Aquaholics Surfing Blog

Aquaholics Surf Trip Morocco; December 30

Posted on 01/15/2009 at 08:27 pm by Nanci Boutet Viewed 1,929 times | 0 comments

December 30th We all went on a road trip to Immsouane (seems like there are several ways to spell and say many villages and beaches). Check the Moroccan site: http://www.morocco.com/blog/visit-imouzzer-ida-outanane
We had two cars full of people. We stopped for a Berber Breakfast at Tamri Valley. The Tamri Valley was beautiful and the restaurant dining room overlooked the valley. The restaurant also has a small naturopathic remedies store where I bought Argan Oil, Argan Soap, Rock Alum (as a deodorant) and Cactus Honey.

Tamri Valley, that's Immsouane breaking in the distance

Breakfast consisted of large freshly baked loaves of bread, and dipping bowls of local honey, freshly ground Amalou (a smooth thick blend of crushed almonds, honey and olive oil), almond oil, and olive oil.
Oh, and mint tea. Mint tea is a big part of every event. The custom is to pour the tea into a glass and return it to the teapot at least three times or until the desired color (indicating strength or steep). A truly skilled tea-pourer can pour from about a foot or more away from the glass. I spilled it every time. They use a LOT of sugar.

Pete Hansen pouring Mint Tea

We drove on to an overlook of the harbor at Imssouane.It looked amazing.

Immesouane Point and Beach (to the right of the point)

We drove down, parked, unloaded, got in the water, and got blown down the bay. It was SO WINDY. We tried to surf, but it was too windy. We had lunch in a restaurant where the plastic chairs were blowing off the patio. Lunch was fish, salad and, of course, fresh bread. A bunch of the British crew tried to paddle out around the point at a beach around to the North of the rocky outcropping,but they got blown up. It was pretty big. It looked like it was pretty small when they started to paddle out, but as they started to make their way outside, a bomb set came through and exploded on them. We decided to come back to camp. It was ridiculously windy everywhere.

Immsouane Beach

On the way home, Mohammed stopped so we could check out the argan tree. It's a very resistant tree and can live from 150 to 200 years. The fruits of the Argan tree are green. They look like an olive but are larger and rounder. Inside, there is a hard shell nut. The nut can contain up to three kernels. The oil production is a very hard process which was until recently completely done by hand.
First, they extract the nut of the fruit then cracked the hard nut's shell to collect the kernels. We were told that they used to take the fruit out of goat dung because it was easier to crack the shell. The nuts are roasted by mild heating and once cooled, ground in a stone rotary quern, a solid rock basin with a solid rock arm which is turned by hand, (usually by little old ladies with biceps like Arnold Schwarzenneger), then they add water and make a dough, and extract the oil from the dough. The argan oil is slightly darker than olive oil and has a nutty flavor and can be eaten or used as a beauty product. I like it as both (minus the goat dung).

Argan Trees