Things to do in Tafraoute, Morocco
Tafraoute is a popular touristic town in Tiznit Province of Morocco, in the central part of the Anti-Atlas mountains. The road R105 from Agadir to Tafraout is very picturesque, you will start snapping pictures of attractions even before reaching your final destination. The road goes along some part of the Anti Atlas mountains which are unforgettable and then scenery changes and you will be passing by Kazbah’s (fortified cities of different sizes). We saw several kasbah’s that were small villages surrounded by walls in the middle of nowhere which shows that long ago there were a lot of wars within the county. One of the most beautiful fortified citadel that we saw on that route to Tafraoute is Tizourgane Kasbah, an old kazbah that nowadays is an attractive touristic destination and also runs a bed and breakfast place. We didn’t have time to stay there a night but I do regret that because how many times in life one has a chance to spend time in old fortified citadel…
Another thing that you will see on that route and also on the road between Essaouira and Marrakech are goats on the trees! Unfortunately, i couldn’t get close enough to them to snap a solid blog worthy photo because the closer i got the faster they were jumping off the trees haha. But go ahead and google search tree climbing goats or for your convenience here i have found an amazing Youtube video that explains the story behind this phenomenon that i enjoyed watching. Apparently tree climbing goats love the argan trees and are climbing it to get to the argan fruits. And yes, Morocco is famous for argan oil that is widely used in moisturisers, skin and hair oils and even in food as an eadible argan oil which is made by toasting the argan kernel to produce the safe to eat oil.
Approaching Tafraoute we saw a lot of almond trees which are the symbol of this city. Tafraoute is almond producing capital of Morocco and even has a yearly Almond Blossom Festival where locals play music, set performances, dance and sell all kinds of food and products.
The last amazing scenery that we passed on the way to Tafraoute and a very popular climbing spot is Jebel el Kest and Jebel Toubkal. We didn’t climb it because our visit to Morocco was during very hot season and it was hard to breathe outside during the day. But for affectionate climbers who would like to include this activity to their list here i found a pretty good article about climbing Jebel el Kest with maps, description of hiking routes and other useful information.
When we finally made it to Tafraoute our number one attraction to visit were Les Roches Peintes. In 1984, the Belgian artist Jean Vérame painted a dozen rocks in different colors in the town of Aguerd Oudad, near Tafraoute. Many decades later we see those rocks preserved in the same condition because of the dry rainless climate of that region. Tafraoute village is a must visit place for artists and tourists for those famous painted rocks, mountains of pink granite and palm oases like Vallee d'Ait Mansour.
We stayed one night and two days at beautiful house El Malara that we booked here via Booking.com. It is a very interesting house fully made of marble and stone because it is what is Tafraoute is popular for, granite is around. The hotel runs by French couple that relocated from their country some time ago to live a quiet life in Morocco. They employ local people from the village who were cooking for us the traditional dishes for breakfast and dinner.
Breakfast at the terrace, El Malara
We were the only guests even though there are several rooms in the house but during the COVID there weren’t many tourists. The only issue was the language barrier because hosts only spoke little English and fluent French but google translate helped. The big bonus is that The Painted Rocks the main attraction of that town is only 5 minutes drive!
Don’t plan to spend too much time site seeing Painted Rocks, it took us probably an hour to snap all the beautiful pictures and move to the next popular destination. If you plan accordingly one night and two days in Tafraoute will be more than enough to cover all local touristic sites and best part of it is that no tour guide is needed all you need is a car or a bike, everything in that village is very short distance. The next destination I’d like to tell you about is called Vallee d'Ait Mansour.
Vallee d'Ait Mansour
Vallee d'Ait Mansour is popular for being a cozy secret oasis but more importantly for prehistoric rock engravings! How many of those prehistoric carvings do you see in real life? For me those were the first ones but yes i saw some in museums too. On the pictures above you can see two Carved Gazelles one is hanging on the rocks of the mountain and another one is carved laying or maybe dead on the rock. To see them you don’t have to go on extensive hike, this site is at the bottom of Vallee d’Ait Mansour. To locate the engravings we asked around and one of the locals show us the spot for a small tip, all the people in the village know where is it but for tourists it’s very hard to locate it.
Tafraoute is also famous for trekking with a guide and the view should be wow but unfortunately we didn’t have time for it as our trip was packed with activities and required moving fast from place to place.
Tafraoute is a great destination to explore and with unlimited amount of huge rocks in the area the view is like the city was hit by asteroids that left such a view. But that’s just my speculation I found this place to be spectacular for a sci fi movie about life on another planet. Actually, a lot of Hollywood movies were filmed in Morocco and you can read about it in my other articles.
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