Morocco 🇲🇦🐫- The beaches of Taghazout

Luckily I manged to squeeze my cheeks together for the duration of the bus ride from Marakech and avoided staining the seats. We arrived at our hostel and were greeted by a very small depressing room with no windows, Rea named “the prison room”. With me shitting 20 times per day, in a tiny unventilated room we were forced for our own safety to upgrade to a sea view suite.

Watching the boxing from our balcony. Much better than the prison room!

Our first few days at Taghazout weren’t as action packed as we’d hoped due to me feeling horrendous and needing to be in close proximity to a toilet. Rea was a little angel and kept checking on me through the nights, worried she was going to find me dead in a puddle of my own excrement.

The new poster boy for Moroccan diareah medicine 💊

We managed to get out to the Taghazout surf expo at Anchor point, where they were selling surf gear/clothing and watched the top surfers show off their moves.

These boys made riding the massive waves look easy, but I can assure you it definitely isn’t!

We also managed to get out a bit and explore the town, a few beaches and saw some incredible sunsets from our balcony. This was also the only time we’ve been somewhere that rea was a more cultured diner than I was. She was scoffing all of the chicken tagines from all the local restaurants, whilst I was picking at the blandest options on the menu to avoid shitting my pants.

If you like surfing and camels, definitely give Taghazout a look 👌

Come Tuesday I was finally back in the land of the living and booked a surf lesson, inspired by seeing everyone making it look so easy. With a dislocated toe, fucked thumb and having barely eaten for 4 days, I wasn’t too successful but enjoyed it none the less! We headed out for food that afternoon with an Aussie couple we had made friends with in the dessert, and after dinner, we bought a few tins of dog food to treat some of the local strays to dinner.

One of the many incredible sunsets from our balcony 😍

On our last full day, we rented a driver and headed out to Paradise Valley. It seemed like we picked the hottest day for a hike!

Due to the lack of rain, the waters weren’t their usual Instagram turquoise and more of a faeces brown!

We trecked through the valley, past all the Riverside shacks selling food and drinks to the main swimming spot, where alot of the locals were cliff diving. We’ve really enjoyed cliff diving in the past, but I was already to injured for that shit, so we decided to give it a miss and chilled on the side instead.

Enjoying the sun (and no longer having diareah) with my best friend 💛

Unbeknownst to me, Morocco is the best place to find fossils in the whole world, so I was absolutely buzzing to find an amazing little shop dedicated to them. The whole desert here is full of them, and I bought a couple more, found locally to add to my collection 🦕.

Despite being 100% jock and hating nerds with a passion, Bristol’s very own Thad Castle may have jizzed in his pants walking into this shop 👀

I cant stand pushy sales people and get pissed off quite quickly, forgetting its more of a cultural thing then them being assholes. Rea’s Indian heritage really came out as she bartered with the shop owner to get a great deal and even left with a free present 🎁.

A fuck load of camels, just chilling in the dessert!

After one night of being demoted to the prison room, we decided to treat ourselves to a night in a swanky hotel and mingle with the upper classes before heading back to Marrakech. Easily the nicest Hotel either of us have stayed in, and worked out about the same price as a travel lodge on a Saturday in Manchester!

Managed nearly 18 hours here without them sussing out we weren’t posh!