Tafarout revisit

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Tafarout was a place we visited twice in 2020 and it still felt that we left too early then we had agendas to follow, this year we have all the time afforded to us to come and stay put. The motorhome parking is at the edge of the village and is an area dotted with Palm Trees and other foliage that the French, mainly, and in there hundreds come to year after year, mainly for January and February. Some have come for as long as the past 20yrs and because of it the town has galvanized itself into a fully functioning tourist town but really without losing any of its charm, even benefiting from it.

The town itself is known as the shoe capital and wandering it's small street's you'll find styles a plenty. Last time we were here we bought and also learnt about the difference styles and significance ie married women wear a different style to unmarried women to show their availability! But the Palmerie parking is another thing altogether it probably supports another 20+ families as everything you can possibly need for a long stay here is available, your essentials, water is delivered by bowzer your washing is taken away and returned clean and pressed and with the early morning cry of 'Bread, Bread, patisserie' which in the afternoon becomes 'Bread, Bread, macarons' (which we can confirm are pretty good) young boys bring crepes, eggs and am sure anything else you decided you needed life runs very smoothly and amazingly for the amount of vans very quietly. With the town so close, all your other supplies are easily available.

So it was with some pleasure that the handbrake was applied for what would end up being a two week stay! We also meet Phil and Izzy who go under the banner of 'The Gap Decaders' I have been following them for some time through FB and YouTube as they also were in Turkey last year around the same time as us! Izzy said come over and say Hi which we did and luckily for us they turned out to be great company and we shared stories, ate together and just enjoyed some time relaying travel stories. The temperatures when we were there got up into the high 20's so we decide to take to a Hotel/Camping just north in Ammelne for 5 nights to enjoy the Pool and access to washing machine. Prior to reaching there we take the short drive to the 'Les Bleu Roches' just outside the town. Painted in 1984 by Belgian Artist Jean Verame in memory of his late wife, and assisted by the local fire department 18 tons of granite were painted Blue, Pink, Yellow and Black. In 2020 we cycled, well more like pushed our bikes here, getting the inevitable puncture en route and enjoying this landscape, back then they had been freshly painted. It's a bit of a Marmite thing you either love them or hate them. Tafarout is nestled in the gorgeous Ameln Valley and is surrounded on all sides by red granite mountains, and these painted granite stones help define what really is an incredible landscape. We enjoy just being part of it and walking through it, we take a more serious hike with Phil and Izzy into the valley and following the riverbed only to be thwarted when the sheer sides of the pinched gorge become too much for us girls, the boys however, Phil a complete action man and Graeme lesser so decide to continue and end up with Graeme having to submerge himself in some dubious water ponds while Phil takes to the slippery slopes like a mountain goat! Us girls safely find our way to the road, enjoy an orange juice at a Hotel and then a car journey back to Tafarout in a young man's car generously (the poor driver had no option) waived down by the local gendarme. Turns out he works in a bank in Casablanca and his family live here and he is on his holidays, and making his way into town for a coffee, we offer to buy but he refuses! We arrive back at the camping area and share a pizza made in a villager's house and dropped off here for us to enjoy and it's an early night as we've not walked that far for a while!

Another enjoyable walk is to a village where Mohammed has turned his father's old house into a Berber museum. It's a lovely walk through the local fields, which afford us some shade and shows us the green fields of crops being grown by the surrounding houses and we stumble upon the communal washing area (no washing machines here girls) where I imagine the local gossip is discussed whilst the clothes get scrubbed clean. The house is as authentic as we could have hoped for and it starts with a tour from the bottom and of course where the animals were kept and we are shown the tools that would, am sure are still in use in many villages of Morocco. The middle floor is the living area of the family with an ingenious feature of a hole in the floor to drop your kitchen waste straight down for the animals to consume. The top floor room and accessed straight from the street is the entertainment area and where only guest's would be welcomed, and it's beautiful with carpets and cushions adorning the room, we take tea and a biscuit too hard until dipped into the tea. And Mohammed gives us a short rendition of some Berber music. This lifestyle like so many others is changing and we feel thankful to have been given the option to see behind the door of this traditional lifestyle.

We enjoy on our last night with Phil and Izzy with her great chicken Byriani, some wine, well maybe a little to much! And know our paths will cross sometime, somewhere. Our departure from here again comes too early and we could have had enjoyed more time here but it is emptying out and by the time we also move off we think there are maybe only 100 vans here and as such it's feel changes. The reality is we are travellers by heart so need to keep moving, as you never really know what you'll find just along the road to tempt you. Oh and that Almond Festival nothing really to report, bit of a damp squid!

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