Austin and I wanted to explore the Todra Gorge since it looked beautiful and everyone online seemed to love it. I am so thrilled we went, it was an incredible time.

When we showed up to town, we found an accommodation near the gorge. The guy that ran the guesthouse mentioned there was a Portuguese group of two coming later that evening. We ended up meeting Andre later that evening and chatted with him for quite some time. His friend he was planning to travel with got injured before the trip and was no longer able to come so he came solo.

At breakfast the next day, we ended up talking about the few years he spent in Paris and ended up figuring out we had a mutual friend in Paris, Simon! This past summer, we met Simon through a motorcycle shop in Paris. Simon does sidecar tours throughout Paris and we spent nearly a full day getting to know him well while both of our bikes were getting worked on at the moto shop. My goodness, what a small world!! We all had a great laugh about it and decided to try to prank Simon from Morocco, ha. Andre sent Simon a photo of him on our motorcycle sidecar saying: “hey man, just bought this bike for super cheap from a shady guy in Morocco. It looks like it has American plates, pretty odd, right?” Simon quickly responded and said, “wait! I may know the actual owners!” and we all had a good chuckle.

After breakfast, we all ended up climbing together. Andre is an extreme outdoors enthusiast! He has a climbing company in Portugal and is a guide / teacher for all types of climbing and also has been a scuba diving instructor in Egypt for many years too. As for the climbing, Austin and I have both belayed before so after running through the basics with Andre, he felt comfortable with the route he was leading and also Austin’s lead climbing belaying skills. I have not belayed a lead climber before so Austin belayed Andre when Andre would set the routes. We climbed a few routes and had an incredible day in the sunshine and soaking up the views. The rock was quite sharp, Austin and I had a few cuts on our hands from falling and such, Andre came out without a scratch, ha! It was an epic time and we are so stoked to have met our new friend, Andre!