Small but Perfectly Formed: Southern Morocco’s Best Hotels by Rose Baring
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Southern Morocco has long attracted Europeans in search of a break from the gloom of winter. In fact there is barely a day when the foyers of its well-known hotels, the Mamounia, the Roseraie, the Gazelle d’Or and the Villa Maroc, do not ring with the voices of the English upper classes. Yet buried by the publicity afforded to these well-established haunts are a scattering of smaller hotels preferred by the real cogniscenti - ex-pats working in Rabat and Casablanca and addicts to the singular combination of beauty, humour and hassle that is Morocco.
It seems that the country has a genius for hotels, particularly for small, idiosyncratic ones. Dotted across the country are a group of independent-minded hoteliers who have coaxed delightful resting-places into being. They take a personal delight in their guests’ enjoyment, often presiding over one corner of the dining room like beneficent deities of the hearth, the lares and penates of their establishments. Some are locals, who have crafted their hotels organically from their own humble villages, bringing to their job a profound understanding of the surrounding landscape and an enthusiasm for its delights which is infectious. Others are Moroccans who have escaped from the big cities and now luxuriate in the tranquility of their chosen spot, tweaking their eccentric flower-tumbling gardens into ever-greater displays and welcoming their bombed-out city-dwelling friends for a weekend of mirthful recovery. Others are the work of foreigners with a passion for a local architectural form, or for the challenge of a particular landscape. All have fewer stars than an overcast February night in Scunthorpe, but I would rather be cocooned in any one of their caring bosoms than in the 5-star luxury of the Mamounia.
The Auberge Tangaro outside Essaouira is an isolated series of buildings clustered beneath a benign, creaking windmill. Trees old and young, arcades and balconies burgeoning with bougainvillea provide shade in the courtyard garden. Many of the rooms are split level, with a sitting room below and a bedroom up a narrow flight of whitewashed steps above, where sea-breezes keep you cool at night. The only details in an otherwise minimalist decor are provided by bright Moroccan textiles - blankets on beds and kilims on the floors. The kitchen produces simple, freshly prepared Moroccan stews, fish and salads, served either at one of the small tables dotted round the courtyard or in the dining room where a raging fire keeps things cozy on cooler evenings. Ideal for a quiet reading holiday for those not keen on swimming. There is no pool and the sea is a good walk away.
The Oualidia lagoon has long been famed for its oyster and clam beds, and a cluster of hotels has grown up around an abandoned royal palace where the tapering lagoon meets the sea. The oldest of these, the Hippocampe, consists of rooms in long bungalows set in a radiant flower garden. Neither the architecture nor the interior decoration has much going for them, but the setting is divine. Twice a day the tide rushes through a distant gap in the grassy dunes to cover the vast bay of sand in front of the hotel dining room and terrace, leaving an ever changing series of pools in its wake as it retreats. With due attention to both the strong sun and the tides, this is a great place for children, who can choose between ankle-high and belly deep pools to frolic in, while their parents indulge a passion for seafood in the restaurants. L’Araignee Gourmande is a particular must. Their cheapest all-seafood menu (which included a particularly succulent sea anemone!) just kept coming and coming. The de-luxe menu defies imagination.
Moving back from the sea and up into the mountains, the Hotel des Cascades at Imouzzer des Ida Outanane is the beloved creation of Jamal Atbir, a soft-spoken Berber who has brought employment to an impoverished corner of the Anti-Atlas mountains. The hotel’s great joy is its terraced garden, with 30 ft walls of hanging geraniums and vast stands of lilies, all fed by the abundance of water that gives the hotel its name. There is a tennis court and a refreshing swimming pool, which is constantly replenished by the spring water that trills through the garden.
Jamal can organise treks into the surrounding uplands, where you sleep in converted shepherd’s huts and village chieftain’s houses. The landscape is stunningly dramatic, with waterfalls crashing into inviting pools of turquoise water and isolated mud-built villages glimpsed far below. Only the plumes of smoke, which rise lazily into the air, and the noise of a few animals betray habitation. Rooms in the hotel have an Alpine feel to them, with simple wooden furniture. Breakfast of delicious homemade breads and jams is followed by a mouth-watering lunchtime buffet on the terrace, and in the evening the only entertainment is watching the faultless performance of the sunset, night after night.
The last place I would choose to spend my time is in some ways the most remarkable. About 15 miles south of the desert town of Erfoud, a small watercourse, empty for all but a few days a year, is the place chosen by Frenchman Michel as the site of his Auberge Kasbah Derkaoua. Just beneath the surface of the seemingly barren desert lies an artesian water source that Michel has used to fashion a veritable oasis. Beneath the shade of the thousands of trees which he has planted and watered with the dedication of the obsessed, his adobe creation has slowly grown into one of the most coveted luxury hotels in Morocco. Subtle sculptural forms borrowed from the local vernacular, the horseshoe arch in the arcades and bedroom doors and the crenellations on the roofs, give the simple architecture a distinction. You won’t spend much time in the small bedrooms, each with its own gas-fired bathroom, but rather in the deep shade of the garden, lying on a cushioned bench reading, or dozing in a tent or sunning yourself by the small plunge pool. Behind the hotel is Michel’s thriving farm with sheep, cows, goats, chickens and horses for riding.
With old-fashioned politesse Michel inquires after all of his guests at dinner in the evening, with a grey parrot on his shoulder and a trail of dogs at his heel. His otherworldly charm was honed first as a meharist in the French army’s camel corps, and then as a teacher in the Algerian Sahara.