Sidi Rabat and the Oued Massa Nature Reserve

Zagan the motorhome has an unrestricted (ignoring a few electricity pylons off to one side) panoramic view of the Atlantic. We’re set up, and a couple of hundred meters back, from the ocean, on a ledge of land alongside Hotel La Dune, in the tiny village of Sidi R’Bat (also written as Sidi Rabat), an hour south of Agadir (N30.086328, W9.663707). This is a beautifully remote and unspoiled part of the world, which we’d never have come across but for a great tip from French blog readers Daniel and Chon; thanks again guys. It costs 40Dh a night to stay here (about €4), which includes hot showers, and you can empty your cassette if needs be, but there is no electricity or shade.

La Dune! Good mobile internet connection here, thanks to the massive telecoms mast installed in the hotel grounds!

After a few days on busy campsites, this place is a breath of fresh air

La Dune’s logo includes the outline of a Bald Ibis, a critically endangered bird which resides in the Oued Massa nature reserve we’re sat in

Dunes by the Massa River

Leaving any campsite in Morocco always involves, for me, a small amount of mentally leaning into the wind. Although the quality of the road surfaces here easily surpasses many countries in eastern Europe, the way in which people, animals and various forms of vehicle use them is, simply put, a wonder they’re still in one piece. Leaving Terre d’Ocean was no different, my nerves were on edge.

A quick detour if I may. I’ve long pondered just what it is makes me, me. My view is my personality, my values and beliefs, are all constructed from a combination of things which have happened both in my lifetime and, with gradually reducing significance, a myriad of events which took place before I was born. How so? Well, I’m fairly certain I feel some small amount of pride in England’s ability to defend itself in the Battle of Britain, for example. Something I had nothing to do with, but nevertheless occupies a tiny slither of my persona. Uncountable numbers of such events and ideas eventually came together to form what I know as ‘me’, and the vast majority of them took place before I even existed, and were therefore out of my control. This is what I think of as ‘life after death’, in a sense.

Back on-topic, the previous paragraph’s high in my mind as I try to work out Morocco. After each drive the four of us sit down and chat through some of the things which happened on the route. Coming to La Dune involved driving through Agadir, a fairly lengthy endurance test involving some miles of hazard avoidance, so we had plenty to talk about. Ju and I drove into the city to try and get into a Carrefour supermarket, as Ju prefers them to the locally-owned soulless Marjane. We found the place OK, but the shop’s car park was full, so we drove into a guarded parking spot on the road alongside. The guardian appears, sporting the usual high vis jacket, and I ask him how much to park. Air is sucked though teeth: we were across two spaces (this is Africa, people park like they’ve just died in the driving seat for god’s sake). OK, I reversed out and back in, squeezing into a single space. How much, I ask again? The guardian asked if we wanted to pay before or after we’d shopped. Before. We’ve learned the hard way to get prices up front here. He looked at me, weighing me up. 50 dirhams. I nearly coughed my teeth out. One dirham seemed closer to the going rate. Maybe 5. But €5 to park up for an hour, in this dump of a city? Nous partons, we’re leaving. I gave him a begrudged thumbs-up, and we edged our way through the city to Marjane, trying to work out where the outrageous price had come from? Probably the apex of a pyramid of cultural experiences the guardian, and his ancestors, have had, and which I can’t hope to fathom.

Blood(?) flowing from the back of a lorry as we entered Agadir

We had considered stopping in Agadir and having a look at the place. It has a reputation of not being worth visiting, being some sort of Frankenstein mixture of Morocco and Europe, the worst of both worlds. Same goes for Benidorm though, and Gibraltar, and we enjoyed both of them. There was a Tui cruise ship in port as we passed by, and the sight of fresh tourists being bussed in, wearing short skirts and clutching fistfuls of dirhams, would have been something to see. Driving through the place, all I wanted to do was drive out of it. The worst of it is the people, how close we come to inadvertently hurting someone. Some of them will just walk into the road, without a care for impending death in the form of an approaching multi-tonne white box. One guy almost lost his head on Phil’s wing mirror. One guy almost rammed his bicycle wheel, possibly quickly followed by his leg, under the front of our van. Zebra crossings here require the intervention of a deity to cross in one piece, and some folks must feel they have the full attention of said deity as they stride into the metallic jaws of doom. It’s nuts. Why these guys have seemingly no road sense is again no doubt the culmination of another set of cultural norms formed through endless experience into the past: everyone expects people to walk into the road, and they’re ready for them (not that ready though, Morocco has six times the road death rate as the UK).

We’ve seen more radar traps, but no-one seems to be stopping daft overloaded trucks, helmetless riders, folks driving the wrong way or suicidal taxis

Agadir port. Not pretty

In the end we found the Marjane, pulling into a huge car park alongside a pack of other motorhomes, and stocking up on items which aren’t easy to get hold of away from the cities. Our route from here on should take us around the south and east of Morocco’s mountain ranges, and should see us pass through smaller towns and villages. No more Marjanes for a while, unless some have been built in the past 5 years. Jules and Phil both later relayed stories of folks just pushing their way to the front of queues, another cultural no-no for us, and one which we find nigh-on impossible to fathom. As we chatted about it we realised the same queue jumping takes place on the road too, where you can find yourself sat at the lights, when alongside you, on the wrong side of the road, one of the small in-town taxis pulls up, overtaking you just before the lights go green.

Mainly motorhomes at Marjane Agadir

Out of Agadir the towns and sporadic, poor quality development eventually petered out, leaving us among scrub. Off the N1, which had amused us with signs saying ‘1236km to Dakhla’, the road was rumbling but good quality tarmac. Wide enough for two vehicles to pass, though we didn’t see any, just sheep grazing alongside round tents. At one point the road entered a town and in some sort of Blazing Saddles surrealism flipped into a perfect four carriageway road, devoid of all vehicles, built ready for a sudden influx of traffic which I hope will never come. At the village of Sidi R’Bat, the tarmac ended and we rolled cautiously the last few hundred meters through the concrete buildings and onto this patch of land.

Blocks being made at the side of the road

The name of the manager here remains something of a mystery. We asked him, and it sounded like ‘Lesson’, so that’s what I’ll have to go with, as he was more pre-occupied with attempting to fleece us of alcohol than with pleasantries. Phil took the brunt of it, fending off Lesson’s request for whiskey with a query: “doesn’t your god mean you can’t drink?”. Lesson wasn’t letting a mere mention of religion put him off-track “I have no god, I am a free man, what about wine, what wine have you got?”. To which Phil delivered apparently the winning blow. “We have no wine, we are athletes, we ran the Marrakesh half marathon and we have the T shirt to prove it”. “Ah”, says Lesson, sensing he’s going to have to get his booze elsewhere after also failing to get at any of our Spanish boxes, “what about this T shirt, you give it to me?”. Jesus, they’re as relentless as the ocean sometimes, this was all after a couple of attempts to sell us guided tours of the nature park.

Fishermen’s lodges built into the rock face below us

Phil went caveman, finding the doorless ones were being used as toilets…

Nice re-use of tyres for steps at one of the fishermen’s caves

We ate last night in the hotel restaurant, a marquee made out inside like a Berber tent. For 70 Dh each we munched a delicious fish tagine (€7), supped water while the French table next to us drank their own wine (we are athletes, after all), and ended up with some mint tea. Like much of Morocco, no prices are listed anywhere for anything, how could they be since they vary with the buyer’s ability to pay (another ongoing cultural confusion for us)? The price of the tea was dropped from 30Dh to 20Dh in an instant, as Lesson looked at Phil’s face and determined maybe he’d charged too much. We’re talking about a few euros here and there, but it’s the enormity of the friction which counts: two dissimilar cultures rubbing up against each other, generating emotional heat as we continue to try and find common ground.

Sidi R’Bat

This morning (after a couple of glasses of wine in the van, ha!), we’ve run in the neighbouring nature park, and taken a beautifully hot and endless shower in the hotel’s facilities. Phil’s been out birdwatching and the sun’s rising high in the sky. Time to stop sitting in front of a laptop and go get some warmth folks.

Ju alongside the beautifully clean Oued Massa

Birds by the Massa Estuary

Unknown plants on the sandy banks of the Massa

Cheers, Jay