As the sunset faded into a purple night, I sipped on a negroni at the rooftop bar of the Hôtel Nord Pinus, tucked into Tangier’s historic kasbah and decorated with vibrant handcrafted carpets, rich in Amazigh Berber symbolism.
Next to me, three Moroccan girls perched around a table and discussed the meaning of life, dipping in and out of Darija, French and English with consummate ease. I scanned the Atlantic ocean; the lights of Spain twinkled on the horizon. I was almost within touching distance of Europe and yet Tangier felt, as Mark Twain said many years before, ‘thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign’.
Think of Morocco and you might think of the mysterious medinas of Marrakech and Fez, the rugged peaks of the High Atlas, or the sand seas of the Sahara. But along its windswept northern Atlantic coast, from bohemian Tangier and cosmopolitan Casablanca, fishing villages and bird-filled lagoons, storied Portuguese forts and vast swathes of golden sand, there are off-the-beaten-track treasures still to be discovered.
If you take Al Boraq – Africa’s first high-speed train, named after a mythical winged horse – you can be whisked from Tangier to Casablanca via Rabat in just over two hours. But why rush it? Instead, I was taking the coastal road less travelled, driving south from Tangier to Essaouira in order to discover another side of Morocco – its untouched coastline and its mix of cultural influences.
City of artists
I began my tour of the northern Atlantic coast in Tangier. The gateway to Europe and Africa, for the first half of the 20th century, this port city was an international zone and fabled for its hedonistic excesses, drawing rock stars, socialites, artists and writers from around the globe.
But after it was returned to Morocco in 1956, it lost its anything-goes appeal and began to slip into a seemingly unstoppable decline. Now its story is changing. With the support of King Mohammed VI, investment has poured in. There’s a new glitzy marina, hotels and apartment blocks are springing up around the bay and streets are being spruced up.
I stayed at the beautifully restored La Maison Blanche on the edge of the kasbah, the oldest and highest part of the medina. Here the room names nod to the literary glitterati – including author Paul Bowles, honoured at the American Legation Museum – that have called Tangier home. From the sun-filled terrace, I saw minarets mingled with cranes, but the fabled light that inspired artists such as Henri Matisse was undiluted.
Vestiges of Tangier‘s alluring loucheness remain in its nooks; tales of the Rolling Stones jamming until the early hours with sub-Saharan gnaoua bands, to the legendary Café Baba, where a faded photo of a kifsmoking Keith Richards still has pride of place. I headed to the Petit Socco, once a hub of smuggling and debauchery, and joined the locals people-watching over a mint tea from the terrace of the Café Central. It still felt that – almost – anything was possible here.
Birders’ paradise
An hour and a half south of Tangier, I discovered Vila Bea perched on the oceanfront of the low-key and distinctly Moroccan resort of Moulay Bousselham. This chic French-owned boutique hotel could have stepped straight from the pages of a design magazine, artfully mixing up Moroccan craftsmanship with vintage European finds – perhaps a Pierre Paulin chair or Verner Panton lamp – all framed by sand, sea and sky.
In July and August, the one-street town throngs with Moroccans escaping the sizzling cities. However, on this off-season evening, I shared the superlative sunset with a handful of fishermen who were braving the breakers to bring in the catch of the day.
Beyond the beach, the Merja Zerga – or Blue Lagoon – is one of North Africa’s most important wetlands and a big draw for twitchers. Hawk-eyed Hassan has been offering bird-watching tours for more than 30 years and as we left the harbour, bobbing with sea-coloured wooden boats, I realised that he had timed it perfectly. The tide was high enough to allow us to putter across the lagoon’s smooth expanse, but there was enough exposed mud to get up close to the birdlife.
As cosmopolitan as Tangier, among those holidaying were a lone black egret from West Africa, a pair of sandwich terns from the UK and a flock of pink flamingos from the Camargue. I could barely keep up with the array of plovers, gulls and waders, as a flock of ibis ebbed and flowed above our heads and a graceful osprey skimmed the water, a fish lunch in its grasp.
Historic port
Like Moulay Bousselham, Rabat – 90 minutes further south – is pretty low pitched, especially for a country’s capital. An imperial city turned administrative centre, it’s home to Mohammed V’s opulent marble mausoleum which stands alongside a forest of shattered stone pillars in testament to an ancient unfinished mosque; as well as the picturesque ruins of Chellah on the city’s outskirts: part Phoenician colony, Roman settlement and Islamic necropolis.
But I opted to stay in neighbouring Salé, once the base of nefarious 17th-century corsairs, the Salé Rovers who created a self-governing pirate republic, making forays to Spain and beyond in search of slaves to trade. That morning, as I gazed out over the estuary to Rabat’s blue-and white-washed clifftop kasbah, djellaba (a long, loose-fitting robe) wearing beachgoers lounged under umbrellas, kids played barefoot football and people eschewed the shiny new red trams to cross the water in blue rowing boats.
My base was The Repose in the heart of Salé’s medieval medina, a lovingly restored seven-room riad run by English expat Jan and her husband Rachid. It felt like staying at a friend’s house, with the advantage of superb vegetarian cooking, and a leisurely breakfast on the plant-filled terracce to the soundtrack of competing muezzin (the call to prayer).
After following Jan to the Koranic school, its interior embellished with carved cedar wood, dazzling zellij tiles and ornate stucco, I slipped through the timeless souks enveloped in the aroma of freshly-baked bread, passed stalls piled high with plump olives and pyramids of aromatic spices.
Following afternoon prayers, a crowd began to gather in the tree-shaded Souk El Ghezel, the largest square in the medina, where traditionally skeins of wool were bought and sold. But that day there was a different kind of auction, arranged by women, chiefly for women, who employ men to show off the goods – from richly embroidered kaftans to more prosaic pots and pans – and take the money.
Later, Jan despatched me to the old-school neighbourhood hammam, where I was led to the first of the hot, hotter and hottest tiled rooms. Shafts of light from the star-shaped holes in the domed ceilings pierced the steam haze, where local women of all ages lounged around in various stages of undress, washing themselves with black soap enriched with olive oil, combing their hair and catching up on the gossip.
Like a child at bath time, I surrendered my limbs to the lady employed to scrub me briskly with a coarse mitt until, satisfied, she showered me with buckets of warm water and I emerged with baby-soft skin.