As I explained previously, we had two weeks in Morocco in between two different organised Exodus trips (a walking holiday and a biking holiday) in the Anti-Atlas. We spent some of this time in Taroudant, some in Afensou in the High Atlas, and the rest in Agadir. We’d seen Agadir very briefly on the first evening of the walking trip, and in the dark I’d got the wrong opinion of it, thinking that there were only a few tourist hotels. It turned out that, along the beach front, there’s more than a mile of hotel after hotel, and the further away from the old centre you walk, the newer and fancier the hotels become. In the other direction to the north is a fancy and expensive marina.
The marina
Agadir is quite a tourist destination, so it seems, though nothing like Essaouira or Marrakesh. We spoke to one woman who was on her sixth visit this year.
There’s a bit of surfing (the waves are better about twenty miles north, where there are several surf villages), and camel rides are offered along the front for kids. In the evenings there are loads of restaurants to choose from.
We headed up the track to the Kasbah on top of the hill to the north of town, making sure to leave early in the morning before it got hot. There’s not a great deal of the kasbah left – much of it, along with the original town of Agadir, was destroyed in the earthquake of 1960.
We spent a surprisingly informative couple of hours in the Amazighe Heritage Museum in Agadir. It started off as many of our trips to museums do – strolling around the exhibits and trying to make sense of minimalist printed explanations in another language – but then an English-speaking guide appeared, and he turned out to be extremely good at talking about the various artefacts and their designs.
Fisherman’s retreat, on the Atlantic
The ‘Little Sahara’
The other thing we did was to take a day trip south of Agadir, using Bakhazouz Tours, for an excursion to Massa, Tiznit, a bit of sand where tourist cars stopped that had been creatively named ‘the Little Sahara’ and the Barrage Youssef Ibn Tachfin.
Afensou is an hour’s drive north from Taroudant. The two places could hardly be more different – Taroudant is a walled, bustling trading city, known as the ‘Little Marrakesh’, situated in the flat and dusty Sous Valley, and Afensou is a quiet Berber village nestled in the foothills of the western High Atlas Mountains. There’s only one place to stay in Afensou, and that’s the guest house Les Terrasses de l’Atlas. This is a special place, and we recently spent four nights there. I hope you will click on the short video above, and see the traditional style Berber house, the nearby villages and the tracks we walked along.
The views are stunning from Les Terrasses, and the afternoon heat is soporific, especially so when swinging quietly from one of the available hammocks, but what may not be immediately obvious when looking out above the river bed (the green bits in the above photo) is how much activity is going on, at most times, beneath the canopy of trees and bushes.
We enjoyed two late afternoon walks, one up and the other down the nearby river course, with Habida from Les Terrasses. Walking with her we were able to watch as she greeted her friends, relatives and neighbours along the way, and we could see numerous people at work on their gardens, collecting vegetables and mending water channels. It was a perspective on Berber village life that you probably won’t get if you only trek in the mountains.
For tourists, a serene place. For the locals, a normal place of work.
Staying in Taroudant was a bit like going back thirty years. Some parts of Taroudant have not changed for much longer than that, of course, and sections of the city almost have a medieval feel to it, but what I mean by thirty years is that it reminded me of a trip Lindsey and I made to Morocco about 32 years ago. Finding our way around by ourselves rather than being part of an organised trip, walking in the souk and drinking coffee while watching the goings-on in Place al-Alaouine, the main square, deciding where to eat (there were only a few restaurants), and talking to some other travellers, in a semi-desert situation, made me think about our previous trip.
We stayed at the gorgeous Dar Tourkia for a few nights, then went up into the High Atlas, and returned for one night, staying at Dar Fatima.
The call to prayer would wake us up, first thing each morning, then we’d go walking into the nearby city for a while, before it got too hot, and we’d return to Dar Tourkia. I loved being on the edge of the desert, yet having a nice oasis of a hotel to retreat to, with a pool to swim in, in the late afternoon. If you stay at Dar Tourkia, you may be fortunate enough to be served one of Fatima’s fantastic lemon tarts (they were so tasty).
We tried, but didn’t manage to get to Palais Claudio Bravo, a few miles from Taroudant, for a day trip. We went to the grand taxi stance outside Bab Taghount, but somehow picked up a “I’m not a guide” guide on the way, and we couldn’t throw him off. The grand taxi driver wanted to charge us far too much for the journey, and my Google Maps couldn’t locate Claudio Bravo Palace so I was not able to show that it was really only 10kms from town.
It wasn’t a great start. We’d set the alarm for 4 AM and booked a taxi for 4.30 AM to take us to the airport to catch the 6.25 AM flight to Gatwick. All those low-figure ‘AM’s are bad enough, but we were still in bed when the phone rang twice and then stopped, signalling the arrival of the taxi.
I looked at the alarm clock. It seemed to say ‘3.30 AM’, so what had happened? Had the clocks changed? No! What was happening? I pulled on my trousers, ran down the stairs and out into the street where the taxi was waiting. “I booked a taxi for 4.30. What’s up? I think it’s only 3.30”
“Sorry mate. Must have been a confusion. OK, I’ll just cancel.” The driver then drove off, leaving me wondering if it was just the 3.30 taxi that had been cancelled, or whether another one would appear in an hour.
You don’t want that sort of confusion and angst so early in the morning. It’s bad enough facing a long, early start journey with several hours in transit at Gatwick. Lindsey and I were now semi-awake, not sleepy enough to go back to bed for an hour, and certainly not confident that another taxi would appear at the correct hour. So we got up, and flapped around. Fortunately, a taxi did arrive at 4.30 AM.
At airports, people now walk in a new, rather peculiar, way. It’s the effect of having a carry-on bag with four wheels in tow, which requires walking with an arm outstretched at slightly above waist height.
In one of the free newspapers available at the airport I read about a couple of would-be Jihadists who had been arrested. Not the brightest of sparks, details emerged of some texts they had sent to each other. “Do you think Islamic State will have eye-surgery facilities?” one of them texted his girlfriend, “Why?”she asked. “Well, if I’m on the run and my specs break, I won’t be able to run away.” “You can just be a martyr then, dear.”
At Agadir Airport, as we waited for our luggage to arrive, I tried to spot other people who would be on our Undiscovered Atlas Exodus trip. Not those young surfer types, obviously, but those wearing walking boots. I clocked at least four, and watched as they then picked their Exodus kit bags from the carousel.
The Exodus kit bags are pretty sturdy (though Lindsey’s started to fall apart by the end of the month), and are suitable for being carried by donkeys, etc, but we’d had big problems trying to force all the walking gear (for the first trip) plus the cycling gear (for the second trip) into them. Also, they don’t have wheels, so you have to lump them everywhere. As usual, it turned out, we took too many clothes with us, but you always have to pack waterproofs just in case, and warm tops, gloves and hats (the desert gets cold at night). I never once used my travel towel, mainly because there was no water to wash with on the walking trip. Yuck! Everyone went six days walking and camping without a proper wash. First thing in the morning, everyone would smell fresh and perfumed after wiping down with wet wipes. Last thing in the day…well, let’s not go there…you’re all in the same boat, though (or desert, in this case). I also didn’t use my reserve head torch, plastic thingy for keeping keys in when you go swimming, reserve power bank, and silk inner sheet.
Above is a short video detailing the Undiscovered Atlas walking and camping trip. It was ‘grade 4’ on the Exodus Challenge level, meaning that you need to be “moderately fit and have an interest in remote or challenging environments. Some previous experience is required for activity based trips.” That sounds about right to me. There were three days which each involved at least 20 kms, up and down (and up…), walking on sometimes very rough tracks, plus an ascent of Jebel Aklim (2531 m), plus some shorter days. One of the hardest turned out to be the last, shortish day, with ascents up three passes.
As I get older, I seem to stagger around a bit, first thing, when I get out of bed. Even at home. My feet don’t seem to work completely for a few minutes, until they’re warmed up. On the Undiscovered Atlas walking trip, this turned out to be the main inconvenience, getting out of the tent in the dark in the mornings and trying to get organised whilst stumbling around on sandy and very rocky surfaces. We also had to pack our bags in the dark, so that they could be loaded onto the donkeys/van whilst we had breakfast, and then off for an early start once it had got light.
The ages of the others on the Undiscovered Atlas trip varied quite considerably, though only one was much younger. I discovered that some people, when booking such trips, ask how old the others are who have already booked. The average age was definitely higher than on our second, cycling, trip which I’ve already briefly posted about.
One of the many joys of such trips, apart from walking through wonderful landscapes, is talking to the other tourists, and there’s plenty of time to do so. On this trip there was a really friendly, entertaining ‘live wire’ Scottish girl, who kept everyone amused, and an older Canadian guy. I talked to him quite a bit, and found his stories about when he spent two-and-a-half years touring around south-east Asia, India and Australia in the early seventies fascinating. There was also another retired information professional, so we were able to swap a few stories.
With Hussan, our first guide, who unfortunately had to leave the trek early to attend the funeral of his father
At first, on our trip, we seemed to spend very little time interacting with the locals. We’d just walk through the Berber villages, saying hello or bonjour to the women and kids (the men were mostly away in towns, earning money to take home later) and then appreciating the extremely warm and genuine smiles we received as we passed by. So I eventually stopped in one village, and blew up some balloons pour les bébés. Well, I nearly caused a riot of excitement! Women and kids suddenly appeared through previously closed doors, forming a circle around me.
No-one wants to encourage village folk in out-of-the-way places to start shouting “Cadeau, monsieur” every time they see a tourist, and so handing out pens, etc, is frowned upon. But balloons are just a few minutes of fun for toddlers, and surely do no harm. I don’t give them out if the kids actually ask for anything, but the Berber people never did. They are so polite and genuine. At a couple of our lunch stops outside villages there were some weins who looked on as our party ate, and who were too shy to come close. But they were happy to practise their french and english when the balloons came out.
Looking a bit rough after several days wild camping
Beside a nomad camp, high in the Anti-Atlas
The walking trip started at Igherm, and went into the mountains through Tagdicht and other villages. The third day of walking took us up Jebel Aklim. Then we turned south and finally west, to complete the circuit. On the final day we went back to the Souss‐Massa River Basin, and spent a night at a nice riad (the Hida) a few miles east of Taroudant in Ouled Berhil.
These feet had done enough walking for a while
The next day Lindsey and I were dropped off in Taroudant, while the rest of the group went on to Agadir. Exodus are very good at organising such trips. They have a high rate of return customers, which is a good recommendation. Their guides (in our case Hassan, and then Mohamed) are super.
Like many people, I like to take a good book with me on trips. For some reason, Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, was the ideal read for my Magic Bus trip in the late seventies. Much more recently, Ginsberg: Beat Poet, by Barry Miles had me glued during a two-day train journey in China. The books don’t have to be relevant to the trip, but sometimes they are. More often than not, as with Sikkim: Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom, by Andrew Duff, I’ve read books about places before the actual trip.
During the two Exodus trips in Morocco we were too busy walking, and later cycling, to have much time for reading, but in the two weeks in between, which we spent in Taroudant, Afensou and Agadir, there was plenty time to relax and enjoy Journey into Barbary: Travels Across Morocco, by Wyndham Lewis.
Even though this is a peculiar book in many ways, it soon becomes obvious that the chap can write!
“…the great official’s lady was up on the Hurricane Deck. Whatever it might be at ordinary times, it became a Hurricane Deck at least the moment she trod it. Buffeted by a mild breeze – she allowed her spotless garments to billow out gently behind – her arms described arcs which embraced the horizon. And this obese groceress wallowing in the profitable squalors of the Third Republic became symbolic, perched up in that way upon the passerelle of the Algerian Packet. It was a Statue of Liberty. A century and a half after the tumbrels and the guillotine, here stood this bogus butter-and-egg marchioness – this enthroned charlady – being borne in triumph towards a land won for the Third Republic by the great Lyautey – a Christmas present for a regime which could find no better way to thank him for his gift than to dismiss him at last, with an insulting recall, allowing him to leave the shores of Africa anonymously, in the first Packet at hand, much like the one we travelled in – less honoured than this inflated daughter of the democratic bureaucracy, whose husband got the pip in his buttonhole from Herriot, probably, for two decades of dirty work!”
Well, I had to look up a number of words and names before I could understand fully what Lewis was talking about, but it was all worth the effort, and it was great to read about ‘Barbary’ whilst we were in Morocco. He writes in a very exaggerated, and now dated, style, but I found it all very entertaining. He plays on particular words, sometimes extensively. One of his favourites is ‘filibuster’, another is ‘the bled‘. Someone once wrote that he had a ‘sharp wit and sardonic insight’, and this plays out throughout the book.
It’s amazing to think that, at the time he wrote, in the 1930s, much of Morocco was off limits to outsiders, “…it is in fact impossible to enter the Sahara from the west. The occidental Sahara is verboten as far as the Paleface is concerned. No European, I discovered to my extreme astonishment, is able to set foot upon these forbidden sands and steppes…No European has ever been able so far to penetrate it. One rapidly crossed this region in 1850. This was, it would seem, the only European who has done so. His name was Léopold Panet. He started from St.-Louis-du-Sénégal. Wounded and robbed of everything, he succeeded in reaching Mogador. And then last year, in 1930, a young Frenchman made a feverish raid into it from the North to a depth of a few hundred miles. He lies buried in the citadel of Agadir. “Voir Smara et mouris!” is more or less his epitaph.” It was too dangerous a place, and as Lewis writes, “…a land so pregnant with plots and so overrun with lawless outsiders as to make a mere tourist’s hair stand on end…”
I was particularly pleased that the bike trip part of our holiday took us through Aït Baha, which Lewis also reached, and wrote, “Beyond the military post of Aït Baha no European is permitted to journey. He can go there only if his friends or his government are prepared to pay for him a very heavy ransom…”
Beyond Aït Baha it becomes obvious how much of an important route this ‘great entrance’, or Imi Mgorn as Lewis referred to it, is through the Anti Atlas from the Souss to the Sahara. The route was protected by many kasbahs for hundreds of years.
Kasbah Tizourgane
Tafraoute
Tafraoute, further up in the Anti Atlas, where we stayed for three nights, still has the feel of a frontier town.
Fortunately, things have changed a lot since Lewis’ day, and neither Lindsey or I were held to ransom.
This is a short movie of the Atlas Descent bike trip we went on and really enjoyed, last week, in Morocco. It was the second of two Exodus trips during a month’s stay in Morocco – I’ll post some more about our other experiences in Morocco in the coming days.
The bike trip, entitled ‘Atlas Descent‘ is rated ‘5’ on the Exodus Challenging scale, with the explanation “You have a good level of fitness and are looking for a physically challenging holiday. Previous experience is essential for activity based trips.” Indeed, Lindsey and I found it quite challenging at times, and we had only a little previous experience of mountain biking. Thank goodness we prepared a little over the summer. We were the oldest people in the group of eleven, and sometimes it showed…however the group was patient with us when we needed to catch up. I have to say that the other people on the trip were really nice, intelligent and much travelled folk. My opinion of mountain bikers is that they are extremely tough people!
The trip involved four days biking in the Anti Atlas around Tafraoute and Tiznit, and two days biking in the High Atlas. The scenery was wonderful, as I hope you will see from the movie. The food was good, and the guide, Radu Man, looked after everyone extremely well.
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