So we went to Tafraoute, a Berber village in the anti atlas. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! Zweeena! The rocks are crazy. The village is clean. There are CASH POINTS. It's not even a village when you compare it to Taghazout. Which is mildly dissapointing, but o.k. The people are calm, there are not that many tourists.
Before we went, we met up at Aftas for plan de campagne. Because, traveling by bus is cheap, but takes long (7 to 9 hours). How do we find people to join us? One of these nights, playing backgammon, pondering our trip to Tafraoute, a guy with long dreadlocks asked us if he could take the backgammon set from us. We said yeah sure and passed it on. Finally we decided to go just the two of us. We talked about it with many people, just as many people told us it was one of the highlights of Morocco. So we grew more and more enthusiastic and asked everyone for recommended places to stay. Abdullah said he has friends in Tafraoute, they would help us and they could rent us a nice appartment and so on. O.k, sounds good! All set, we thought and booked our tickets for a CTM bus from Agadir to Tafraoute. The day before departure, we met up again to ask Abdullah for his contact in Tafraoute. Turns out he didn't even know the guy's name, and didn't have his phone number. But he's the cousin of a silversmith who runs a shop there and you can rent bicycles with his father. And he speaks perfect Berber. Which is good to know. He drew us a little map of how to get there:
Alas, we went on our endeavor, armored with bus tickets and a hand made map of a village in the mountains.
After about 6 hours on the CTM bus, night falling and not being able to recognize ground floor from sky from mountains anymore, we decided it wasn't the moment to rely on Abdullah's instructions anymore. We had already shortly spoken to a Dutch woman (sic) who lives parttime in Tafraoute working as a volunteer English teacher for Berber women, and feeling very well at ease in Morocco. It seemed a good idea to ask her about a place to stay, and she took us to HOTEL TANGER. Without doubt one of the most charming, cheap and comfortable places I've ever stayed. Only 10 minutes after arrival in Tafraoute, we saw ourselves installed in a nice triple room with a terrace and a separate bathroom. Nice nice nice. Had some tea, took some nighttime pictures. Went to bed.
At around 5 o' clock in the morning there was an un-smooth transition from complete sleep into alarm-state-awake when the muezzin called ALLAH'AKBARRRRR SUL'ALLAH'AKBARRRR through his 3 megaphones around the mosque.
So Tafraoute is a very quiet village (except for prayer time announcements). We've seen few women, but some of them run argan oil shops (women cooperatives are known in Morocco for producing argan oil based cosmetics).
For the rest, PICTURRRES
Oh, zweeeena!!!
And I haven't even elaborated on visiting the old town of Tafraoute, houses of 500 years old pasted into the mountains, surprisingly fresh inside and completely beautiful.
On the day we left, we decided to take a later bus, with the more moroccan (less western than CTM) "Sahara Tours". 10 dirhams cheaper, only stops as far as Inezgane (just before Agadir) tsja, and then we ran into two guys from Taghazout, the one with the long dreadlocks who we passed a backgammon game to when we were planning our trip in Aftas. What are the odds.
Before we went, we met up at Aftas for plan de campagne. Because, traveling by bus is cheap, but takes long (7 to 9 hours). How do we find people to join us? One of these nights, playing backgammon, pondering our trip to Tafraoute, a guy with long dreadlocks asked us if he could take the backgammon set from us. We said yeah sure and passed it on. Finally we decided to go just the two of us. We talked about it with many people, just as many people told us it was one of the highlights of Morocco. So we grew more and more enthusiastic and asked everyone for recommended places to stay. Abdullah said he has friends in Tafraoute, they would help us and they could rent us a nice appartment and so on. O.k, sounds good! All set, we thought and booked our tickets for a CTM bus from Agadir to Tafraoute. The day before departure, we met up again to ask Abdullah for his contact in Tafraoute. Turns out he didn't even know the guy's name, and didn't have his phone number. But he's the cousin of a silversmith who runs a shop there and you can rent bicycles with his father. And he speaks perfect Berber. Which is good to know. He drew us a little map of how to get there:
Alas, we went on our endeavor, armored with bus tickets and a hand made map of a village in the mountains.
After about 6 hours on the CTM bus, night falling and not being able to recognize ground floor from sky from mountains anymore, we decided it wasn't the moment to rely on Abdullah's instructions anymore. We had already shortly spoken to a Dutch woman (sic) who lives parttime in Tafraoute working as a volunteer English teacher for Berber women, and feeling very well at ease in Morocco. It seemed a good idea to ask her about a place to stay, and she took us to HOTEL TANGER. Without doubt one of the most charming, cheap and comfortable places I've ever stayed. Only 10 minutes after arrival in Tafraoute, we saw ourselves installed in a nice triple room with a terrace and a separate bathroom. Nice nice nice. Had some tea, took some nighttime pictures. Went to bed.
At around 5 o' clock in the morning there was an un-smooth transition from complete sleep into alarm-state-awake when the muezzin called ALLAH'AKBARRRRR SUL'ALLAH'AKBARRRR through his 3 megaphones around the mosque.
So Tafraoute is a very quiet village (except for prayer time announcements). We've seen few women, but some of them run argan oil shops (women cooperatives are known in Morocco for producing argan oil based cosmetics).
For the rest, PICTURRRES
Oh, zweeeena!!!
And I haven't even elaborated on visiting the old town of Tafraoute, houses of 500 years old pasted into the mountains, surprisingly fresh inside and completely beautiful.
On the day we left, we decided to take a later bus, with the more moroccan (less western than CTM) "Sahara Tours". 10 dirhams cheaper, only stops as far as Inezgane (just before Agadir) tsja, and then we ran into two guys from Taghazout, the one with the long dreadlocks who we passed a backgammon game to when we were planning our trip in Aftas. What are the odds.
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