DAY 9 Tafraout to Agadir
07 December 2005
I got up at dawn to take a look around the surrounding hills to search for wildlife, particularly hoping to find reptiles warming themselves in the dawn sunshine. After rousing the porter sleeping in reception to unlock the door I walked out of town by a new route. Even this ungodly hour someone tried to get me into a carpet shop. I clambered around on the rocks, seeing birds, a goat herd with his flock, and a pack of domestic dogs roaming the hills but no reptiles.
When I got back to the hotel Olly and Andy had already breakfasted, so they took a wander in town whist I had something to eat. They ran into Houssine again, nice man though he was, he apparently wasn't immune from starting the hard sell with a few trinkets.
Hill outside Tafraout. Enlarge image
Goatherder with herd. Enlarge image
Osprey, Souss-Massa national park. Enlarge image
Osprey, Souss-Massa national park. Enlarge image
We packed up and hit the road heading toward Agadir via Tiznit, although we decided against stopping to save some time. For lunch we pulled off the highway along a dirt track and sat under the shade of palm. The ground was littered with sun-bleached snail shells. The snails themselves could occasionally be seen on the small bushes dotted around on the otherwise bare earth. We continued northwards travelling parallel to the coast until we reached the Souss river, where we turned off into the Souss-Massa National Park. Almost as soon as we got into the park we saw an Osprey soaring overhead following the path of the river. After parking up the car we started walking along the river towards the coast. I was kicking myself for not having my binoculars which I'd left back in Oxford when packing at 2am after a night out, before travelling north to my parent’s house. Along the path we met a guide that I was keen to take on just to get the use of some binoculars. The river was crowded with coots, gulls, cormorants, herons, gulls, little egrets and spoonbills.
Another guide came along the path, and offered to take me back to the car so that we could drive around to the coast to meet the others, stopping look for bald ibis, for which the park is famous, along the way. This guide, who spoke virtually no English, and I headed back to the car cross-country, flushing some Barbary partridges on the way. They are somewhat underwhelming as they look so similar to the red-legged partridges that have been introduced to Britain. I asked the guide about nightjars by pointing to their picture in my field guide. So, instead of going to look for ibis we drove the car a short distance up a dirt track and got out to look around the scrub for nightjars and also a type of shrike called the black crowned tchagra. After half an hour of fast marching around we had seen neither, and so got back into the car to drive to a village close against the coast. We wandered out into the scrub just above the beach, and came across a falcon perched in a bush, and then a little owl which allowed a close approach. There were many great grey shrikes around on the bushes, and then the guide excitedly pointed out a Tchagra which was flitting in and between bushes, and searching the ground around them for food. By now it was time to meet up with the others who were waiting at the first guide’s home. In his small (bed)room he made some café au lait and scrambled eggs on a burner directly attached to the gas bottle. Night was beginning to fall as we headed out of the park, eventually escaping after I initially took a wrong turn out of the village ending up off the dirt track in the scrub.
Little owl. Enlarge image
Little owl. Enlarge image
Black Crowned Tchagra. Enlarge image
Driving into Agadir we managed to miss the town centre and end up in a slum area, though a swift U-turn got us back on course to find our chosen hotel, Canaria. We dropped off our things and headed out for the night. Agadir, which apparently means fortified grain store, is a new town as the old town was destroyed in an earthquake. It is more of a tourist resort than a ‘real’ Moroccan town, and as a consequence has a more liberal feel. And therefore was a good opportunity to go for some drinks. Walking through the streets we were rapidly intercepted by a limpet by the name of Hassan who wanted to show us around. We told him that we were just going for dinner, hoping that would throw him off, but he just invited himself. So, instead we decided to go to bar hoping that he didn’t drink, but this also proved to be no barrier. We ended up being led to a bar called The Pub, apparently an Irish bar but it showed little evidence of it, heretically not even serving Guinness. After buying Hassan a beer we drank ours as fast as possible, and told him it was nice to meet him but that we had to leave now.
We walked out to the beach front which was lined with restaurants catering for tourists. In the distance Arabic writing was glowing, looking as though projected onto some kind of building - this turned out to be an illusion. In the daylight we found that the writing was actually made with lights on a nearby hillside, though I still don’t know what it said. For dinner we ended up in one of the beach front restaurants serving pizzas. When they arrived I was surprised to find that they were excellent. The night was finished by returning to The Pub for a couple more beers.
