When we arrived at the Cedre Gouraud, a forest area just outside of Azrou, we told our taxis to wait for two hours, certain that would be plenty of time. Then, we set off in search of the monkeys, confident that as we had been told, they would be everywhere, right around each corner we turned.

Instead, we traversed through a lovely forest, found a gorgeous clearing, had a snack looking out over the fields, didn’t break into an unidentified grounded object, followed a trail that I decided to take (!!), and went up an incredibly steep hill just to go back down it. With only ten minutes remaining to be back at the taxis and a five minute walk ahead, we finally found the monkeys–specifically, barbery macaques.

We didn’t feed them, but I was still astonished by how tame they were. Initially, we were cautious about getting too close because we didn’t want to scare one away–then we noticed there were another ten or so scampering around, being fed by other humans. I really enjoyed watching one being groomed by another, and watching a few babies swing around the trees playfully.

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