Not only is the outdoor 'quality of light' really great in Morocco at this time of year, the indoor light is really great too!!!  As you can see the 'Moroccon light shade' comes in many guises and is available everywhere.  The headache for any tourist is of course - which one to bring home????

An early morning visit to the local market in Morocco is a real eye opener and a mecca for people watching.  The market was suprisingly a male dominent arena and all appeared to turn up on their donkey!  It was a great experience walking around, we probably stood out like 'sore thumbs' being the only Tourists in sight.

Goats climbing trees - not something you see every day?? Actually they are an important part of the production of Argan Oil which is apparantly 'the new olive oil' and used to season salads with its nutty flavour. It is also recognised as a prized cosmetic and can be purchased everywhere here in the form of creams & oils. The fruit are fed to the goats, whose digestive juices dissolve the tough coating on the shell, the nuts are then recovered from the goats' dung and the kernels are split, lightly toasted, pulped and pressed! To produce just 1 litre of oil takes 30kg of nuts and 15 hours of manual labour - no wonder it's not cheap....

Essaouira is dubbed as the 'Wind City of Africa' and is very popular with both windsurfers and kite surfers.  Beach sunbathing is more like 'sanblasting' as we found out!  We really enjoyed the compact walled Medina as it was not as frantic as the larger ones like Marrakech, and very easy to navigate.  It was great to visit the port in the late afternoon to watch the catch come in with boats being swarmed by the ever present Seaguls!

We came across this gem of a place when out exploring the countryside about 13km from the coastal village of Sidi Kaouki.  We just stopped for a cuppa and ended up coming back the next night for an amazing dinner bed and breakfast.  Dar Na is owned and run by Said and his English wife Helen.  They have created a wonderful property in the tranquil yet breathtaking surroundings overlooking a deserted stretch of coastline.  The service was excellent from the memorable walk through the oasis to the beach with Helen and the two dogs to the delicious tagines cooked by Said in the evening using locally grown produce.  The lifestyle is a healthy one as is testiment of the 95 year old man in the one pic above who still takes his daily walks through the village.....

Sidi Ifni and Mirleft are two small fishing towns in the South of Morocco.  Sidi Ifni was a Spanish colony not long ago and many people still speak Spanish today.  Sidi Ifni appears to be the end of the road for most of the hoards of European campervans as further south lies Western Sahara and mainly only 4wd accessible beaches.  There are many good surfing beaches along this stretch of coastline.  We found a great place to stay near some rocky coves just North of Mirleft.

Here are a series of dawn and dusk shots taken at Legzira Plage which is about 10km north of Sidi Ifni.  You can see the view out of our room in one of the shots.  None of the small hotels at the beach have constant electricity so we just had about 3 hours in the evening - not always constant as the generator cut out.  It was a small price to pay as this beach has to be one of the worlds most beautiful, it would certainly come straight into our top ten that we've visited!

The drive from Ait Benhaddou took us on the main road towards Agadir and then we travelled over a seires of spectacular mountain passes (the road wasn't on our map - but it was tarmacced, well the Moroccon version of....) into the town of Tafraoute in the Anti Atlas Mountains.  Tafroute is a lovely village surrounded on all sides by Granite mountains.  We spent a great few hours exploring teh granite boulders nearby.  There is a belgiun artist who has painted some of them in bold colour - red, green and of course powder blue.  I'm not so sure it should be considered art or vandalism, to my mind it spoilt a truly magnificent landscape?