{"id":26410,"date":"2017-02-27T17:40:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T17:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=26410"},"modified":"2021-06-14T16:51:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T15:51:51","slug":"anti-altas-tafraout-morocco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/anti-altas-tafraout-morocco\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Anti Atlas, Tafraout, Morocco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zagan the motorhome’s casting a shadow. We’re under a Moroccan sun 1053m high in the Anti Atlas mountains, just outside the Berber town of Tafraout. There are three campsites here, but they’re all small, walled-in and looked packed out when we arrived, so we opted for the huge mountain-backed municipal camping area, along with maybe 200 other motorhomes (N29.723201, W8.985595<\/a>). It costs only \u20ac1 a night, in an epic arena of orange, boulder-clad mountains, but the low price comes at a cost – see below.<\/p>\n

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The incredible view of Tafraout’s hills from our Hymer’s windscreen<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dawn in the municipal camping area at Tafraout, Morocco<\/p><\/div>\n

…rewind back to Bouizakaren (the spelling of Moroccan place names in English varies by the way – a casualty of the imprecise way of transferring names between Arabic, Berber and Latin alphabets). A delicious in-van tagine didn’t sway my decision in any way to hand over an old (very old, worthless in the UK) iPhone and iPad to Lahcen. From speaking with him and his son, getting opaque stories of ‘difficulties’ he’d faced, looking at the building work he’d done with his small, rough hands, and just weighing the guy up, I was convinced he was a great recipient. After paying, I gave them to him, and he was genuinely overjoyed, in a quiet way, telling us how important they were to him. I said he could sell them if he wanted, but he told us they could get onto the Internet in the town, and he would keep them. Old tech always seems to go down well in Morocco, even stuff which no-one would touch back home, and I felt very happy at any small contribution we could make to his enterprise and his family.<\/p>\n

Ju’d also dropped the bombshell that she, inspired by our friend Ann, would be doing today’s drive up to Tiznit, her first on the African continent! Yeah baby! With my feet up, and hardly a white knuckle in sight, we set off along the 500m of piste back towards the N1, taking a photos and having a laugh.<\/p>\n

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Back onto tarmac, it quickly became very clear why the lorry lights we’d seen training their way across the darkness last night were going so slowly; we were immediately on a winding mountain road. Hazard avoidance time! Overtaking vans, oncoming lorries and coaches, a truck which had spilled its load of fruit and JCBs sat on the inside of the road hammering away at rock to widen it, Ju handled the lot beautifully, and we cruised the couple of hours north, this time using the out-of-town Camping Tazerzite a few miles south of Tiznit (N29.643300, W9.72252).<\/p>\n

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Camping Tazerzite<\/p><\/div>\n

Tazerzite was empty compared with the in-town (or close to town) Tiznit sites, maybe only 30 or 40 French motorhomes compared with the hundred or so in the other two sites we saw. With huge pitches, separated by mature hedges buzzing with bees, a spotless (best yet!) shower block and the protection of a giant walled-in compound, it did the job for us as an overnight stop. If we were staying much longer though, I’d be wanting a second form of transport like the other outfits were carrying on trailers – quad bikes, mopeds, cars, mokes, motorbikes – rigs over 10 metres long are (almost) the norm in some places.<\/p>\n

Back in our usual positions in the cab, from Tiznit we headed up to Tafraout on the R104, reputed to be one of the most scenic routes in all of Morocco, and it lived up to the reputation. Leaving the cloud behind as we climbed, the hills were exposed, naked stone dotted with spaced-out trees and shaded by the parallel lines of old, hand cut terraces. Maps.me predicted a 2 hour drive and even on roads almost completely empty of traffic we still took closer to 3 hours, taking into account a crafty nus-nus (milky coffee), tea and cake stop at the Hotel Kerdous, just shy of the Col de Kerdous.<\/p>\n