Ups & Downs in Taghazout, Morocco
Arriving in Morocco
We first landed in Marrakesh around 4:30pm, and because we were apprehensive to drive in Morocco at night we opted to get one night hotel outside of the city in Marrakesh. We picked up our rental car no problem, and had a short drive to our hotel, Hotel Lawrence D’Arabie.
We check in to our room, nothing special, just a cheap 1 night stay, and we decide to walk around for the last bit of daylight and grab dinner. We walk to the nearby Marrakesh train station and see the edge of the hustle and bustle of the city center. Our first taste of Morocco was quite good at a small restaurant packed with locals: chicken tagine for me and beef tagine for Shaun.
That first night, we both had a difficult time sleeping through the night with the jet lag, but tossed and turned throughout the night until the sun finally came up and we got up for breakfast. I wasn’t feeling good though… very nauseous suddenly, although I felt fine through the night. We walked downstairs and the overwhelming smells of the breakfast buffet was too much– I turned around midway and went back straight to the room, thinking I was going to get sick. Thankfully I didn’t, but I again felt nauseous on our drive that day. I’m not sure if it was my body accustoming to that first meal the night prior, or if jet lag was manifesting in a strange way of nausea…
Our drive from Marrakesh to Taghazout was about 3.5 or 4 hours, and we were a bit nervous about driving in Morocco but once you get out of the populated areas, the roads are open and well maintained. We were on, what seemed like, the main freeway for the vast majority of the ride, passing barren desert and occasional villages or pitstop areas. It was a toll road, and cost about $8 USD. Once we reached Agadir, the main city nearest to Taghazout, it got more dense and busy driving, but still manageable (granted I’m not the one driving though!).
Tiny Town of Taghazout
We arrived to Taghazout midday around 1pm or so, and found our hotel no problem. I had done quite a bit of research and back and forth communication with a few hotels in the Taghazout area. Dfrost and Surf Maroc were the main two companies catering to tourists, and both actually offered discounts to the surf competitors in the contest. I decided on Dfrost because it was a bit cheaper, even including all our meals: daily breakfast, packed lunch, and nightly family-style dinner. (Someone we knew had warned us there wasn’t much to eat in the area, so we preferred to do an all-inclusive. However, we found this actually wasn’t true– there’s a dozen or so restaurants in Taghazout that were reasonable and seemed fine to eat at. We had a midday snack at a few of these spots, but were ultimately happy to keep it simple and rely on Dfrost for most of our meals).
Our Rooms
Our first room (we moved to another room halfway through our stay), was quite small– it didn’t have much wiggle room besides the double bed and dresser inside, but the small space was overlooked by the beautiful balcony view! It was advertised as a “private balcony” albeit actually shared with the room next door… regardless, it was a stunning view, with the Atlantic Ocean literally at our fingertips and our view from bed with our heads on our pillows! Our balcony also looked over the shared lounge area, with tables, couches and a hot tub area overlooking the cliffs. It was beautiful!
The only downside for this room was that the bathroom was separate from the bedroom. I knew it was an option for the room type we booked (advertised as “bathroom attached or detached private”). So although it was just outside our bedroom, it was private for our use only, and only opened with our key.
Halfway through our stay, many of the other guests had moved out (we found that most flights from Europe are popular to come and go on Saturdays), so the staff offered to upgrade us to a premium room that had become vacant. This room was probably 2x if not 3x as spacious, and had a large, attached en-suite bathroom, which was appreciated. It also had a larger, actually private balcony with a seating area, which was lovely. It was on a lower floor though, so the view was not as dramatic as the higher floors. No matter, I was happy to have more space and a connected bathroom :)
Food and Fears of Getting Sick
I had been warned from both friends and the internet that getting sick in Morocco (especially Taghazout) is unfortunately very common–– about 50% of visitors will fall ill from bacteria in the food or water that we’re not used to. Shaun is always very, very cautious when we’re traveling about food and water, so of course we were taking all the necessary precautions: only drinking bottled water; swishing our mouth with bottled water after brushing our teeth, keeping your month shut while showering; avoiding ice in drinks; avoiding foods that would have been washed in the tap water like lettuce or other vegetables…. The list goes on…
But sometimes… no matter how cautious you are, you still get sick.
Our first week at Dfrost, there were around 20 other visitors staying there too, and since it’s a shared buffet dinner each night, we hung out with them every evening and chatted. From our very first night there, we heard murmurs of others who were sick. By the second night, the girls in the room next door to us were sick. A bunch of them had gotten a hammam the day prior, and they were assuming that’s why they got sick. (A hammam is a Moroccan tradition, it’s a mix of a steam room and shared bath, and they scrub your body down for baby soft skin–– however, the steamy tap water you’re breathing in and the shared bath may not ultimately be the most hygienic….)
So within our first couple nights, several of our comrades at Dfrost had gone down for the count with the notorious Moroccan sickness: some vomiting, some diarrhea, some with a fever, some all of the above. Some said it lasted 12 hours and then good as new. Some were struggling for several days. However, one guy at Dfrost had been in Morocco for FIVE WEEKS at this point and had not gotten sick at all! I was envious of him and he gave me hope I’d prevail without illness!
Alas, four or five days into our stay, I woke up feeling achey, weak, with the chills. I laid low that day and rested, hoping it would pass. My stomach felt fine, I was still eating, but just felt overall woozy… By the evening, it felt like a full blown fever. That night I was roller coasting between hot sweats and freezing chills, barely sleeping. By the early morning, my stomach was upset and had runny tummy (I don’t like the word diarrhea), with a fever that felt pretty dang high. Shaun asked the front desk if they had a thermometer, which they didn’t, but they said the doctor was coming to visit our room neighbor who had been sick for a couple days at that point, so they offered for the doctor to see me, too. I wanted to make sure it was nothing serious, so I was glad to see him.
There were two men, I think only one of them was a doctor, and through broken English and French, we described my symptoms and they wrote me up a prescription. They said this is very normal, once they asked if it was my first time in Morocco, they chuckled and said yes, yes of course, first time here! First time in Africa! I was worried the prescriptions would be outrageous with no international healthcare, but was pleasantly surprised when each prescription (they wrote me two) were just $2 and $5 USD each. (side note: WOW this made me frustrated with the American healthcare system, but that’s another topic.) One was Immodium, a very common aid for runny tummy, and the second was an antibiotic called Flagyl for fighting a bacterial infection.
I was happy to take the pills, and my current symptoms were much better by the next day. Runny tummy had subsided and my fever had gone. However, now, day 3 of being sick, a new symptom had taken hold: I had the most intense cramps I’ve ever felt! I could barely move my body without wailing in pain! In trying to describe it to Shaun (who felt fine this whole time), I said it felt like I ate an entire apple and everything had digested fine but now there was a huge apple core stuck in my stomach with nowhere to go. It felt like a big ball of thick pain that hurt whenever I’d move. Ugh! I’m not sure if this was a continuation of the bacteria I was fighting or actually side effects of the pills I’d started taking. That was maybe the most miserable day, but by day 4 (which was my 26th birthday!) I felt much better. The cramps and subsided, and now I just felt a bit weak and little appetite. I was eating the entire time I was sick though to keep my energy up.
Even though it lasted longer than other peoples’, I was so thankful to not have gotten sick and vomited. It’s basically my biggest fear in life- throwing up. The others at Dfrost swore that once you threw up, you felt better much quicker but I would rather have had my 3-days of symptoms versus 1 night of nausea.
Shaun lucked out with the two weeks in Taghazout, only getting a little upset stomach and runny tummy for a day or two. He usually has a much more sensitive stomach than me, so I was surprised! For the most part, we ate all the same things except for a few times of ordering different items but from the same restaurant... You win some, you lose some.
Dfrost Almugar: Taghazout Surf and Yoga Villa
Dfrost staff was amazing and very attentive. Once I got sick, they would check on me everyday and make sure we were feeling better. Everything from booking, to arriving, and offering to upgrade rooms were all very smooth and pleasant surprises. There is a rooftop yoga terrace, which we signed up for sunrise yoga one morning and it was lovely. It begins in the dark and the sun rises of the mountains mid-practice. They offer sunrise and sunset yoga everyday (except Thursdays), and I would’ve liked to do more, but after being sick I wasn’t feeling 100%.
Overall, the food was good, although a bit repetitive to be there for so long (we had 12 nights!). Each night had a different taste, such as local Moroccan tagines or couscous dishes, also had burgers and fries, falafels and flatbreads, and lots more. Mondays are all-vegetarian meals (although they will accommodate a veg diet any night), and Sundays are a special BBQ night. It was good food, and it was a bummer I got sick, but I felt safer eating there than other places in the town.
12 Nights in Taghazout
We had 12 nights booked and pre-paid, because we arrived early for the surf contest to accustom to the time change and for Shaun to surf and prepare for the competition. Surf contests have waiting periods of several days, so they can pick and choose the best days of the best waves within that period to run the contest. This contest had a period from January 25 through February 1, which was quite long. So arriving early, plus booking for the duration of the contest period is how we got to 12 nights…
The contest was supposed to be held at Anchor Point, a point break just 15 min walk or 2 min drive from Dfrost in Taghazout, but unfortunately they decided to hold the first few days of the contest at a different site, Anza, a beach break about 20-25 min drive away towards Agadir. Shaun’s first heat was tough with smaller waves and he lost early, so that left us an entire more week at Dfrost post-contest. We weren’t able to check out early since we had prepaid and they were upfront about not being able to refund anything for personal reasons to leave early (understandably), but it did leave us a bit stir crazy. To be honest, 12 nights felt much too long to be there. One week would be have been just fine. It’s a small town and it started to feel like groundhog day…
We made the best of the rest of our time, and began to plot the rest of our time abroad. We were toying with the idea of going to the Sahara Desert, but it was a 10 hour drive from Marrakesh, so 14 hour drive from Taghazout, and being that remote after feeling so ill for so long made me nervous. We were planning to spend time in Marrakesh, but were starting to feel a bit tired of Moroccan food (it feels like a catch 22 because you’re paranoid of what to eat, scared to get sick again). So we started to consider spending the tail end of of our trip in Europe instead (our flight home was out of Barcelona)…. After deliberating for a couple days, we bought flights to spend the last 5 days of our trips in Tuscany, Italy. We thought after our experience here, we were craving some delicious Italian food and wine!
But before we left Morocco, we headed to the High Atlas Mountains for a 3 night stay at the Kasbah du Toubkal. My boss had given me this extravagant present for Christmas (not even knowing we were headed to Morocco for a surf contest– an insane coincidence!), so we were really excited to explore a different side of Morocco in the mountains at a luxury retreat center, named one of National Geographic’s one of the world’s most unique lodges…
More on our stay at the Kasbah, in the the next post!