0412 Agadir to Taliouine

3^rd Feb 2016

We got a tattoo !   A fun day.

(NOTE  TO THOSE OF YOU READING ABOUT OUR ADVENTURE REGULARLY, YOU WILL HAVE NOTICED WE HAVE BEEN QUIET FOR A WHILE.  SIMPLY, THE INTERNET DOWN AROUND THE SAHARA IS NOT TOO FLASH, AND BEING AN IMPATIENT SOUL, I DECIDED NOT TO SIT AROUND FOR HOURS TRYING TO POST, AND GETTING FRUSTRATED, BUT TO JUST KEEP TRYING UNTIL I GET A DECENT WIFI.  SO I AM GOING TO POST THE WRITTEN BLOG (IT IS ALL WRITTEN !) AND TRY TO GET THE PHOTOS UPLOADED (THE MAIN PROBLEM) AS I CAN.  SO I AM POSTING ALL THE WRITTEN SECTION AND WILL CATCH UP ON THE PHOTOS LATER !!)   

We have had a relaxing couple of days in Agadir.  Janet spent yesterday in Agadir with family friend Lucy from Melbourne, who lives here, while I spent the day in the camp site going for a bike ride, and trying to get all my photos uploaded onto my blog !  Eventually succeeded, and then Lucy came over for dinner after she had had a surf, and we had a very pleasant evening over a bottle of local Maroc wine.

I am going to take back some of what I wrote, or may have inferred, yesterday.  Yes, this camp site is crowded, but then you have beach, fishing, exploring around Agadir and the rest of Maroc, relaxing in the sun with your friends – Against the alternative of sitting in cold France, or Germany or England ?  Quite a simple decision really !  I am not sure that I would want to stay in this particular spot for long – I would rather be up in the mountains with less people – But I can see why so many Europeans come down here and sit here for 3 or 4 months during the European winter.  It is not a bad place to live.  Speaking to people in the camp site this morning, apparently there has been a massive jump in road and infrastructure quality throughout Morocco over just the last 2 years, let alone in the past 5 years.  And similarly the number of Europeans down here has jumped as well.  And why not ?  The locals are friendly, it is basically very safe (probably safer than most big western cities), fuel is cheap (less than a euro a litre), food is good, water is good, and the scenery is unbelievable.  What is not to like about this place ?   I still don’t like the crowds, but I understand why they are here.

Over the past few days we have noticed a number of campers / vans that had beautiful desert scene paintings on them – I even posted a couple on here a few days ago.   Well, just as we were packing up to leave today, one of the artists comes by and says he can do a painting in only 30 minutes !  Decisions, decisions !  Since they were so cheap, I said “Let’s go”, and while we were packing up the car, Rachid Nabil got to work on Troopie’s bonnet.  I had to remove a sticker of a palm tree, but I didn’t like it very much, so it was no sacrifice !   30 minutes later we were packed up, Rachid had his money, Troopie had a tattoo, and I was a happy chappy,  So we headed out of the camp site.

Once again, despite what I said about the camp site before, I realized that it actually a very good camp site, the facilities are first class, you can get ANYTHING done there (fixing motorhomes, getting seats re-upholstered, shops, taxis into town, the man comes round with fresh bread every morning, another with fresh fish,  and down on the beach are little restaurants to buy anything you want, but a lot of fresh seafood. 

We headed into Agadir through a couple of little villages where they had weekly markets going on, bought some fresh bananas (hey, they don’t call this the banana coast for no reason !) and went back to Carrefour to restock the wine and beer cellar after the last couple of nights in camp with Lucy for supper !  That done, we headed out of town, east, towards Agdz again, and then we are going on to Erg Chebbi.  Had a funny incident in suburbia when we had a horse dawn cart in front of us, and the horse thought he was turning right and started to turn, but the driver wanted to go straight ahead, so for a moment the poor horse had his front legs crossed over as he suddenly tried to turn left !  But in Morocco, no road rage – Every one just gives space and smiles !  When we passed the cart, we waved at the driver and he smiled and waved back.  Lovely. 

It was then across fairly boring flat countryside with the temp around 25 deg C, travelling up the very rich agricultural Souss valley, until we got to Taroudant, where we decided to have a quick look around town as the books said there was a great city wall and Medina, and a lovely old hotel.  The history of Taroudant as a trading place goes back before the 11^th century, when the Almoravids took the town at the beginning of their conquest of Morocco, and later, under the Saadians, the valley became the country’s most important producer of sugar cane, cotton, rice and indigo. – Valuable items on the trans Sahara trade routes.  In 1687, it opposed the rule of Moulay Ismail and all its inhabitants were massacred – Only the ramparts of the town remained.  It continued as a centre of sedition right through until the 20^th century. 

We drove through part of the old Medina, inside the city walls, but decided not to go exploring on foot, as we have been in so many Medinas already and will go to more yet !  So we parked outside the walls, in an area where there were lots of motorhomes parked and there was a big “No Motorhomes” sign.  So we asked the parking  attendant what the deal was – “For 20 dirhams ($3), you can park here overnight, no problem !!”   Anyway, we just parked for a short time, and wandered into the Hotel Palais Salam.  This is the best hotel in town and started life as a 19^th Century pasha’s (a high official in the Ottoman Empire) residence in the Kasbah (fort, or administrative centre).  The entrance is outside the city walls, and while the rooms are apparently very comfortable, it is all slightly run down and sad given the luxurious and very romantic garden setting with its secret patios and inviting swimming pool.   But a lovely cool spot, nevertheless.

From there we headed out of town, continuing on our way east towards Agdz.   The scenery became more interesting as we headed back towards the mountains of the High Atlas, and there is a LOT of agriculture here – Bananas, oranges, olives and lots more.  We came across some amazingly overloaded donkey carts, loaded with what looked like orange tree prunings, but the loads wer so wide we had to go oin the dirt to get past them !  And the poor little donkeys pulling the loads !!  We passed through several little villages like Aoulouz, where we saw big houses, that looked more like castles, up on the hills.  Lots of goat and sheep herds beside the road, and one heard was so big, and crossing the road, that we had to stop and wait while the young goatherd through stones to get the stragglers out of the argan trees and across the road.  We gave him some sweets as we passed, and got a massive smile from him in return.  Lovely people (have I said that before ?). 

Like so many other places, they do have a plastic bag problem in Morocco, especially in the country.  We have decided that the solution would be for the government to offer something like 5 Dirhams a kilo to people who bring plastic bags in to a recycling centre, and that would provide a means for poorer country people to earn some money, and would also keep the plastic bag litter at bay.  Letter to the Tourist Bureau coming up !

We then came in towards Taliouine where we decided to stop for the night as it was too far to the next sizeable town where there would be a camp site.  Taliouine has a big but fast disintegrating Kasbah, and is also the centre  for saffron, so we shall go exploring there tomorrow morning.  In the meantime we found a delightful campsite just outside of town, and we are going to have a tagine for dinner in their restaurant tonight.  In the meantime they have quite good wifi, so hopefully todays fun and games will get downloaded in real time for a change, rather than waiting several days !!

A good fun day.

Photos finally hear - Will annotate them later  https://picasaweb.google.com/110185357936043625130/0412AgadirToTaliouine?authkey=Gv1sRgCIqHtMnRxuzSDw