Morocco- Taghazout, Paradise Valley, Tifnit

Nicky:  It is another sunny day as we wake and we walk along the beach into Taghazout to buy bread.  We also inquired at a shop about gas.  In the UK/Europe and Morocco if you are using bottled gas you always exchange an empty bottle and receive a full one (not like in NZ where we refill the same bottle).  This is why we had a refillable tank installed so we could use Autogas pumps at petrol stations, however, like Finland, Morroco has no Autogas.  So we had the van fitted for both tank and bottled gas. We have a near new camping gaz brand 907 bottle in the van from the UK, and as the Moroccan ones are very worse for wear we want to buy a Moroccan one and use that for exchanging while in this country.  That way we can keep our nice blue bottle in the van for when we sell.  We inquired at the campsite in El Jadida and they quoted 120 dirhams (11 euros).  We left it as we knew they should be around 60 or 70 dirhams.  A shop in Taghazout quoted us 70 dirhams, so we drove the van down to make sure the thread was right.  Dale connected it all up so we knew it worked before we handed over the money.  We had been on the refillable tank since the nice 907 bottle ran out in El Jadida.

Our destination that day was Camping Aourir, a new and well recommended site we had read about on the internet.  It was our most expensive campsite so far at 100 dirhams a night (8.90 Euros), but also had the best facilities.  We spent the afternoon relaxing, as the campsite is in the middle of nowhere and there is nothing to see nearby which is unfortunate.  We just stayed the one night there, getting washing done, waste water emptied and the van refilled with water.  The campsite is on a road that leads to Paradise Valley.  Unfortunately first we had to return to the main road for petrol, 5km backwards on the worst road we have struck yet.  On arrival at the pumps we saw a boy having two drink bottles filled with petrol. We almost received diesel so some frantic arm movements and saying "sans plomb, sans plomb!" ensued as the van takes unleaded petrol.  All filled up we had to go back past the campsite to reach the valley, in which palm trees grow and water flows in a small stream at the bottom (nice but Paradise is a bit of a stretch :-)).  

We had read that this road is not particularly good due to being narrow, having blind corners and steep drop offs.  The road was quiet, which helped and there were relatively new barriers in several places.  It also hasn't rained in a long time, which was of benefit as the rain can really play havoc with the safety of the road.  The Moroccan taxis don't slow down when coming the other way which is scary when you are on the side of the steep drop offs.  In some areas there were stone cairns to mark the edge of road or to alert you of fragile road surface near the edge.  In one instance rocks in the middle of a bridge were marking exposed reinforcing steel now jutting out like lances ready to impale your vehicle.

We made our way to the waterfall at Immouzer des Ida Outanane.  This waterfall runs dry a lot of the time and only runs when there is plentiful water available.  Otherwise it is used for irrigation further up the river, so it doesn't reach the falls.  We found the car park and were immediately pointed in the direction of the falls by some local Berber men.  One of which took it upon himself to be our unasked for guide.  It was a beautiful area and you can see the impact the water has on the rocks in the waterfall.  There are also plunge pools, according to the guide are about 40 metres deep.  Along the way a man caught us up trying to sell us wooden boxes for "10 dirhams" which i'm sure would have become 100 dirhams had he got one in our hand.  At the plunge pool of the waterfall a man offered Dale some dodgy old blue swimming shorts 'to hire'.  No thanks.  Once back at the van the guide of course wanted a tip.  Fine, at least he hadn't tried to claim a ludicrous fee.  However he was trying to cadge clothes worth say 25 Euro for 20 minutes work.  We had heard beer was better than money so tried offering him a beer (which we since found out is not on) to which replied 'No I am Muslim', so a 10 dirham coin it was (half a days wage for some people), which he then didn't look too happy about.  This experience taught us that next time if we don't want a guide we will make that known, as the payment could have resulted in an argument, as he of course wanted more from us than 10 dirhams (90 Euro cents). Then of course another guys wants 'something for parking', so we got the full Moroccan tourist treatment but at least we had got out without it costing us much.

We made a decision that night that we would stick to the coast south and not go inland to the desert sand dunes.  We want to keep our costs down whilst in Morocco and it would be a big commitment to head inland and also see the coast.  The next day we headed back on another winding and narrow road to the N8 which led us into Agadir.  We stocked up at the supermarket and from there we headed south to the beach at Tifnit.  A small fishing village, where we parked up overlooking the sea and the town.