My trip this winter was planned to be together with an American couple, Jan and
Bruce Struckman, who had to cancel at the last moment becuse of an acute eye
opertaion. I promised to send them a report of the trip afterwards, and thought
that maybe some of that also might be of some interest for the bird lists.
This first part has no birds in it at all, but the later ones will deal with
the birds of the coastal areas, the hills, and the desert, respectively
________________________________
THE MOROCCO TRIP. 1. THE TRIP AND THE COUNTRY
I took part in the Sunbird 'Winter in Morocco' trip (for some strange reason
advertized by Winging It in the US as 'Fall in Morocco') last week, very ably
led by Bryan Bland, who has been doing this for 30 years, and James Lidster. We
were a group of 14 people, nicely mixed, with half Americans, half Britons, and
with also a good mix of ages, and experience, ranging from young Steven, for
the first time outside Europe, to old Gerry on his 37th international birding
trip. As usual nowadays, almost everybody had brought a scope, so I often felt
a bit like a parasite, ambling from one scope to another (I don't own a scope
as they give me headaches after a while). But it also meant that I had
excellent opportunities to see all the birds that the leaders conjured up; they
were again wizards in knowing where to find the birds, and afterwards to make
sure that everybody saw them. Also, the level of birding competence among the
participants was once more surprisingly high, and I often felt envious.
We flew directly from London Gatwick to Agadir, and were there based on the
large hotel Anesi, apparently quite close to the beach. I use this somewhat
curious turn of phrase, as we in fact never saw the hotel and its surroundings
in daylight. Agadir has not much architecture to show anyway, as the entire
city was destroyed in the devastating earthquake some 40 years ago and so
everything except the old citadel is new. We usually had breakfast at 6 am and
left half an hour later, and most evenings we were not back before 7 pm. The
hotel was a large block (I lived on the 8th floor) and quite comfortable, once
I had learned how to keep my room cool. The food was buffet-style, and largely
western-style with a veneer of mideastern cooking.
Every day we were out in the field all day, but as usual, Sunbird took very
good care of us and we had some quite interesting lunches. One day we ate at a
caravan-serail in Massa, a beautiful and original-looking place, that hardly
anybody seems to know about, and that does not seem to strive hard to change
this either---there is not even a sign outside telling that this is a place
where one can eat. Another day we ate our taziens in a large bedouin telt in
the mountain town of Tafraout, and the last day we humped along sandy and
three- dimensional roads to a posh and isolated beach hotel, Kfar Massa, again
near Massa. Some days, when the leaders did not know of restaurants safe enough
for our use, we had picnick lunches outside in some oasis or other. And one
night we stayed overnight in the southern oasis of Tighmert, S. of Goulimime
(which the roadsigns called Guelmim, by the way), an old garrison town.
Morocco is a country of rather uncompromising square houses (built that way to
keep them cool, no doubt), virtually all painted some shade of peach (varying
from ochre to cerise), with white trimmings and often blue doors. In the
villages and small towns on the coastal flats the houses look as if they were
dropped from above, with little evidence of a master plan; the hill towns are
tighter, and in some regions, where there must have been regular tribal feuds,
the villages are clustered closely together on hilltops and surrounded by
strong walls. The people are as varied as the houses : in Agadir most men use
western clothing, but as one comes out in the countryside and also in the
smaller town, many of the men use Arab clothing, long robes often in earth
colours or white, and long hooded dark brown coats making them look like the
henchmen in historical movies. The men absolutely dominate the streets, and a
surprising number of them seem just to be sitting around, in the many cafes or
on the stoops before their houses or small businesses. The women are just as
variable, but most use elaborately patterned wide clothes, usually covering
their heads and often most of their face; in the more extreme cases only one
eye is visible. Somewhat unexpectedly, as the objective of all this must be to
make the women less desirable-looking for strange eyes, many use very
conspicuous colours and strong patterns, which somehow seems to be
counter-productive. The schoolgirls also varied regionally and also within
every town. Most were wearing the head-scarf, that has been so hotly debated in
many European countries, some also cover their faces partly or largely, but
everywhere there are also girls that go bare-headed, even in the more
traditional areas; so peer-pressure can't be all that terribly strong. The
women are always on their way to somewhere, and you don't see any in the cafes;
but one does see some young couples walking together hand in hand here and
there in the evening twilight. All the people are friendly, wave to the cars,
and shout greetings. Of course near the tourist places they also try hard to
sell you things: Moroccans are well-known master-salesmen.
During the one week we were in Morocco we were two days into the mountains, two
days in to the desert and two days to the coastal wetlands, On the seventh day
half of the group went on a pelagic trip out of Agadir, while the other half
went out by car. We saw lots and lots of good birds and I'll tell a bit about
this later on. The weather was fine all the time, after a severe rainstorm the
day before we arrived, of which we saw the tracks all week; this also caused
rough seas the first part of the week. Mornings and evenings were cool, but
during midday temperatures went up to 25-30*C I think, and we had only high and
partial cloud cover some days. One day started out very foggy, but that burned
off almost as soon as the sun came out. And we had some impressive sunsets over
the sea and over the desert!
I am most grateful to Sunbird for organizing this great trip, to Bryan and
James for finding and showing us the birds and smoothly solving all smaller
logistical problems, and to the other participants for letting me use their
scopes lots of times.
Wim Vader, Tromsø
Museum
9037 Tromsø, Norway
PS Note the correct zipcode number here
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
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