Wednesday 17th March - Saturday 20th March

Wednesday 17th March

Up early and said or goodbye’s to the Jones and headed off to Tafraoute. This would be a trip of 108km back to Tiznit and then 107km of mountain roads. It was a long drive through twisting uphill roads, though with great views. As we passed through the villages before Tafraoute, the scenery was amazing, red mountains and a feeling as though it was a film set. We arrived in Tafraoute and parked up outside a campsite surrounded by mountains with the sun out.

Thursday 18th March

Woke up to sun and palm trees and the tops of red granite mountains, it was lovely.

Decided to get the bikes off and to go find some stone paintings and carvings in the area. The ride was hot and uphill, but surrounded by red boulder formations and baron land.

After a while we gave up finding the carvings and headed back into town for some shopping.

First though, the biking had made us hungry to try our first Moroccan tagine. After a few times biking around trying to decide on the venue, we settled for a hotel with a Bedouin style tent set up outside. We sat and ate in the tent, it was lovely and the tagine very nice. We would now defiantly have too buy a tagine cooking set.

Now to the shopping, Tafraoute is home to many small stalls of Moroccan style shoemakers. We had a look around many stalls and shops and got taken to see some rugs. We ended up though buying a lantern made from recycled metal, from a stall making amongst other things buckets.

Friday 19th March

In the morning headed back into town, to buy some shoe’s and tagine pots, we didn’t get round to buying yesterday! After, we drove off towards some near by gorges and an Oasis.

After some very steep and pretty much single track mountain roads we ended up driving into a huge red mountain gorge, with palm trees running along in the narrow valley.

We found some parking right in the Gorge, just off the track surrounded by Palm trees and the small river. We paid the guardian 20Dh and this would now be our new home for the night, perfect. Off with the bikes again and further we headed into the Gorges-d’ait-Monsour, as the track wasn’t good enough to drive down.

The bike ride was great, lazily pedalling down a track covered in palm trees and surround by very steep and high red cliffs. Everywhere we turned to look was a stunning view and there were some strange noises around, we think it was the frogs. We ended up sat overlooking a small open valley full of Palm trees, It was a lovely Oasis.

Back at the motorhome, the couple of cars that were there left and we were now alone.

This would be our first night wild camping in Morocco, as the guardian too had gone. We could see no houses, although there were a couple in either direction. Very peaceful spot although a lil spooky at night with the noises!

I am really enjoying the living outdoors life, relaxing in the evening outside with great weather and great scenery. At night in high winds or out the way places, you can feel vulnerable. Although when we wild camped in the UK we also felt that. It’s part of the course I suppose, but worth it for the places you see. The scenery up here in these mountains and down in the gorges was just something special.

Saturday 20th March

Headed up and out of the Gorges, up and down mountain roads back into Tafraoute. From there we kept on along the mountain roads and back to Agadir. The scenery again was amazing, beautiful mountains and flowers in spring.

Back in Agadir and back to the supermarket to stock up, before getting to the campsite we had stayed a few times before, just before dusk.