Village Dining

Hiking in the Rif Mountains is a beautiful experience. In Chefchaouen, we hired a guide to take us to God's Bridge and then to lunch in a local village. This is the village where we ate our lunch.

The village was pretty small, so we set up for cooking our lunch outside the village mosque.

While our guide chopped up veggies for our vegetable tagine, we got to relax and take in the village sights. This adorable kiddo was walking around the village carrying a bag of laundry soap. We also listened as the village boys recited the Quran. They practice 6 days a week for the whole school day, with the goal of memorizing the whole book. That is the only education they receive in the village.

Our tagine was cooked in this part of the mosque, where the water is boiled for cleaning before prayer. Non-Muslims are not allowed in mosques (besides the Hassan II Mosque in Casa, which is open to tourists), but we were able to check on our lunch and pose for pics by the boiling water in this part of the mosque. Note our lunch on the propane tank on the right side of the photo.

This was the final product - it was delicious! We ate in Moroccan style, by using bread to dig in (with our right hands, of course) to the communal dish.

The Imam came out with mint tea for us and Ahmed poured the tea for us. We were happy and full when we left!