From Tafraoute to the Coast

We settled into Tafraoute for several days to explore the area and to get some work done on the camper. Tafraoute sits at over 1,000m in altitude so the weather was perfect while we were there with warm days and cool nights.

At some point on our journey, we had managed to crack the plastic body of our rear bumper on both sides. We didn’t even know how or when we had done it but we found ourselves in the right place to get it fixed relatively cheaply.

So when the owner of Mohammed’s Garage came around the Aire touting for business we had a chat with him and agreed a price for his garage to repair the damage the following day.

Like most garages that we have seen in Morocco all the work seems to be done on the side of the road, so we parked up in a layby opposite the garage and headed out on our bikes for the day.

We headed out of Tafraoute towards the small village of Tazka, which is built amongst the rocks of the area, to visit a museum called the Maison Traditionelle. This is a traditional local house that families have lived in, in this area, for hundreds of years.

On arriving at the village we cycled up to the house and we were in the alley outside looking for somewhere to lock up our bikes when the museum owner spotted us. He told us not to bother locking the bikes that they would be perfectly safe left where they were.

He then welcomed us inside and gave us a very interesting hour long tour (in English) around the house, kitchen, storerooms and the rooftop workshop. He also told us about local agriculture, talked about how climate change had affected this, and showed us how argon nuts were processed to make Argon oil – a very expensive commodity in this region that sells for around USD 75 per 100 ml.

Just next to the village is a very old (4,000 years) petroglyph but we weren’t sure how to find it so after retrieving our bikes we asked the owner of the museum for directions. He said we would never find it ourselves so very kindly locked up the museum and walked us to the site, and he was right, we would never have found it! The original petroglyph is very faint now and you can just about make out the outlines but on a rock nearby there is a copy which is a mere 100 years old !

After this we cycled back to town and found one of the few restaurants in town that was open during Ramadan and settled down for a lazy lunch. I had a lovely tagine with meatballs, egg and cheese which is now my favourite type of tagine.

We went back to the garage to find that they’d finished the repairs and we were pleased to see that the cracked areas were fixed and indistinguishable from the original finish. All for €120, a fraction of what it would have cost to get it fixed at home.

The next day we headed out for a day trip to the oasis of Ait Mansour. This was a spectacular drive that takes you up out of the valley where Tafraoute is located and drops you into a gorge where the floor is thick with palm trees between the valley walls. The area of the town of Ait Mansour widens out and is also thick with palm trees which are the lifeblood of the locals.

There is a loop drive that you can take which pushes through Ait Mansour but the palm trees were hanging low over the road and we didn’t want to risk damaging the roof and solar panels so we returned the same way to Tafraoute, which was no disadvantage as we got to take in the beautiful scenery again.

After five days in Tafraoute we decided to carry on but it is easy to see why some travellers settle down here for weeks at a time.

The road north out of Tafraoute is another stunning drive over a high plateau with the occasional deep valley cut through it. This year has been unusual in the amount of rain this part of the world has received and therefore we were treated to a much greener landscape than would usually be the case and also lots of lovely wildflowers.

We came upon a kasbah on a rock as we drove and decided to pay a visit. We walked up the steep access drive to find a firmly shut metal door. It didn’t seem very inviting but after banging on it a few times a guardian came to open it and let us in to have a look around. I think we had just arrived a bit early before they had opened up for the day as when we left the door was wide open.

There wasn’t a huge amount to see in the Kasbah other than a lot of ornately painted doors but there was a restaurant so we each had a fresh orange juice on the roof terrace in the sunshine which was lovely.

Not too far from the Kasbah we stopped by a small restaurant. We had heard that the owner ran tours up to an Agadir which was high above the road. Soon after we arrived our friends Phil and Caroline also arrived and we arranged for our tour together.

The road up to the Agadir was very steep and narrow so we were glad that the tour price included a lift up the road in a car ! The Agadir Ighir Ifran is a beautiful example of the traditional Moroccan vault and this one was 900 years old and had 86 different chambers each of which would have been owned by a different family from the surrounding area.

The tour only cost 20 Mad per person (That’s less than €2) and was definitely worth it.

We didn’t make it very far the next day. I had seen on google maps that there was an interesting little cave by the side of the road and although we couldn’t park that near it we found a beautiful area just under 1km away just off the side of the road. In fact we liked it so much that we decided to spend the night there.

While we were there a herder went past with a large herd of goats and two other guys arrived in a car. After chatting with them we found out that they were guardians of the village and they were making sure that the herder safely passed through their territory. We asked if it was OK for us to spend the night and they said we were very welcome.

I walked down the road and climbed up the cliff side on a very unstable path and managed to climb up to Fizrit cave. It was only a fairly shallow cave in the side of the rocky valley walls but the views out into the valley were great.

After a lovely afternoon and evening in our ‘private campground’ we carried on towards the coast. We were in desperate need of a proper supermarket having not been to one for several weeks. There simply aren’t any in the Sahara region of Morocco at all, but we had made it to the coast and Agadir where we stocked up in a Carrefour. Sadly the Alcohol Cave was shut for Ramadan but we still had some reserves so all was not lost!

We didn’t want to stay in Agadir so we started to head South down the coast and found a nice campsite a short distance from the coast near the Sous-Massa National Park. We cycled down to the national park and were very disappointed by the area which was really full of rubbish and building debris.

We carried on heading South and during the drive a taxi driver started gesticulating and pointing at our camper so we pulled over and saw that one of our headlight bulbs had blown. As we have learnt to our detriment the police are very hot on issuing fines in Morocco so we headed to the nearest town of Tiznit, in search of a replacement bulb. We found a street with a whole bunch of mechanics and small automotive spare parts shops and to my delight the first one we tried had what we needed.

We went for a walk through the town of Tiznit itself, which is a walled town. The walls have been well restored and there is a natural spring called La Source Bleu next to a restored but strangely empty Kasbah but there isn’t much else to interest a tourist so we didn’t stay too long.

After Tiznit we drove down to an abandoned fort in the hills overlooking the sea, Mirleft Fort. This was an old French military fort and was abandoned in 1956. The fort was in pretty bad condition with the walls crumbling down. The best bit of visiting the fort though was seeing an owl in the daytime. I think it was a Little Owl (that’s a type of owl not a size description).

We were heading towards Sidi Ifni which would be our southernmost stop on our Morocco trip. We had been planning to go further south but we had been enjoying the country so much that we have moved much more slowly than we expected and we were running out of time.

Before getting to Sidi Ifni we stopped off at Legzira Beach which is a huge beach with a natural arch – and the first beautiful beach that we had seen in Morocco.

We walked along the beach and explored the arch before coming back along the beach and stopping off at the one of the beachfront restaurants for a very tasty fish lunch.

It makes such a great change to eat seafood after all the tagines in Morocco.

We ended the day in a campsite right on the beach in Sidi Ifni, although there wasn’t much of a beach and the campsite was pretty dire but on the plus side, there were some lovely little hawks (common Kestrels) flying around the campsite and we were treated to a lovely sunset.