Tizi n'Test

I just love that sign. The Tizi n' Test is the middle and steepest pass of the 3 main routes through the Atlas from Marrakesh to the south. It is said to start from Taroudant but actually it starts from about 30km east on the route to Ouazazate. This 30 km is in the Sousse valley and pancake flat and then you get to this sign  and from there, as the sign says, it is 120 km of hairpin bends and dizzying ascent.
The southern side of the mountains are short and steep but once over the top the Marrakesh side is slower and longer with more villages off. It is the pass by which R Cunningham Greene sought to reach Taroudant as recounted in his 1898 book "A Journey in Morocco". He did not get there being captured by a Goundafi Caid and held prisoner at Talaat n' Yacoub. The kasbah there can still be visited although it is off the main route. Had he succeeded Southern Morocco may have spent the first half of the 20th century under British rather than French control.
The current road was blasted through by French engineers between1926 and 1932. There is a marker stone at the col recording this feat of civil engineering. The road has only been metalled for the past few decades and is only one and a half vehicle wide. To pass oncoming traffic it is necessary for one set of wheels to go onto the piste verges. Locals and Grand Taxis play "chicken" refusing to cede their road. Lorries and coaches are less cavalier but given that the drops from the hairpins are precipitous any encounter with oncoming traffic can be scary. The "Rough Guide" decribes the descent to Taroudnat as "hideously dramatic" which just about sums it up.
That having been said we drive up there quite frequently just for the views. Not in winter when it will be closed for days at a time by snow (the col is about 7000ft above sea level) and not during rain when I don't really trust the boulders not to erode out of the sides or the "streams" not to sweep the road away under but after when the damage is visible and the streams still waterfalls.
On the Taroudant side it seems that every hairpin has its cafe or mineral shop. They are of a muchness, necessarily so as they are so remote. You watch them as you approach marvelling at how they balance ove the drops. All serve limited food, generally salad and omelettes. Either cooked in a frying pan or "Berber omelette" with the filling cooked in the base of a tajine and the the eggs poured on top and the lid added. My favourite is the Hotel Bellevue just below the summit, (there are a number of Bellevues but this has a VW minibus as a mineral shop opposite) not because of the food or the view but because it has immaculate toilets including a sit-on rather than a squat. 
The Marrekesh side which is longer and slightly less hair-raising passes by Tin Mal and through Ourigane.Just as it joins the main road into town there is a restaurant with swimming pool and a large function room. We turned up one day hot beyond belief and fractious and they seated us in cool shade and served one of the best moroccan meals I've had, simple, lots of salads, couscous, brochettes but excellent.



View from Tizi n' Test



View from Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test







View from Tizi n' Test







View from Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test




Cascade Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test




VW bus as mineral shop Tizi n' Test





Terrace Hotel Bellevue Tizi n'Test




Cascade Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test




Cascade Tizi n' Test




Cascade Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test



View from Tizi n' Test





Coming home on Tizi n' Test




View from Tizi n' Test



Out and about - Tioute

Tioute is about 20 minutes drive from Taroudant. It is coupled with it in the standard day trip from Agadir which allows you a non stop tour round Taroudant Souk and then on to Tioute for lunch in the Kasbah. They will tell you that your vehicle cannot get to the top, which may be true for full-size coaches - certainly turning round would be difficult, but cars and mini-buses can get up no problem. You will be disembarked and then with great jocularity be made to ride up the steep direct route on a donkey; your photo will be taken and sold to you after your "traditional banquet" of moroccan salad, chicken tajine with preserved lemons and olives, and vegetable cous-cous, perhaps with brochettes. I am not sure what happens to the tour parties then whether they are merely allowed a view from the top and to admire the rather splendid but modern tiling or whether they are given a chance to see round the oasis. I suspect the former.

Tioute is  a very pleasant self driven trip though. The oasis is still run by the Caid whose family built the Kasbah and although that is now part restored to house the restaurant he lives in a very nice modern house in the village. As you arrive rhere will be some villager waiting to act as a fauxguide pedalling before you to a suitable parking place. He will take you round the palmery showing you the datepalms, beans, carob and fruit trees and the various vegetable and cereal patches depending on the time of year. There will be children with donkeys should you need one. There is the most wonderful pink jasmine near the restaurant/teahouse which is not aimed at tourists but village festivals and weddings. In the spring the boys will be swimming in the water cisterns but by autumn these will have depleted irrigating the crops
Your guide will explain that the oasis has 11 mosques in the various settlements, necessary in the past so the the muezzin could be heard in all the fields, perhaps tending to obsolete in the days of loudspeakers. He will tell you of Tioute's starring role in Ali Baba, a french film made there in the 1950s, and he will suggest you should eat not in the Kasbah but have a genuine better , cheaper meal in a local house, doubtless his own. There is an artisan shop in the village and a stonecarvers, so you can buy a souveninr of your visit and then go on to eat in the Kasbah, with its immaculate european toilets and wonderful views and your guide will go with you and give you bouganvillea. A trip you should do at least once.
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Modern tiling in the Kasbah resaurant Tioute




The palmery Tioute




View from the Kasbah Toute




The oasis from the Kasbah Tioute



Tioute Kasbah



Tioute Palmery



Tioute Kasbah



Bouganvillea at Tioute Kasbah Restaurant



Tioute Kasbah



Out and about - God, King and Country

As we are in Wales for the summer I thought I would continue the blog not by diarising Taroudant but "guiding " to places round about. The obvious place to start is Agadir the nearest city with the best road links. Built entirely new after the 1960 earthquake it seeks to mimic contempory european resorts. It therefore has an excellent range of non-moroccan restaurants, mostly italien but also indian and chinese and the notorious English Pub which specialises in showing all SKY or main channel english football matches as well as Wimbledon and grand prixs and doubles as the local consulate. There is also an Irish pub , but don't expect Guiness or Murphy's as no-one in Morocco has a license to brew stout.
It's main attraction is the 7 mile beach and there are areas where you can have a lounger and umbrella and cold cokes or icecream fetched you by helpful young men for the princely sum of 20 Dh or £1.60. There are also tennis, golf and riding clubs, mostly towards the south near the Royal Palace and officers mess, presumaby for their benefit as much as the tourists. People do surf on the beach and I spent a pleasant windy afternoon watching a kiteboarder but the main surfer beaches are in the villagesto the north of the town although hotels will organise daytrips to them or quad bike trips south towards the nature reseves.
There are also fixed price shops selling alchohol. Marjane the major supermarket chain selling everything an expatriate frenchman could want, alchohol, patisserie, cheese, charcuterie, icecream. The alchohol is much cheaper than in the tourist bars and the imported food can only be got in these shops but they are fixed price shops and therefor like all fixed price shops slightly more expensive than their moroccan equivalents for comparable products. This perhaps most importantly remembered at Uniprix which specialises in "cut-price" "tourist trash". They do however have a wonderful range of bookmarks to which I am addicted.
The market, every day except monday, is the largest covered market in africa  and has a wide range of produce including imports as well as a "souk" area.
There is quite a nice garden "Jardin de Olhao" celebrating the Portugese town's twinning with the city and containing an interesting little museum in memory of the earhtquake victims and lots of fotos of the old town but all the hotels have nice gardens although the Lawns are of a much coaser grass than the english eqivalent and certainly would not do for croquet. One of the really attractive aspects driving on the dual carriageways to the suburbs, and there is huge development going on with "haut-standing" appartment blocks everywhere particularly near the University campus which grows by the minute, is that the central reservations and verges are irrigated and planted with roses, pelargoniums, bouganvillea, palm, oleander and agaves to create ribbon gardens much as in Bejing.



Agadir beach





Jardin de Olhao, Agadir




Jardin de Olhao, Agadir



The Seamstress

There is an area of the Arab souk containing a couple of score tailors'shops and some related suppliers selling thread, braid, ticking, ribbons, buttons etc. Most have a sewing machine but much of the work is done in the traditional manner by hand whilst sitting cross-legged. Maybe half a dozen of the shops are run by young women and they seem to prefer using machines. I generally try to use one of the women's shops if I want alterations for no better reson than latent feminism. (Which is a reason for eating at stall1 in Marrakesh). The pictures are of the alley where the seamstresses I last used have their shop. It is a bit of a back alley and all the stalls are tailors. It is used by the men opposite for winding thread which they attatch to a loop in the wall at one end;  you can see this in the photo to  the right and the old man sewing in the traditional tailor's croosleg sqat to the right. The garments in the womens'shop are typical of the day to day outer clothes worn by women who adopt arab clothing.



Winding thread in the tailors' alley of the Arab Souk Taroudant







A Stork's View

Confusingly the gate into the Kasbah is not Bab El Kasbah but Bab El Djedid but Bab El Kasbah which is near the Palais Salaam and the Hospital (ie. near the Kasbah rather than into it) is perhaps the most attractive. It is over the Avenue Moulay Rachid by far the widest and most impressive road inside the Medina where caleches queue for trade and you are able to climb onto the ramparts above the gate and see the town from the perspective of the storks which nest in the Kasbah.

Avenue Moulay Rashid from the top of Bab El Kasbah Taroudant



Bab El Kasbah Taroudant from the top





the ramparts from Bab El Kasbah Taroudant




The new 5 a side pitch from Bab El Kasbah Taroudant





A Caleche stand near Ave Mly Rashid Taroudant




The Kasbah from Bab el Kasbah Taroudant



Camels

Chum had a real thing about camels. She seemed to equate camels with the whole Morocco experience. She was estatic when we arrived and on our way into town there was a herd of camels grazing by the bridge. I was not sure how she felt a couple of days later when we visited the tanneries and they seemed to be processing a fresh herd-size batch of camelskins.
chum bought a camel sculpture at the stone carvers and had to be walked away from the stuffed leather camel stall. The highlight of her trip was in Marrakesh when we took her for a camel ride. I kept her away from the butchers, thakfully we were not in Fes where an encouter with a dead camel head on the butcher's stalls in the souk would have been unavoidable.



camel skin await processing at the tannery




Pushme -pullme Marrakesh



and ne'er a drop to drink

The water was off this morning which was ironic given the weather the last 3 days. I couldn't wash up..sob..crocodile tears. Unfortunately it came back on later.
The weather has been  very Welsh. Generally this year precipitation has been high. The talk , with some satisfaction is that this winter the rivers in the Atlas have never run dry. There have been several periods like now of steay indeed stair-rod rain for 3 or 4 days leading to bridges being washed away. There has been fresh snow on the Atlas this weekend. Yesterday the dam was so full they had to release some water to prevent a risk of failure.
We went out to the main bridge to take some photos.The causeway was acting as a dam itself with water like a wide lake upstream and pouring through the sluice.