Morocco - Part II

Marrakesh has long been one of the places on my ‘to visit’ list.  Just the name conjures up a far-away world of elaborate Islamic architecture, exotic scents and vibrant colours, all moving to the beat of African drums.  Romantic I know and probably impossible to live up to but that didn’t stop our arrival into Marrakesh being a big deal.  Our approach to the city was through a red dusty plain dotted with the occasional, sorry-looking palm tree, the sudden increase in traffic and infrastructure heralding our arrival to the new town or Ville Nouvelle as it is known.  Not unlike most cosmopolitan centres we observed the 5* hotels, large private houses, restaurants and cafes and rather disappointingly Zara, H&M and Starbucks.  However, the traffic kept moving and it wasn’t long before we reached the mayhem of the old town where any form of road etiquette disappeared, and it was every man, scooter and donkey for themselves. 

It is at times like this that we are delighted to be overlanding in a Land Rover and able to take part in the hustle and bustle of a place.  The huge trucks, that we have seen so many of since arriving in Morocco, being forced by common sense to park in one of the busy campsites outside the city.  Booked to stay in a Riad on the edge of the medina, we wound our way through the labyrinth of narrow alleyways, often having to perform a series of forward-reverse manoeuvres to get Bob round the tight corners, whilst at the same time resisting the many offers of direction from the all too willing locals.  We eventually located our accommodation which was right at the dead-end of an alleyway which meant Bob was parked right outside the front door under the watchful eye of the Riad’s security cameras – Result!

Marrakesh, we had arrived. 

As an added bonus, we were meeting up with some friends for the duration of our week's stay and were looking forward to an input of new energy with which to explore our surroundings.  Our accommodations on opposite sides of the Medina proved perfect to meet up and wander through the busy souks, soaking up the sights, sounds and fragrances whilst enjoying an occasional cocktail on one of the many roof-top terraces.  We sampled the street food, haggled with the local vendors, visited a hammam, watched the snake-charmers and purchased fresh fruit and warm nuts from the stalls set up in Djemaa el-Fna central square.  A 3-hour bike tour confirmed that the atmosphere within the old city’s red clay ramparts was a chaotic world away from the modern, somewhat characterless outskirts, but there is no denying that Marrakesh can cater to every type of traveller.  The week finished with a half-day cooking class with a couple of local women who shared their knowledge of preparing Moroccan food and insight into the use of the local spices. 

You see the multi-coloured open sacks of spices everywhere and what better way to feel like a local than to head over with your own spice jars for a refill.  Nice idea, but after seeing a rather cute kitty doing their business in one our enthusiasm rather lost its momentum!

Marrakesh was everything we hoped it would be and more and we loved every minute of it….

….. well, nearly every minute.  As you might expect in the middle of the desert there isn’t much grass around, even the parks are beautifully laid out and planted in red desert earth.  Unfortunately, Leroy is a bit fussy about where he does his business and 2-3 times a day it was necessary to take him on a 4km round trip to a tiny area of sparse greenery where he was somewhat reluctantly prepared to go.  Whilst the exercise was good, the journey itself was not too far removed from entry into the Temple of Doom – a test of will required to navigate an anti-social 50 kg Rotti through congested cars, scooters, bicycles, screaming children, donkeys, stray dogs and hundreds of cats.  Good job Ian was grey on arrival as he certainly would have been by the time we left having done more than his fair share of running this particular gauntlet.

essaouria

It would have been so easy to stay longer and we were sorry to leave, but after parting company with our fellow discoverers, we were keen to see more of this fascinating country and so set off for the coast.  One thing that you can’t fail to notice in Morocco are the excellent road networks.  Over the past 20 years, the government has built approximately 1,100 miles of modern roads, connecting most major cities via toll expressways.  So, it didn’t take us long to reach Essaouria, an ex hippy haunt proud to proclaim its associated with Jimi Hendrix who stayed for 11 days back in the 60’s.  Apart from its grand coastal fortifications, this laid-back town has the only pre-planned medina layout in Morocco which makes the streets of the old town unusually spacious and medina browsing an altogether more relaxing experience.  There was quite a bit of development going on, not unlike many of Morocco’s larger towns, but hopefully the town will stay true to its name which literally means “the beautifully designed”.

mirleft

We are now nearly half-way down Morocco’s 2,000 km Atlantic coast and the further south we go, the less developed the area becomes.  The coastline is beautiful, kilometres upon kilometres of curved sandy coves that are mostly deserted despite the area being renowned for wind powered water sports.  We have seen the occasional kite surfer battling with the large Atlantic waves and some locals play football on the beach on a Sunday but other than that we more or less have the place to ourselves.  The landscape is expansive, mostly dry rocky desert, occasionally broken up by a lush green valley. 

Life on the road is fantastic but can also be quite tiring.  Just co-ordinating routes, picking up groceries, filling up with fuel and water, exercising, driving and finding somewhere to sleep can often take all day.  The idea of remaining static for a while, somewhere warm and where there would be a chance to just laze around, had been on our minds for a while.  The sleepy little fishing village of Mirleft was where the pin dropped.  Two hours south of Agadir, positioned on the cliffs between the coast and the desert, the location was perfect for chilling out before we proceeded further south and into the Sahara.

desert life

Just as we had no forewarning of our misfortune on arrival into Morocco, the same was true of our good fortune on arriving in Mirleft.  Our Airbnb interim home belonged to a French couple and a few days after arriving we found ourselves temporarily back on the road being given a whistle-stop tour of southern Morocco.  We visited luxury desert camps, picnicked under the shade of Acacia trees amid sand swept dunes and visited other ex-pats who had made a life for themselves in the area.  Poor Bob was pushed towards his limits as he raced across rocky desert tracks trying to keep up with our hosts, an ex proto-type driver for Renault and his lovely wife, who set the pace in their surprisingly nippy Duster.  The picnics consisted of oysters and gravlax, washed down with 12-year-old champagne which was unbelievably produced from their own fourth generation vineyards situated in the Grand Cru region of France.  You just couldn’t make this stuff up!

Exhilarated but exhausted, we arrived back into Mirleft where we had a chance to unpack Bob and were dismayed to find that rather more of our stuff had been stolen than we first thought.  A decision was made for one of us to make an impromptu trip back to the UK to replace some necessary items and by the time we were reunited in Mirleft it was almost time to hit the road again

overlanding community

One of the items collected in the UK was Chris Scott’s exhaustive book of off-road routes – Morocco Overland.  Rather than taking the N1 Desert Highway south we opted instead to follow one of his routes which would take us all the way down to Tan-Tan, a route which comprised nearly 40km of beach driving and 60km of rocky desert, with alarmingly indistinct tracks.  It had been a while since we’d been tested off the tarmac but we were delighted to be on a track that had previously been part of the Dakar Rally.  Unfortunately, our recent lack of off-road driving was all too evident as it took us less than 10 km to get stuck in the soft sand.  Yes, we would have been able to dig ourselves out but fortunately, not more than a minute later, two vehicles approached and after some brief introductions Bob was pulled out backwards by a capably driven truck.  A bit embarrassing but always good to meet fellow travellers; these two young German couples were intending to drive all the way to South Africa in a 4x4 lightweight truck and a 2WD white van.  They had an interesting dynamic, the truck would test any dodgy looking terrain, give a thumbs up to the van which would then attempt to follow but invariably get stuck, at which point the truck would then go back and tow the van to more stable ground.  They had been employing this technique throughout Morocco and it would be hard to argue that it wasn’t working for them as they were making steady progress and were obviously managing rather better than some of us.  Once the beach ran out they diverted back onto the N1 and we continued into the desert trying to get a handle on Chris’s navigational hints which were few and far between but then we were in the desert and there is a limit to how many times you can turn right at a palm tree? 

ksar tafnidilt, tan-tan

After a long, dusty day we arrived at what at first appeared to be some kind of mirage, a rather impressive but lonely fort (Ksar Tafnidilt).  Despite looking as if it had been stood for centuries, commencement of the building only started in 2000.  It was the result of a vision of an ex rally-driving Frenchman who seemingly fell in love with this remote part of Morocco, a remoteness which enabled him to have a wife on-site as well as a wife back in France.  Apart from the owner and one of his wives, we were the only people in residence which seemingly didn’t necessitate the generator being activated but the solar showers were hot, the stars were out and the all-pervasive peacefulness was magical. 

This was as far south as we planned to go (on this particular trip) just a short distance from the border of the former Spanish province of Western Sahara, a country that has been the subject of a long-running territorial dispute between Morocco and the indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front.  There is a buffer strip of land that runs the length of the country, separating the Moroccan-administered western portion from the Polisario controlled eastern area.  A strip of land dotted with fortifications and landmines, evidence of the 16-year on-going conflict over this second most sparsely populated country in the world with its rich phosphate reserves and as yet untapped offshore oil deposits.  Despite all this activity, a route through Western Sahara is the choice of many overlanders heading for Mauritania and Africa at large, a route that presumably never strays too far from the coast. 

Turning around we took the N1 north towards the Anti Atlas mountains, passing through the dusty town of Guelmim whose only point of interest would have to be its weekly camel market.  Little more than a diversion these days but had you been intending to make the minimum 1,000 km crossing of the Sahara by desert caravan, Guelmim would have been a good opportunity to purchase your camels.

ait mansour gorge, tafraoute

The Anti Atlas range runs parallel to and southward of the central Atlas Mountains, extending around 300 km east from the nearby Atlantic Coast and providing an important barrier against the Sahara which lies to the south.  The area receives less than 20 cm of rain per annum and is one of the least-visited parts of Morocco.  The dry landscape is a dramatic contrast of pink and black granite rock forms that create a distinctive backdrop to deeply carved fertile fissures that are lush with date palms, pomegranate, olive and fig trees.  We saw plenty of abandoned villages of traditional mud brick structures clinging to the granite mountainside and many that looked to be abandoned only to find Berber communities living amongst the dilapidated buildings.  It is a very beautiful and striking area enhanced by a feeling of absolute remoteness and absence of tourists which is surprising given that it is just a three-hour drive from Agadir.  The small town of Tafraoute, a secluded oasis nestled in the Almen valley, was the perfect base from which to trek to Les Roches Bleues.  The Belgian artist Jean Verame has created an intriguing sight of enormous boulders covered in not just blue but pink, black, red, yellow and orange paint.  Originally painted in 1984 with the help of the local fire brigade and their hoses and 18 tonnes of paint, this tribute to Verame’s late wife could be viewed as art or vandalism but either way was most unusual.

les roches bleues

Tafraoute is the largest producer of almonds in Morocco.  The almonds are produced by small scale farmers and when we tasted them side by side with their sweeter, chemically processed cousins from California, they were notably better.  We have seen whole almonds for sale throughout Morocco, but by far the preferred use for them is as one of the ingredients that go into amlou, a thick brown paste with a texture similar to peanut butter made up of ground roast almonds, honey and argan oil.  A common sight in the souks is that of the local women overseeing spinning metal vats that churn out the thick gloopy mixture which seems to serve as a handy alternative to Nutella.  The second ingredient of raw unprocessed honey can be found in a mind-boggling range of flavours including saffron, orange, thyme, lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus, and honeydew, with varying colours from a light gold to almost black, each jar containing large pieces of chewy honeycomb.  And finally, argan oil which is one of Morocco’s most famous products and offered for sale in varying quality at every souk and from make-shift stalls dotted along the roadsides.  The oil is produced from the kernels of the relatively rare argan trees which are indigenous to southwestern Morocco and extracted by a labour-intensive process usually undertaken by the many women co-operatives that have been formed across the country.  The oil is used widely in cosmetics but more interestingly is the most expensive edible oil in the world.   

It is always an interesting observation to compare the value of a product where the supply and demand is notably different based on location.  We saw how small a value was attributed to the excess of hash in Chefchaouen insomuch that it was handed over for free and similarly, as we have travelled through the country, we have seen herds of goats feasting on the precious argan trees.  Unfortunately, it is the same the world over and there is always someone with a money-making idea and goats in trees (yes, they’re real!) would have to be one of the more bizarre.