Ben Tutton

Ok… it’s been a while since I left Morocco, so I’m just going to finish up the diary part of my trip blog with a quick post that covers the second half of my time in Morocco.

I spent the Friday night in the forest getting the timelapses that can be seen in my showreel on the homepage. It was beautiful (if a little chilly) up in the hills with a really bright moon illuminating the landscape. I camped in my hammock with the stars above me. It was a really memorable experience, definitely worth doing even though the timelapses didn’t end up in the final film.

 

That weekend was taken up with processing the timelapse images and a bit of logging too. I managed to escape for a walk around Azrou with Barbora and Neal. We ended up in the cage on top of the rock “Azrou” as the sun set.

The following week I made a focused effort on my sound recordings as they had been a bit neglected earlier in the trip. Surprisingly the macaques seemed unfazed by the fluffy microphone wind shield.

 

This week also seemed to be the week of the insect. There was an emergence of hundreds of thousands of earwigs one afternoon at 4 o’clock. There were also lots of bitey insects and some shiny ones.

 

On the Thursday it was my Birthday so I decided to have a day off from the monkeys and instead I headed out before sunrise to get a timelapse of the sun moving up the mosque as it rose from behind the mountains. Apart from forgetting the tripod plate it all went well and I got three nice timelapses. Well, they would have been nice had the roost of egrets not woken up and circled the mosque. It would have been far too much photoshop work to remove them from each frame individually, so it wasn’t included in the final film.

 

As a birthday treat/reward for the early morning I went to the nicest cafe in Azrou and relaxed with a mint tea and a pain au chocolate. Parfait.

That evening we went out for my birthday to a nice restaurant. I had a lamb tagine that would have been delicious had it not been for the peanuts floating on the surface.

 

 

The following day was rather relaxed. And here’s a picture to show it wasn’t just me who fell asleep in the field!

The Friday evening was my last real day of shooting so I decided to go up to try to get some more timelapses and some footage of the macaques waking up in the morning. Barbora and Neal decided to come too. It would have been great, apart from the huge thunderstorm that threatened to soak us as soon as we were dropped off. A late night dash to an abandoned hut proved unnecessary as the rain never came. We found the monkeys in the morning and I got my last shots of the trip.

On the Sunday we headed to Ifrane for a nosey with Chris who had arrived the previous day. It’s a very wealthy town in comparison to Azrou. It felt a bit too clean, and after an extortionate mint tea we headed back to Azrou. That evening we had welcome back meal for Chris with the flat landlords and their family on the roof -  The couscous had been prepared for hours in the traditional way. it was truly delicious (like just about everything I ate in Morocco)

I ended my time in Azrou the same way I started it – making the researchers late! I lost track of time while filming the Azrou skyline for the film introduction, I eventually realised the time and found Sandra’s car, only to be met with a few light-hearted scowls! I enjoyed my last day following the monkeys and chilling, taking in all the surroundings. That evening I took the night bus back to Marrakech. I spent 36 hours there at a fantastic little Riad with great hosts and a very nice jacuzzi. It was a great way to get back to civilization before returning to the real world.

And like all good things, this trip came to an end – Now the hard bit started… the edit!

 

Hello to anyone who’s come here from the Barbary Macaque Project Blog. I’d just like to thank you for popping over here and invite you to read in more detail about what I got up to during my time in Morocco. I appologise for the fact that the posts have stoped just over half way through my trip, but I got a bit bogged down with my degree. I’ll be finishing my Masters in a week, so there will be more coming up on the blog. Keep checking back, or even better, subscribe by RSS.

Please let me know if there’s anything you’ve enjoyed reading about.

For those of you who didn’t see my post on the BMP blog, you can check it out here

Not much interesting happened! Filming the monkeys in the morning. They were at the top of the valleys so we all had a steep walk up in the morning. Especially up the valley aptly named “vertical”. The macaques were turning rocks over on the slopes to look for insects and ants nests. This proved to be a bit of a hazard if you were below them because the rocks rolled down the hill taking out anything in their path. I had a few near misses.

Another near miss was when I was almost weed on by a monkey while standing beneath a tree.

After the previous day’s exploits I decided to try a different plan of attack and in order to get jib, and dolly style shots; I used my glidetrack in a vertical position. ( I will write a post specifically about this technique)

After lunch it looked as though storm clouds were building, so I set the tripods up at the top of the hill in order to record the formation of the clouds.

Unfortunately the clouds didn’t build as expected, however I did manage to get some nice footage of white fluffy clouds moving across the sky.

The evening was fairly standard. I dumped all the cards then I cooked myself a risotto with the beetroot I had bought on Tuesday at the Souk – it was pretty good if I do say so myself!

After the previous day’s lack of monkeys I was anxious to get more footage, but after searching the whole mountain for 2 and a half hours Sandra had told everyone to head back to the car. I was thinking the worst… maybe they’d been displaced by another troop, or moved into a new range? What if we didn’t find them again?!? Luckily this was my imagination running away with me, and by sheer luck the Macaques were spotted just off the track back to the car. We picked up their trail up and followed them to the “UK”. This was a perfect time for me to try out my cable dolly. First I wanted to see if I could make an ascender from the pulley and rope I had. I messed around for a bit and made something that work in tests without the camera attached. The only problem was fixing the pulley to the tree securely.

Soon the infants were playing in the trees and I was distracted from further tests of the ascender dolly. I got some nice footage of the hyperactive, adventurous infants.

After lunch I decided to try out the cable dolly between two trees in the traditional cable dolly style. The dolly platform is made from parts from an Aldi bike pulley system that cost me the princely sum of £5! (Certainly nothing like this) I’d bought 40 m of lightweight rope from Decathlon to save weight and space, and to allow a long movement of the dolly. The rope was the downfall of the whole plan. It felt strong enough when I bought it, but over 40m when stretched between trees the rope was extremely stretchy. The weight of the dolly rig (all 2kg of it) stretched the rope so much that the camera hit the ground. Even after tightening the rope as much as I could it still happened. Defeated and frustrated at the stretchy rope I gave up on the dolly Idea. I now know why the pros use wire rope at high tensions! Definitely needs a bit more R&D.

Back at the apartments Neal asked if I would trim his hair. The weather was now starting to change from rain to the more traditional summer weather of sun and Neal’s copious hair was getting too hot for him. I was happy to oblige and we put Chris’ clippers on charge. After about an hour we thought we would be good to go, so Neal moved through into the bathroom and I started. I removed about an inch from in front of his ears, then the clippers promptly stopped! Lucky I hadn’t gone straight for the front! We put them back on charge and Neal escaped to a proper barber to have the job done properly (read about the consequences here)!

After leaving the Macaques in the “Texas” area of their habitat the previous day they should have been fairly easy to find. Usually they don’t travel too far after we leave them in the evening, but they were non-existent! We searched everywhere. Up and down all the valleys (with the heavy tripod). Eventually after almost 3 hours of searching Sandra radioed decided to call it quits. The others went to the tourist group, but she dropped me off back at the apartment. I already had close-ups from the tourist group, so I thought it would be better to get on with more LnT.

Tuesday is also the day of the souk in Azrou. It happens just outside of the town in a large walled square where a temporary town is assembled each week. It’s huge, and you can buy almost anything you can think of. From fruit and veg, to kitchenware and underwear. I headed up after lunch and spent a few hours just wandering around in awe at the size and variety there. I bought quite a lot of fruit: 1kg apricots, ½ kg plums, ½ kg dates, ½ kg figs, some mint tea, popcorn, a cucumber and a big beetroot all for under £3! Amazing. If I’d been feeling strong I would also have bought a huge watermelon too, but I think I would have struggled on the half mile back to the apartment.

For the rest of the day I ate lots of fruit, and tried to catch up (unsuccessfully) on the LnT – there’s so much stuff on the internet that it’s not hard to find anything that’s more interesting than reviewing clips, even talking on Skype to my wife!!!

Overnight the rain from the previous day had persisted, and although it had now stopped the grass and ground was really wet. It was also really cold. Sandra’s thermometer recorded a temperature of 8°C. The morning dew of the previous week had had little effect on my boots, but the sodden ground had my feet and legs soaked to the skin within minutes. The cloud cover took a few hours to burn off, and by that time the Macaques were on the move. They were leaving the “Amphitheatre”. They had done this once before, but I hadn’t caught it on film last time. It’s quite impressive. The amphitheatre is an isolated part of the home range, and to get to the rest of their territory, the macaques have to cross an open tract of land in front of the quarry. They feel uncomfortable in open spaces without the safety of trees, and so they group together, and sprint across the quarry entrance to the safety of the trees on the other side. I managed to film this, and hopefully it will make it into the documentary.

I also managed to film some of the juveniles enjoying themselves in the puddles splashing around. At first they were content with splashing, but this soon escalated into chasing each other excitedly, and ended with one of the juveniles, Dakota, being thrown – judo style – into the muddy puddle. She looked bedraggled. It didn’t help that it had clouded over again by this point, and within an hour it had started to tip it down. Sandra called me over to see something interesting. It was a rather large lizard that one of the juveniles had run away from. It had been caught in the downpour and cooled down to a point that it was unable to move. I decided to warm it up and release it, but not before assigning it a position as camera operator!

In the evening I did a bit of LnT while cooking myself some Moroccan style dhal. I’d forgotten how “gasseuse” lentils can make you!

After the excitement of the previous evening’s activities I had a leisurely start. Checked emails, Skyped with Lauren, did a small amount of Logging and Transferring of the past week’s footage. A mammoth task that I really shouldn’t have put off for as long as I did! I’d barely even scratched the surface when Neal popped up and asked if I wanted to head out for a bit of lunch. I’d not even had breakfast yet, so with an emphatic yes we headed out to the “Fish Place”. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what they sell, but I will tell you how delicious it was… It tasted fantastic! Really simple food: 2 fried fish (whole, but beheaded and cleaned), bread and a spicy dipping sauce. All eaten with fingers, bones left on the paper tablecloth that also acted as a napkin for oily fingers. It cost us 11DH each (~ £1), an absolute bargain as we both left absolutely stuffed. I had however spared a little room for my newfound vice: crepes with honey. 6DH ensured that both Neal and I were fit to burst! On the way back to the apartment we called in at the ahadaf and I grabbed some ingredients for dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. We leisurely strolled back and after a few hours we met as agreed, and made our way back into town.

On the advice of the chaps up at the tourist group the previous day we (Neal, Barbara and I) had decided to head to ‘Ain Leuh at about 4 o’clock for the cherry festival. No busses ran the 25km trip, so we were going to go by Grand Taxi. We went to the taxi rank by the bus station, only to be told that it was the wrong one, those taxis were headed to Ifrane. We left none-the-wiser as to where the rank for ‘Ain Leuh was, and after half an hour of aimless wandering we stumbled across the correct one hidden behind the police station. It had started raining during this time and was getting steadily heavier. After a bit of quick haggling where we were quoted 10DH each, and then 12DH when the driver changed his mind (we think this was due to the old Mercedes not being full – it only had 1 person in the front passenger seat instead of 2, and 4 in the back, not 5!) We squashed in the back and made the half hour journey there with a nice accompaniment of Berber music blasting out of the car’s stereo.

Upon our arrival the torrential rain that we had driven through had thankfully stopped, but the skies remained grey. We arranged our return for 20:30, and then Barbara asked where the cherry festival was. They pointed across to an a walled area and said “it was there yesterday!”. We were a day late! We were in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere with three and a half hours to kill – Great! We went to where the festival had been, it looked like it would have been impressive with lots of stalls, and a big area for performers. Slightly saddened we decided to have a walk around Ain Leuh. That took all of 20 minutes, so we headed to a café to pass the time how Moroccan’s do, with a mint tea watching the world go by. I’m not sure if it was boredom, or the copious amounts of sugar in the mint tea, but we became rather hysterical and any mention of cherries would send us into fits of laughter. After exhausting just about every cherry and festival related joke we could think of and all the mint tea had been drunk we just sat in uncomfortable silence. We definitely wouldn’t make good Moroccans. After 25 minutes we were ready to leave, but with nothing else to do Neal had enforced a 50 minute minimum time limit. We sat there with sporadic fits of laughter as we watched a man walk past with a crate of cherries, we observed a fight over a moped, and even an evangelical/crazy muslim lady walking up and down the road denouncing everyone for not being good muslims.

Finally Neal’s self inflicted time limit was passed, and we were able to leave the café. Neal found a shop that sold belts to he would no longer have to hold his trousers up. He reckoned it was the best 25DH he’s ever spent (probably the sugar talking!) We walked back to the main square and found one of the few places that sold food, and sat down in the diminutive upstairs quarters. None of us were feeling particularly hungry after our large lunch, but Neal ordered for us. ½ kg of meat. We didn’t even know what we would get, so we weren’t sure if this was lots, or a miniscule amount – more hysterics ensued about our unknown portion size. It was a perfect amount for 2 people (Barbara didn’t eat any). The meat was essentially hand made burgers served with bread – delicious! It was almost time for our taxi back. We went up the hill and got in the taxi. This time both Neal and I were sitting in the front passenger seat. It was a bit of a squash.

Back at the apartment we told Sandra that she had missed out on a fantastic festival. She didn’t believe a word!

Long time No post! I got rather bogged down with work during my latter weeks in Azrou, as I had lots of logging, transferring and reviewing to do in the evenings. I’ve been back in the UK for 10 days now, so over the next few days the posts should come thick and fast until i’m up to speed with my time in Morocco. Then I will try to get into a routine of 1 post a week ( to start off with at least!) about camera type stuff.

Anyway, where was I…?

In order for Barbara and me to get to know all the areas of the green group home range Neal had said he would take us on a tour of all the different places that the macaques are known to visit. We’d agreed to head up at 8 before the weather got too hot and any thunderstorms had had the chance to form. We met and walked up the road out of town. We had planned to hitch a lift, but everyone that passed was either full of passengers, or unwilling to stop. After waking about 5km someone kindly stopped for us. I jumped in the back of his new 4×4 and almost sat on the large rifle that was on the seat. He was on his way to shoot birds in the forest. We found out that his name was Shakir, and he was a retired furniture importer who provided Italian furniture to the top Moroccan hotels, restaurants and businesses. I think he had been very successful.

We got out at the tourist site and walked the short way to the green group’s home range. Neal took us on a whistle-stop tour of the places we had not yet seen in the home range. this included repeating climbing the valleys that the macaques had led me through on Wednesday, luckily thought today I wasn’t wearing a backpack. We went higher than I had been with the monkeys and reached a section called “The Alps.”

We headed back down and returned to the tourist area where we chatted to Ben Haddu, a fossil/gem seller and a group of the other men who work up at the tourist site. He invited us over for tea and bread which we gladly ate. while we were chatting he mentioned a cherry festival that was happening in a nearby village over the weekend. We all liked the sound of that, especially the traditional berber music, so got more details. (held at Ain Leuh. Starts at 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday). After saying our goodbyes we hitched back down the hill and chilled before getting ready for the evening’s festivities, the Morocco v.s. Algeria qualifying match for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations.

At about 20.15 Neal and I headed out to town to find a cafe to watch the match in ahead of kick off at 21:00. We soon realised that we were a bit late as every cafe was crammed full of men waiting for the match to start. Eventually we found a small space at the back of a cafe, so we grabbed some chairs from outside and made our way in; Surprisingly we didn’t decapitate anyone. We sat down and ordered some mint tea while waiting for the match to start. The excitement levels started to rise as 9 o’clock drew closer, by 9:01 people were getting rather agitated and frantic… Nobody knew what channel the football was on! After a lot of flicking the correct channel was found (3 minutes late!).

It took a tense 25 minutes for the Moroccans to find their stride and score their first goal. soon after, they scored again and were looking on form for a third. After about 38 minutes of play a picture of a mosque appeared on screen and and adhan began to play. It was time to pray! About 10 of the spectators in the cafe got up to head to the mosque, but the others remained glued to their seats. By the time this interruption had finished, so had the first half, the coverage resumed as the players were leaving the pitch. Neal and I were dumbfounded; we could not believe that a national match would be interrupted like that. There would have been uproar in the UK!

Morocco continued to dominate in the second half. and the final score was 4-0 to Morocco. Everyone in the cafe was jubilant, everyone apart from the chap sitting to my right. Throughout the match he had been shrinking in his seat, and at the end of the match he slunk out quietly. It appears that I had been sitting next to the only Algeria fan in Azrou!
Following the victory we headed down the hill to grab a quick bite to eat before heading back. On the way down we met Driss who was running back up the hill. he quickly mentioned how amazing the match was before sprinting off. We stopped and Neal treated me to a peppery snail soup. Another delicious moroccan treat costing only a few pence. As we drank it every vehicle that passed was beeping its horn, and a small group of lads ran past us down the road cheering. It was a party atmosphere.
Check out this short clip (hopefully theres more to come in a separate post about the Moroccan’s love of football!)
A few minutes later once Neal and I had finished our soup the group of lads came back again. This time the group had swelled considerably to about 400-500 young men and they were running fast through the traffic. I looked at Neal, and on his returning glance we both started to run too. We joined the throng of running teens and kids all of whom were chanting, singing triumphantly and waving flags. Every so often the group would spontaneously come to a halt, sing for 30 seconds and then carry on running in the middle of the high street with cars and trucks passing either side (albeit rather slowly). Eventually the chaotic festivities slowed somewhat when the Annour Mosque was reached, and everyone started to sing. The excitement started to ebb slightly at this point, the police also turned up, although there was absolutely no trouble for them to deal with (unlike in the UK after a football match!). Neal and I decided it was time to call it a night.

Sorry I’ve not been keeping the blog updated. I’ve been snowed under with the work that I’m out here to do, so that has to take priority. Hopefully I should have some time this week to get writing.

Anyway, to give you a sneak peek of what’s in store when I do update the blog, here’s a few pics from the past week.

After a bit of a rest the previous day I was ready and willing to get loads more film of the Macaques. Sandra and her team were going to be working with the tourist group. We had a quick drive along to see if we could spot the green group, but unlike the rest of the week the macaques were not immediately visible. In order to not waste the good morning light I decided to film the tourist group. The macaques are noticeably bigger than the green group due to their plentiful diet of bread, peanuts fruit and whatever else the tourists feed them, alongside whatever else they forage, there is also much more rubbish at the tourist site, and lots more people. This would cause a problem with continuity when filming. Luckily the macaques are very used to humans so they let you get much closer than the green group. to get round the continuity problems I decided to try to film details such as hands during grooming, infants being carried, and teeth chattering. This worked very well, and throughout the day I got some lovely closeup shots.

I also got to see one of Sandra’s experiments in action. It is two perspex boxes joined together on a frame with a sliding sledge upon which food is placed. A rope protrudes from the front of each box so that the monkeys can pull the sledge forwards to get to the food. In order for it to work two monkeys must pull both ropes simultaneously. It’s a test for cooperation between the macaques. It was fascinating watching the monkeys doing the experiment successfully, even if it may have been by fluke! After a few hours the macaques strength had got the better of the experiment, and they had broken the spar that connects the sledges with their determined pulling on the rope.

After lunch I set a few timelapses of clouds going and sat back as they completed with nice results. The cloud was moving nicely across the sky. By this time my hayfever was getting the better of me, so I went back to film the macaques a bit more. I stumbled upon a woodpecker’s nest inside a dead tree trunk. the young were making a racket, chirping for food. I waited for a while and eventually got some footage of the adult arriving at the nest and feeding the chicks. Soon after this I got a call on the walkie talkie saying it was the weekend!

We headed back to the apartment. I backed up the cards, then we went out for a sandwich as a group of 4. I was amazed by the sheer number of people out on the street. the women were sitting on one set of benches, with the males sitting round the corner as well as loads of people milling around the shoe sellers on the pavements. We sat in one of the small parks along the main street to eat our dinner – I got hit by a football! The spicy sausage sandwich with chips was really tasty, however the 5DH cone of fresh donuts stole the award for delicious cheap food!

We all headed back to the apartments and arranged our plans for the following day.