The Painted Rocks

I have never much liked Tafroute. It is not a real town in that it did not exist until the French and their Foreign Legion decided to make it an "administrative centre" for the surrounding villages and the Anti-Atlas. So it is just a nouvelle ville without a medina but quite a few hotels and a souk. I have always found it soulless and never stayed long, but Justin Adams sings about it on "Desert Road", and the guidebooks rhapsodise so we thought we'd give it another go. I realised that what is nice and I do like is the surrounding area, so it seems that what people like is not the town itself, as with Taroudant or Fes but the hinterland, and once I understood that it really is quite nice. 

Perhaps its most famous attraction is the painted rocks. These were spray painted by a Belgian artist,Jean Verame,  in 1984. They had faded badly and we had never ventured out. Since we were last there they had been re-painted and the piste to see them improved so off we went.

To understand them you need to understand the landscape which is arid semi-desert between the valley walls of the red anti-atlas. The valley floor is studded with huge boulders scattered about. 

Some of those boulders have been sprayed  pink or blue, and the scale is the key here as they are each about 10m high.. I think they have been designed to be seen from a distance in the landscape rather than close up and as the re-painting has brought out the graffiti artists I think this is where you best see the artists intention. When they were re-painted it  was as part of a project that also painted some rocks in part  of Arizona which has a similar landscape. Maybe I'll get to see them some time.