Road trips, mountain walks and holidays

After a a few years, we returned to Morocco again and this time our destination was Marrakesh again. Flight to Morocco Marrakech’s location in central Morocco is quite ideal for visiting other places outside the city, but of course staying in the city itself and visiting its market is always exciting. I mentioned the Marrakesh market because we are very keen on using Moroccan spices and take every opportunity to renew our stock with fresh ones. Although this time we flew from London Gatwick Airport and not from Glasgow as previously, we flew with EasyJet again. The reason is quite practical –  the flight times offered by EasyJet are much more convenient than those offered by Ryanair. If you search hard enough and find the best offers, the price differences between airlines are minimal. Another interesting observation – London Gatwick airport costs are lower, so even when flying from Riga to England, we first look to see if AirBaltic offers competitive prices. Unfortunately EasyJet do

This is the next blog about our Morocco trip in 2020 during COVID lockdown. After visiting Agadir, Paradise Valley and Taroudant, we went to Tafraout to spend the rest, or at least the major remaining part, of our trip in Morocco until we get a chance to travel back home. Lockdown in Morocco Although we were in quarantine near Taroudant for two weeks and had a document allowing us to go outside, our arrival was not straight forward at all. Despite all difficulties, we managed to get there and were requested to self-isolate for two weeks again. During our stay in Tafraout, additional measures were introduced in Morocco, for example, mandatory wearing of face masks. I am not sure if curfew was introduced while we were there or before our arrival; in any case, from 10pm until 6am everybody had to stay inside, and police was patrolling in town every night to enforce the rules. It was only around Ramadan when curfew was cancelled and later some less essential shops and market shops started

Painted rocks near Tafraout One of the most exciting attractions near the Moroccan town of Tafraout are Painted rocks. Those are a series of mountain rocks in a large mountain valley painted in different contrasting colours. Initially, rocks were painted in 1984 by the Belgian artist Jean Vérame who also painted rocks in other countries, such as France, Egypt and Chad. Before visiting Painted Rocks, we read several negative reviews on the internet regarding this place. The reason for criticism was the fact that there was not much paint left on the rocks due to natural erosion and animals, especially goats, climbing on rocks. However, we were lucky; when we visited Painted Rocks in 2020, all the rocks were freshly painted without any signs of erosion. Getting there There are at least three options for how to get to the painted rocks depending on your preferences- hiking, cycling or by car. Directions below are given assuming that you would start your trip from the centre of Tafraout, ne

After visiting Agadir and a nice walk in Paradise Valley we continued our trip as planned to Moroccan city Taroudant. However, we had quite different plans in comparison with what we ended up with. First time in our lives, we had to go into quarantine due to the COVID lockdown. The good news is that we had booked a very good comfortable (and expensive) guesthouse just a few miles from Taroudant city centre. It was booked for three nights, however, we spent there almost two weeks. On the positive side, we had a full board throughout our stay, with a local chef – a young Moroccan lady. The host was French, so we got a mix of local Moroccan and French cuisine. We had a large pool in the backyard, a beautiful garden with turtles and peacocks, a large living room and even bigger bedroom, a huge bathroom, a covered outdoor terrace and French drinks with dinner whenever we wanted. So, although our self-isolation was expensive, we enjoyed it as a separate unexpected holiday. Getting to Tarouda

Many of you may know Morocco’s coastal city Agadir, however, there are many places in Morocco with the name agadir. In general, the name agadir in the Berber language means wall, enclosure, or fortified building. Those usually were used as granaries and storage of another different kind of goods. About Agadir Inoumar There are lots of these old buildings all around Morocco, although most of them are almost collapsed and forgotten. One of these buildings, Agadir Inoumar, was our destination during our trip to Morocco. We were told by people living in Morocco to go to visit Agadir Inoumar. At that time we did not have any idea about where are we going to see. We just got some guidance regarding the route to go. Have to mention that often Google Maps are useless in Morocco; I even contributed by drawing a new route after we returned from this trip, however, for some reason, it was not accepted by Google. After our visit we got excited about this topic and we found a good article about Ber

After spending a few days in Agadir we were ready to go to our next destination in the direction of Tizgui. We had booked accommodation in a small hotel in the mountains near Paradise Valley for a very good price – Hotel Restaurant Tifrit (coordinates: 30.599090, -9.497355 ). Honestly, we were very keen to move out from Agadir as it already was clear that Morocco was going into total lockdown because of COVID and we had a feeling that it would be easier to live in less populated areas rather than attract the attention of local authorities in the city. The hotel had quite a few other guests from France and the Netherlands, although those came to Morocco a while before we arrived and were already looking for ways to get back to their home countries; all regular flights from/to Morocco were stopped and people were hoping to board on one of the rescue flights. Before leaving Agadir we stocked up with some food and drinks just in case as we planned to hike in the nearby mountains and there

This is the first post from the series about our trip to Morocco in 2020. It was planned as a ten-day long holiday, however, we ended up being under lockdown for almost three months due to COVID first-wave restrictions. We could have stayed there even longer but fortunately British Embassy in Morocco helped us to get back to the UK on one of their organised rescue flights early in June. Arrival to Morocco We arrived at Agadir Al-Massira International Airport just before midnight in the middle of March. Later on, it appeared to be the last international flight allowed to land there for quite a while, although nobody was expecting this at that time – we had booked a return flight with EasyJet, which never happened after at least five cancellations we had the patience to go for. Agadir airport is located about 15 miles (20 kilometres) away from the city centre; to get there we booked a private taxi service in advance. The flight was slightly delayed, so we had to get in touch with the co

The capital city of Morocco is Rabat, which is located 324 kilometres northeast of Marrakesh. It would take three and a half hours to reach Marrakesh by car from Rabat; it is the fourth largest city in Morocco. Instead of coming from Morocco’s capital by car, we landed at Menara Airport in June. It was a direct flight from Glasgow by EasyJet; the cost of the return flight per person was about £145 and pre-arranged taxi pick-up from the airport to the city was around £15. We spent about a week in Morocco at that time. In 2015, Marrakesh was named by TripAdvisor as the No.1 travel destination in the world (winners of the 2015 Travellers' Choice award for Destinations), leaving such popular destinations as Czech capital Prague at 5th position, UK’s London as No.6 and Rome as No.7 – impressive, isn’t it? The major part of this trip we spent in Marrakesh. Accommodation in Marrakesh Marhabbah Murrākuš! It is a norm in Morocco that you would rather find a privately owned guest house ‘Ri

The Authentic Morocco tour A couple of days after our arrival in Marrakesh, we went on ‘The Authentic Morocco’ tour to see the highest and most spectacular sand dunes in Morocco and to experience a camel ride in the desert. We booked the tour with a local travel company well in advance; the duration of the Morocco tour was three days and two overnight stays were included for a total price of EUR 120 per person (we paid in advance a deposit of EUR 70 per person). To sum it up, this Morocco tour was very good value for money and we were completely satisfied with this trip. Below, are more details about this trip. Day one – crossing High Atlas mountains We met our driver-guide near the hotel at 8 AM and boarded Toyota Land-cruiser where other people were waiting for us to join the trip; there was a driver and six passengers in total, including us – just enough space for such a long trip. The destination of our first day was Dades Gorge, a small village in the middle of nowhere. We travell

 When visiting other countries, we always try to familiarise ourselves with local cuisine, at least as much as possible. One way of doing this is visiting local restaurants, though it is even more exciting if there is a possibility to prepare food ourselves. It appeared that Morocco offers visitors to enjoy cocking classes; this is both an adventure and getting new useful skills in preparing Moroccan food. Moroccan food In Morocco, we booked a cooking class near Marrakesh – FAIM D’EPICES . The price was approx. EUR 50 per person and that included transportation, lessons in Moroccan food preparation, preparation of meals in practice, drinks and spice workshop (pick-up place usually would be arranged near the place you stay in Marrakesh, which is a norm in Morocco). We learned how to make a complete meal, meaning bread, salad, a tajine and the special Moroccan patties. The main dish on the day we were there was the tajine of lamb with prunes. Be aware that they do not accept credit cards