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Published: February 21st 2008
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Hotel Atlas was one of our more expensive choices for Morocco, but the promise of a "fantastic spread" for breakfast swayed the decision. Hah ! They brought out an omelette with chicken in even though I said I was vegetarian. We did get a nice pancakey thing, but it was burnt and cold, and the basket of bread was stale. Once we had finished we asked when the next bus to Tiznit was and he said in ten minutes. We dashed to the stop only to find we had missed it. A grand taxi was waiting with three other passengers who had obviously just missed the bus. We thought we were going to be lucky and just have the backseat for three of us, but just at the last minute another person arrived and we were back to pretending to be sardines.
The Gare Routiere is pretty far from the bus station in Tiznit, so that coupled with the gale force winds helped our decision to jump into a petit taxi.
The bus station was not only completely empty, but housed in a building which can only be described as a rickety old barn. The strong winds didn't help
appearances as a dusty cyclone (originally I wrote Cyclops, whoops!) was taking place just outside. We knocked on the window of a coach and a guy surfaced for long enough for us to discover the bus didn't leave till two and for me to persuade him to let us leave our backpacks.
We nipped into a café opposite the station for drink and a two and a half hour wait. Our joy at finding a Barcelona game on TV was short lived as we quickly realised that every single one of Morocco's flies was sheltering from the wind in the same Café. It was fairly entertaining watching the camper vans and scooters with two or more people struggling to move into the wind, especially with the dirt that was blowing at them.
We found an internet café around the corner which was quiet, fly free and nice and cool. We managed to waste two hours there easily.
The bus to Tafraoute was slightly longer than we had anticipated and seemed to take forever. We got into the general area before sunset and we passed through some beautiful villages which were surrounded by the mountains. Each one fitted
the description of Tafraoute but we just kept on driving through them until we arrived at the least picturesque of them all.
We arrived in Taroudannt just as the call to prayer was sounded, so when we walked into the reception of Hotel Salama the receptionist was mid prayer. We spotted the price list (252dh) and decided to nip and look at another hotel. (We know how long prayer can last.) The second hotel was ok with us and we nearly took it until I remembered to check whether they had a European toilet; they didn't. Hotel Saadien has a beautiful lobby and our room does have a shower and TV so we decided to pay higher than usual for one night.
We were excited to find that we had BBC World; however the sound on it didn't work. Nevertheless, we managed to discover the football results and see the Boro score. As soon as the sports section finished on the news, Rob dragged me out to eat as he was apparently starved from our day of traveling.
There wasn't an abundance of places to eat so we opted for the one with locals inside. When we were in Eastern Europe, we picked restaurants by looking at how many locals were eating there, and what their meals looked like. It is impossible to do that in Morocco because locals only drink tea and coffee in the evenings; it's rare we see them eating in restaurants. We now consider ourselves connoisseurs of tagines because of the sheer amount we have eaten. This one was not only terrible, but about as big as a saucer. The best pudding on the set menu wasn’t available and when we frowned he offered us a crème caramel instead, this coupled with tea la menthe was quite nice.
We decided to make use of our expensive hotel room and return to it for the evening. I enjoyed a nice almost hot shower, and then we both watched a terrible film in English. We even had a heater in our room, so we didn't have to huddle under the covers for warmth. I think we dropped off watching a French film that had been dubbed into English, and had Arabic subtitles.
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Irene Shirazi
non-member comment
the backpacker in us all
Hi Stob-thanks for your blogs - bringing out the traveller that lurks in some of us but is hidden by the daily necessity of earning to live. St..f that - as I read more of your adventures and travel to places, there is a slowly growing and steadily more irresitable urge to don the backpack and set off in search of new and wonderful( or not!) places and people. It´s scary but attractive - I´ll tell H it´s your fault when he comes home from work to find we are on a flight to the depths of Morroco and the Aftas beach! Keep your spirit of adventure within you-never let it go. xxx Irene