Côte ouest marocaine
08/02/2023
The next morning we continued our trip to Plage Blanche, a huge and impressive beach stretching approximately 30 km from Aoreora Fort to Takoumba. The entire stretch was without proper roads, only the occasional gravel interrupted by small dunes or bigger rocks.
Equipped with a special GPS for offroading, we broadly followed a track to the coast of the Atlantic. The terrain ended with a cliff tens of metres high, offering us a stunning view of the ocean and a chance to have a cold beer.
With the Landy stopped not far from the escarpment, this was a wonderful opportunity for some car pictures to remember the trip by.
Following the cliff northbound, we came by occasional military outposts and quite a long drive later a small and mostly abandoned fishing village. The local explained to us that carrying the fish up the hill had gotten to difficult for many of the fishermen that used to live there, many now in old age, and that the young people had gone off to the cities to find work there instead. He was one of the few that stayed and lucky for him, we came by to buy most of his inventory. We asked the fisherman to fillet the fish and watched some local cats wait eagerly for the offal.
With our dinner sorted we had a look down the cliff on the northern side. There we saw Plage Blanche before us going tens of kilometres with small to huge dunes where we would later set up camp.
We drove down and the sand adventure started. As mentioned previously, we had to reduce the tyre pressure on the beach. Once there, we spotted the shocking amounts of garbage that had washed up, only interrupted by the occasional whale bone. It was surreal to experience the dichotomy of beautiful nature and human pollution there. The extent was to the point where even hundreds of volunteers spending days cleaning it up would likely not have a meaningful impact. Needless to say that we took all of our trash with us.
Because of the rising tide we wanted to find a spot to camp more distant from the shoreline. To do this, we had to cross some of the dunes which due to the type of sand was not an easy feat. However, once we had made it to the spot it was perfect for spending the night.
We grilled the fish from earlier, together with some vegetables and homemade bread a soldier had gifted us. After the sun was gone, the campsite became an even more spectacular site. With this eventful day over it was time to go to bed.
Our track
Here is an overview of our track that day. It is the yellow line that starts inside the country and ends at our campsite on the beach.
A bientôt!