On the Road again

Quick photo of the Mernissi house for my Xmas visitors to peruse, its unique folks its got a roof (keeps the warmth in).


When you have lived in Fes for a while there is always the temptation, once in a while, to go exploring to search out what lies beyond the Medina walls. It is difficult for some of the people here to get further than Marjane the hypermarket by taxi as they do not have access to a car. Therefore they can find it can get slightly claustrophobic and the need for a breath of fresh air and an adventure is necessary. Thats where I come in and now who needed that kind of break I thought to myself ummmm.

I suggested to Josephine from Dar el Hana that we undertake a trip to Al Hoceima on the Med coast, why, because I had never been there and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the massive development of this area. The Kings Plan is heavily concentrated on resorts springing up in this neck of the woods and locals here have long championed the beauty of the coast, so thats a good enough reason to go visit i thought to myself.

Josephine didnt take much persuading and soon with her bag of nuts, biccies and crisps to hand we headed off into the unknown. You might want to have a map to hand to follow the progress as it gets quite convuluted. First of all we headed east out of Fes on the Taza road and soon branched off onto the Al Hociema route to the Rif mountains. Now it said 250k but from experience never try and guage how long a trip will take in Morocco as roads can twist and turn or else you dawdle (great word) to take in the scenery. So for the first part we cruised through the sparse, sand coloured landscape feeling the Fes stress melt away.

The running soundtrack to the whole trip was Jo's squeaky seatbelt which emitted a groan everytime she moved to check out the vista, which was frequently, which had us both in stitches although less so by the end of the trip. Through winding, snaky single lane roads we passed through Taonate which was festooned by sheep, people and Merc vans all jostling for the few inches of space left in the road, nightmare and then the dubious delights of Ketama which is Kif central where there looked to be a deal being done on each corner. Best to hurry on before sundown as the road now became infuriatingly bendy and not to mention downright dangerous with the oncoming traffic all thinking they were a cross between Michael Schumacher and a deranged pyschopath on angel dust.

Finally Al Hoceima came into view, "the sea, the sea" we both cried, while the seatbelt squeaked in agreement. This is a modern, clean resort area with serious development ongoing but on a charm factor scale it figures low, especially off season and the serious lack of a decent restaurant. We spent the night however with an agreement to continue eastward to Nador and beyond. Now this is where things become exciting as heading out to what we thought was the main inland route to Nador we ended up on the brand new coastal road that hugged the shoreline for some 70k. We saw some of the most gorgeous fertile agricultural land almost bordering the sea and to our right almost moonscape rock formations or gentle pastoral delights. Eco tourism thoughts filled our heads as this setting must surely be one of the most unspoilt stretches of coastline I have seen for many a year. This road is NOT on a map yet so the rest of infrastructure is barely in place, few shops or houses to speak of and only one adventurous entrepreneur building a hotel. In a word STUNNING!!

Therefore on hitting Nador after a turn inland we were severely disappointed. This is earmarked as the business centre of the region and though it borders a lovely lagoon and a spacious promenade the town itself again factors low on the charm-o-meter, and we turned around and skedaddled (great word meaning to escape quickly I believe). So now it became obvious we were going to head for the famed Saidia resort, the flagship of the Plan D'Azur, and soon in the distance we could see the huge pastel Disneyland. Stretching out over a region the size of the Fes Medina ie. massive folks, this spanking new mix of apartments, hotels, townhouses,pools and gardens amazes with its breadth of vision but also with the identikit nature of the buildings. It is going to be a phenomenal enterprise heavily promoted throughout the international property market but as a purist from the cultural heart of Fes it was not to my liking, shall we say! This area is going upmarket quicker than a rat up a drainpipe and will obviously seriously compete with the Spanish market on the Costas in a few years when complete.

Old Saidia a somewhat sleepy but fashionable one street town just along the coast is rushing to catch up, replacing whole roads and for the speculator a plot of land here would be a very good punt I should say, when the major apartment builders turn their starry eyes in this direction, wont be long. So slightly shocked and stunned we headed to Oujda with no expectations whatsoever, how wrong could we be!!

The brand new motorway, superbly lit, passed by the immaculate airport soon to be VERY International and then Oujda itself, quel surpris. Here was a stylish, wide boulevarded town, pavements planted with jacaranda trees, what seemed like everything under major refit or renovation in a VERY tasteful way. Beautiful colonial buildings sat side by side with modern structures and it worked, the charm-o-meter shot up the scale. This is a town with a very serious future as the hub to the Med coast operations and for the new batch of first time visitors to Morocco they will be perhaps even more impressed than myself. We booked into Hotel al Hanna (it was the name that did it said Jo) for the grand total of 60dh a night (avoid the shared bathrooms) and had a fitful sleep of almost 12 hours after a mentally exhausting day.

The next day was 350k trip back to Fes and though we searched high and low either side of the road for the new proposed motorway between the two towns it was not apparent that anything more than the little single lane road we were on was going to be the realdeal. Am I missing something here because this should be a two line highway so you could roar to the coast at 100k an hour not take the snakes and ladders route to the Taza road from Fes where you are always stuck behind an overladen lorry. Oh well cant get everything right can we?