Morocco Savvy

Dakhla is the new destination of choice for the hip and happening crowds - and celebrating its new status with a festival of its own.

Surfing, kite-surfing, paragliding, quad-biking and rough-sea fishing. Dakhla is quickly becoming the real men’s paradise, where talk is about hitching your way into Mauritania rather than finding the most lavish palace restaurant.

Marrakech is for tourists, Dakhla is for travelers. But beware, French daily Le Figaro this weekend put the town on its list of cool destinations. The door to package holidays could be opened soon.

Apart from enough wind to get your kite going, Dakhla has one major unique selling point. It is one of the few places on earth where the desert almost literally touches the ocean.

The small town was a bit of an unknown entity to most people, except UN peace keepers and Moroccans who travel from all over the country to work here during the fishing season. But lately, more and more foreigners are finding their way to Dakhla.

Thanks to the early years of aviation, the town even has an airport. But its business fell last year,  with only 24.459 passengers passing through its tiny terminal (most of them UN officials, we guess). The new tourists - erm, sorry - travelers will probably opt for the much more adventurous 26-hour bus ride from Marrakech.

Dakhla’s authorities are determined to get more visitors. So next weekend, the town is celebrating its first Desert & Sea Festival. There’s the usual menu of folklore and gnaoua music, mixed with kite-surfing (of course), funboarding, martial arts demonstrations and even a film festival.

Among the artists that will be performing are the Gypsy Kings and American jazz pianist Randy Weston. Recent Motorola Music Awards winners Hoba Hoba Spirit, H Kayne and Darga are also appearing.

The festival’s website will stream the entire festival, allowing us to watch the event online. Which fits perfectly with the new, cool Dakhla. 

• Help the Dakhla tourist board with a new slogan that fits its hip status - post your suggestions

Nine people have been killed near Khénifra as the bus they were traveling in fell into a ravine.

According to the Moroccan press agency MAP, 36 others were injured, six of them seriously. 

The accident happened Saturday morning around 11.30 on the road between Agelmous and Khénifra, some 195 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Casablanca.

MAP reports that an initial investigation suggests that a mechanical problem caused the bus to veer off the bending mountainous road and plunge into a ravine.

The region is little visited by foreign tourists.

Eight out of ten deaths in car accidents happen on the same 180 kilometers of roads - here’s where to be extra vigilant.

There’s around 35,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) of road in Morocco, and yet 80 percent of all fatal car accidents happen on the same 180 kilometers (110 miles) in the network.

Moroccan weekly La Vie Éco has mapped these dangerous stretches and has come up with a list of the 15 “most lethal roads”. Most of these accident “black spots” are located on intersections in the north of the country.

According to La Vie Éco, the layout of intersections is as much a cause of accidents as speeding, reckless driving and the poor mechanical state of a lot of cars in Morocco.

For its part, the magazine says, the government is spending more than US$ 15 million to improve the traffic situation at the listed locations.

If you want to see the maps of these “black spots”, check the article over at La Vie Éco’s website.

The most dangerous stretches of road on the “tourist trail” are:

Traveling between Casablanca and Marrakech

• intersection of the RN9 and provincial road 3011 (near Sidi Maarouf), at kilometer point 2.1

Traveling between Marrakech and Essaouira/Agadir

• RN8 between Marrakech and Chichaoua (between km 182.3 and km 183.3)
• intersection of the RN6 and provincial road 5013 (km 185.1) 
• intersection of the RN4 and the RN6 near Chicaoua (km 187.8)
• RN8 north of Ameskroud between km 30.8 and 54.8  

Traveling between Casablanca and Essaouira

• intersection of the RN1 and regional road 204 at Bouguedra (near Safi), at km 518
• the southern exit from Safi on regional road 301 (the coastal road to Essaouira) at km 177

The other “black spots” have not been listed here, because they are not on the tourist trail. Again, La Vie Éco lists all of them on their website.

A big thank you to the people at La Vie Éco’s website who responded very quickly to my request to put these maps online.

The world-famous tanneries in the old part of Fes could disappear - the industry itself wants to move its activities out of town.

The Association of Modern Tanneries and Leather Goods Producers (ATMFAC) has come up with a plan to create three “tannery villages” near Fes, Marrakech and Settat.

Moving the tanneries, the Association argues, will reduce pollution in the cities and allow the industry to grow. ATMFAC thinks that at the new sites, production could be tripled.

“We’re talking about the survival of the sector,” Latifa Boughalem, ATMFAC’s regional president in Marrakech, tells L’Economiste. “We need to have a production site that meets international environmental standards. It is a polluting activity.”

She explains that tanneries use lime and chemicals to soften the leather. They also use a lot of water, which can be problematic in urban centers, Boughalem adds.

A project proposal for the first “tannery village” near Marrakech has been sent to the authorities, who have yet to reply.

The tanneries in Fes are among the city’s best-known tourist attractions.

Al Hoceima finally gets an all-year-round ferry connection to Spain - good news for Moroccan expats and road congestion alike.

From early June, a new ferry service will open between Malaga and Al Hoceima. There will be two crossings per day in either direction during the summer, and one per day off-season.

It’s good news for the thousands of Moroccan expats living in Europe, many of whom are from the region around Al Hoceima. A lot of them prefer to bring their car when they return to visit family during the summer.

Until now, they had to use the Malaga to Melilla service, the ferries between Algeciras and Tangier or the seasonal route from Almeria to Al Hoceima. For a lot of Moroccans living in the Malaga region, that meant some considerable detours.

It also meant a lot of extra traffic on the already overstretched summer roads in Morocco. The fact that the roads in the north of the country aren’t exactly highway-style or well-maintained just added to the mayhem that this annual exodus provokes.

Curiously, the name of the company that will run this service hasn’t been mentioned in the news reports. Our bet is on Trasmediterranea - if had been Moroccan ferry operator Comanav, that fact would have been in the headlines.

Flying Paris to Marrakech is good for its profile, but Aigle Azur makes more money on flights to other parts of Morocco.

“Marrakech is a showcase for us,” Aigle Azur’s boss, Méziane Idjerouidène, tells French trade magazine TourMag this week. “The flights from Paris aren’t making us a lot of money.”

Competition on the route, the magazine says, is “ferocious”. Other low-cost airlines that fly between Paris and Marrakech include Atlas Blue, Jet4You, Corsair and Axis Airways.

Flights in and out of Casablanca are much more profitable, Idjerouidène says, as are seasonal routes into Fes and Tangier. Much of Aigle Azur’s business is coming from Moroccan immigrants who live in France but return home regularly to visit family.

Aigle Azur is adding Paris Orly to Rabat from the end of this month. The airline also flies from Paris to Agadir and Oujda.