Burning the Inheritance

On Monday May 29^th, still in Essaouira Morocco, we spent the morning getting organized and dealing with some odd tasks, and checking out of our house at the last possible moment.  The reason for this was somewhat strategic as we were on our way to the Essaouira Airport to rent a car and wanted to start the rental as late as possible in order to give ourselves as much time as possible on the day we would need to return it.  Fatima our Airbnb host representative met us at the house, again bringing a porter to help deal with our ever fatter and heavier luggage and also arranged to have a taxi waiting to take us to the airport.  Great service!

Our taxi driver took us to the car rental office in the airport and, pretty shortly thereafter, we were loading our bags into a relatively new and kind of clean Kia Picanto.  We pulled out of the airport with a lot of anticipation and expectations as, for the next seven days we would be driving south down National Highway No. 1 along the Moroccan Atlantic coast, through the countryside and a number of small cities and towns.  It was impossible for us to not compare this drive with the one we’ve taken a couple of times up and down the California, Oregon, and Washington coasts and we really hoped to find it as amazing and beautiful as that drive.  While we generally try to use public transport for cost reasons, there really didn’t seem to be any way to really experience this route the way we wanted to without renting a car, so we did.

Our destination on this first day of driving was a very small town called Taghazout, a drive of about 2-1/2 hours “under normal driving conditions” (which, we have since decided, don’t actually exist here).  We made our way to National Highway No. 1 only to discover that it is currently being reconstructed and, while having a real divided highway will certainly be great in the future, it made for some pretty slow going for a bit. 

Beyond the suburbs of Essaouira, the road gradually climbs into the surrounding hills and then opens onto a wide valley of rolling hills between mountains and (presumably, as you can no longer see it) the ocean.   Like what we saw between Marrakesh and Essaouira, the country is harsh, dry and rocky, but it is not barren, being sparsely populated with extraordinarily hard and prickly plants and trees, and small communities and towns scattered everywhere along the way.  Harsh, but very beautiful in its own way.

Eventually the road turns back to the west and, as you make your way through the hills you begin to catch glimpses here and there of the ocean you knew was there all along.  Almost as a tease, the road follows the ocean from a distance along high bluffs, occasionally turning away in a long switch-back through a river valley before finally emerging again.  Near the point where the road came out of the hills and finally met the coast, we found a seaside restaurant on a wide beach near a place called Tamri and stopped for a delicious lunch of fresh seafood before continuing along the coast for the last 30 kilometers to Taghazout. 

For the most part, the coast here sits well above the ocean with rocky outcroppings and cliffs, but here and there, we saw beaches below the cliffs and, off the coast at some beaches, some formidable looking waves.  As we approached Taghazout, we encountered more road construction where, unbeknownst to Google, the main road into town was being replaced.  We managed to find the alternate route into town where Google directed us to drive down some roads which really didn’t look like roads but were assured by some locals that it was OK.  (We later discovered that all the streets, sidewalks, and public stairs on the ocean side of the town’s main drag are in the process of being reconstructed and repaved!)  We eventually dead-ended at the beach, parked, and hauled our luggage along a pedestrian walkway which was not under construction and which led us to World of Waves, the place we were staying for the next 3 days.

Oh, did I mention that Tahazout, is considered a bit of a surfer’s mecca?  Well, it is, but that wasn’t what drew us here.  We had fixed the start of our trip down the Moroccan Atlantic cost at Essaouira and the finish at a place called Sidi Ifni (which we’ll get to in a later installment).  When we looked at various places between the two for an intermediate stop we found Taghazout and an Airbnb hotel/restaurant there called World of Waves (or WOW as they tend to refer to it) which featured, among other amenities, on-site yoga.  More about yoga here later but, needless to say, this was an easy sell to Colleen.

As it turns out, Taghazout is actually a pretty interesting place.  It is a very small Berber town (only about 8,000 year-round residents) which draws surfers and other tourists from around the world, with, as we saw in our own Airbnb hotel, quite a few digital nomads among them.  (Taghazout was reportedly ranked as one of the top 10 places in the world for digital nomads but that seems to be a stretch given that there is not a single ATM in town.)  In any case, the thing that makes Taghazout seem a bit different and a bit special is it’s appearance that, despite the surfers and tourists, many aspects of life here continue in much the same way they did before there were tourists. 

This became evident to us on our first morning there when we were woken at the crack of dawn by the sound of fishing boats being carried down the beach to the water slung below a large motorized wheeled vehicle.  (I should note that, whenever possible, we prefer to sleep with the windows open versus air conditioning and, up until that moment had really been enjoying the sound of the surf just below our windows.)  Once in the surf, each boat turned seaward and scattered in groups of varying sizes, presumably seeking out the best spots to catch fish.  Around noon the process reversed itself with most of the boats back on the beach by early afternoon, and we saw the entire process replicate itself over the three days we were there.  In the afternoons, some of the fisherman gathered in the shade above the beach and, as near as we could tell, swapped fishing stories the same way fisherman everywhere do.

It was pretty intriguing to see that at least this part of the town’s traditional life seemed to continue unhindered and unaffected by tourism and to see the two coexist in apparent harmony. Most of the travelers we met and interacted with in Taghazout seemed to be pretty respectful of the locals and I think everyone actually kind of loved the fact that they went about their business despite the fact that we were all there.

We quickly settled into a nice routine of yoga and workouts in the morning followed by a really good breakfast (included in our World of Waves package!), a couple of hours on the beach, then back to WOW for a maybe a late lunch, coffee, or cocktail.  In the afternoon, maybe a bit of work (and maybe a second yoga session for Colleen!), then dinner followed by some reading or a movie, and then to bed with the sound of the surf as background. 

WOW was a really nice, really comfortable place with great staff and we actually found it to be a bit decadent compared to what we has kind of become the norm for us in our travels.  Their restaurant was actually one of the better more popular ones in town and we could get food and drink delivered to the private hotel terrace or even our room! (Uber decadent for us!)

Yoga in Taghazout

Yoga has been hard to come by in this country of Morocco.  One of the reasons why we came to Taghazout in the first place was because it was described as a surf and yoga hot spot, and they did not disappoint.  I was fortunate to have several options and I took full advantage, often having two yoga classes per day.  I found a lovely morning rooftop yoga class at Amayour Surf and Yoga Hostel.  The yogi was a young woman from Siberia, who spoke 7 languages and was spending her time traveling around the world teaching yoga.  Yoga class where we were staying at the World of Waves was held in the late afternoon on the patio overlooking the ocean.  That yogi was also a young woman living just outside of Taghazout, where she enjoyed the quiet, with fewer tourists.  All of the yoga that I enjoyed was straight up energetic Vinyasa, which was just lovely.  

So, in Taghazout we settled into that nice rhythm and didn’t feel the need to wander very far. (One of the benefits of not having a kitchen is not having to grocery shop.)  We did take a stroll after dinner one night and spent a little time in a ceramics shop which resulted in the purchase of some bowls which we will be shipping home from Tangier along with the brass light fixture and spoons we picked up in Marrakesh along with God knows what else we may acquire between here and there.  On Wednesday May 31^st, our last night in Taghazout, we had dinner out at a place just up the hill from WOW called Favela, which looked to have (you guessed it) a nice rooftop restaurant with great views.  The restaurant was very nice, the food was very good (I had some incredibly fresh and tender squid), and the view was spectacular.

We came to Taghazout looking for a bit more luxury than what we expected to see in most of Morocco and were not disappointed.  It was a nice relaxing stay before we ventured further south and further off the beaten path to a place called Sidi Ifni.