Little Marrakech
Trip Start
Oct 11, 2009
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101
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Trip End
Mar 10, 2010
Taroudannt, Morocco
Friday, January 1, 2010
Early morning surf before we headed inland 60km to a campsite called Le Jardins. The campsite is primarily an organic farm supplying Courgettes, Mandarins and beans to European supermarkets. It had a handful of sites for campervans but the facilities were clean and new. We also had use of the owners private garden and pool.
20km further inland was the other reason for this sojourn inland - Taroudannt. A walled city with vibrant markets of Marrakesh but without the tourists or from the locals. Infact we only saw a handful of westerners there.
We had a walk through the souqs until we came to the main square where we stopped in a restaurant for an early Tarjine and Cous cous dinner. The food was good and the people watching was even better.
2nd Taroudannt to Sidi Wassay
A lovely morning, although a little fresh compared to what we had gotten used to as we were inland and had views of the snow capped Atlas Mountains. Hayden true to his word went for a run around the farm and received several jolly bonjours from the workers who were already out picking the manadrins. Back in Tarourdannt we enjoyed a morning coffee and pain a chocolates – yum. We wanted to walk around the walls and thought we would have been able to climb up and walk around them which would have given us a fantastic view of the town. Unfortunately the walls had deteriorated and so we could only get a view from up on the main gate. Never mind, we would check out the souqs again as Hayden and Gill wanted to buy a few more things. After some hard bargaining and friendly banter and all of us leaving one leather shop and about to enter another before being called back to the original shop and them agreeing with our final price, Gill bought some nice leather sandals and a leather belt and Hayden a leather poof.
All shopped out it was time for a quick burger lunch and head back to the coast. We found a new road that took us back towards Agadir (another one that was not on our map) in half the time. We headed for the Souss Mass National Park hoping to see some birdlife and do a few walks.
On the way we took a detour to Tifnite a little fishing village on the headland of a beautiful crescent beach. The village has no running water, no electricity, and the road stops about 1km before the town.
