Winter 2019: Tafraoute

Well we thought it was about time we stopped enjoying ourselves and reported back to our readers!

As we've said before Tafraoute is likely our favourite place in Morocco, maybe because we have happy memories of enjoying time with many other Funsters, the superb weather, the lively and welcoming township – and also because it's CHEAP! Okay, it's guardian parking, that is, rough camping with security and a few facilities thrown in, but at 15 dirhams (about £1.25) a night it's the bargain of the year and many, many motorhomers take advantage of it. There's probably upwards of 300 motorhomes here of all nations, ranging from simple converted vans through to super-liner monsters towing cars, buggies and motorbikes. Then there is a smattering of giant off-road machines, designed for the desert proper, usually German. But the place is so large that, unless you want to live hand-in-glove, like the French seem to insist on, there is plenty of room to be on your own if you wish.

Water is delivered by bowser who you need to keep an eye open for and then wave him down, but he'll deliver as much as you want for 25 dirhams. The toilet cassette emptying facility is primitive and totally inadequate for the number of people here, so you need to pick your time – 5.00 am seems to be good! As for “grey” water, most just water the few stunted trees.

Local tradesmen call round at intervals, the most regular being the bread man who will leave you a baguette or bap in the bag you tie to a door handle and leave 2dh in before you go to bed - he also does absolutely delicious coconut macaroons! Solar panels, bodywork repairs, argon oil, honey, windscreen and wheel covers, floormats – we've met vendors for them all. Local ladies offer a “meals-on-wheels” menu, home-cooked and served in your van, also a laundry service if you wish. Young lads collect used water containers (they get a kick-back for them) and will also run errands – one took our gas bottle for replacement this morning, was back within an hour and was overwhelmed when I told him to keep the change, around £1 which is a lot to them. The gas cost £4 for a 13kg bottle – how much is it in the UK?

The weather has been fabulous, the main reason of course for us coming to Morocco. The sun comes up over the eastern rim – Tafraoute is in a bowl, almost completely encircled by mountains – at around 8.00 am and disappears the opposite side around 6.45 pm. Overnight temperatures drop to a comfortable 12 deg and during the day we've seen as high as 37 deg. Mid-afternoon a strong easterly breeze gets up, enough to cause us to take in the awning, but it remains very warm. But just to ring the changes, this morning it was partially cloudy although it has mostly cleared and is once again quite hot. The solar panel has the batteries recharged by 10.00 am.

We've walked into the town a couple of times, once for some shopping on market day when it gets totally chaotic, and one evening for a meal at an excellent restaurant for the princely sum of £12 for the two of us! There are others which are, shall we say, colourful but are very enjoyable and we'll almost certainly be eating out again. The locals are very friendly and almost without exception very helpful, although they always have an eye to turning an advantage, but also they are not pushy and accept Europeans as a normal part of life – there are quite a lot of us about however......

Our reason for coming a little later this year was to see the 9^th annual Almond Festival and this has been taking place over the last few days, today being the last. During the day there are stalls selling goodies, a bit like a Christmas market we suppose but realistically only up-market versions of stuff you can get every day. A big sound stage has been erected in the main square near the mosque and that has been hosting entertainment for the last three nights – and we mean nights; it was still going when Terry got up at 7.30 am this morning. Unfortunately it was quite loud too and Arabic music sounds very repetitive to us so not to our taste. Never mind, we can at least tick that off our todo list.

Our days have been generally spent relaxing, in and out of the sun so that we're colouring up nicely without getting sunburned. The humidity is very low so the heat is much easier to cope with. We've had a few get-togethers with our Funster friends and more are planned – we've just been told about a planned “farewell lunch” in a local hotel next week. Brenda is getting quite a lot of her sewing done, although the quilt is still slow progress, whilst both of us have got through a good number of books.

We've had a couple of problems with the van, not entirely unexpected given it is now 12 years old with 107,000 miles on the clock, but nothing serious thank goodness. We tried to use the cab air-conditioning on our drive up here from the coast but it wouldn't work; suspect it needs a recharge but we'll need a proper garage for that which we'll look for later. The freshwater pump started to fail so we replaced it with the spare we carry. As previously mentioned the mains electricity element in the fridge failed on our way through Spain but, not being able to get a replacement, we're managing okay on gas, although using a lot more than before. Finally we thought we had a leak after unexpectedly running out of water, but that appears to have been us using more than we had thought when doing some washing, though we'll keep an eye on it.

Strangely we've seen no other Brits other than from MotorhomeFun all the time we've been in Morocco and have come to the conclusion that insurance companies introducing a hefty charge for the obligatory Green Card has deterred many this year. The French however, after a couple of lean years when we heard they'd had the same problem, are back in force, totally overwhelming all other nationalities.

We haven't made any plans about when we intend to move on, or even where although a couple of ideas are being kicked around – this year was always intended as a relaxing break rather than rushing around being tourists. We've not taken many photos either but here are a few more, some taken by our good friend Phil.

Must finish now, my deck chair is calling.......................