dressed 'in flowing indigo-colored robes, turbans and face veils designed to protect against sand and wind. Tra-aditionally, great pains were taken before buying cloth to ensure the dye would rub off and turn their bodies blue. Blue Men, members of the Taureg, tribes of nomadic Berbers, have all but disappeared along with the great, Sahara caravans.

Sunset was approaching and kneeling camels waited to carry us into the towering dunes. Reaching a crest, our caravan paused in a sand-sea of shifting color -- gold to pink to dusty red -- as the sun cast its final glow.

That night we dined under the stars on the countless dishes that make up a Moroccan feast. Blue Men musicians arrived with drums and castanets, inspiring Jeff to don indigo garb and join in the drumming.

A trekker's sensory overload

Nomads for a night, we drifted off to our tents to bed down on colorful rugs. In the early hours after mid night, awakened by the absolute silence, I crept out of my tent to walk under a sky so brilliant it seemed flung with jewels from a sorcerer's pouch. Another unforgettable Moroccan image.

As were so many: the Todra Gorge, squeezed between sky-touching cliffs; crumbling ksours and kasbahs standing guard on the tops of hills; hammam (bathhouse) where I was sluiced, soaped, sanded and kneaded; the restored l2th- century Tin Mal mosque, a UNESCO site despite its lonely, High Atlas location; Moroccan flavors escaping in a sensory flurry with the lift of an earthenware tagine's coned lid; a ride on a silver-haired mule, my saddle a colorful Berber rug, on a high-mountain trail. . .

In Marrakesh, as I tucked my boots into a plastic bag to protect my clothes on the journey home, there it all was, dusted on my boots in shades of gray, ochre, pink, black and red. A kaleidoscope of color. Morocco a pied.

If you go

THE TRIP: Country Walkers' Morocco trip, 12 days/11 nights, has scheduled 2001 departure dates on Sept. 29, Oct. 13 and Nov. 3. Price is $3,998, all meals included, with a $895 single supplement. The meeting point is Fez, with departure from Marrakesh. Airfare is not included.

Contact Country Walkers (P.O. Box 180, Waterbury, VT, 05676; phone 800/464-9255, fax 802/244-5661, e-mail info@countrywalkers.com or visit www.countrywalkers.com).

THE WALK: Terrain varies between easy, moderate and challenging and averages between five and 10 miles a day with longer, shorter or more or less-difficult options on some days. A comfortable minibus with an extremely careful Moroccan driver transports participants between walk locales.

GUIDES: An exceedingly well-trained and able Country Walkers guide accompanies each trip along with a second, Moroccan guide who provides cultural. insights about the country. In addition, each walk is accompanied by a local Berber guide who knows the terrain and people.

LODGING AND FOOD: Hotels are the best available in each locality, ranging from super-luxurious to modest with a one-night stay in a desert tent. All meals are included, with an emphasis. on authentic cuisine, including two gala Moroccan dinners in sumptuous surroundings; lunches, with a few exceptions, are carried in day packs.

GUIDEBOOKS: Insight Guides' "Morocco," Foot-print Guides' "Morocco Handbook" and Cadogan Guides' "Morocco."

GETTING THERE: Royal Air Maroc flies daily from New York to Casablanca and has a schedule of interior Morocco flights including Fez and Marrakesh.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Martin Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group