Today I allowed myself to get up a little later than usual. I was woken up by the rooster and the morning call to prayer at around 6.30 but I fell asleep as soon as the eager chicken and the muezzin stopped their invocations.
I woke up again at 8.50, got dressed and went up for the rooftop breakfast.
There are now five Polish people at the hostel, all in their twenties. They were talking, I listened. It was fascinating, because I quickly realised that I was unfamiliar with this kind of young Polish people.They were not the same Polish people I worked with in London. They were much more like the young English people I knew, but they spoke Polish.
After breakfast, I followed my son’s advice to look for ‘trash goats’ who lived at the very top of the village and ate rubbish, hence the name.
I turn left of my front door, kept walking up, and sure enough, I found a group of goats. They were eating rubbish, just as my son said they would be.
After the goats, I went all the way down to the main street, you need to be fit to walk up and down Taghazout.
I had the whole day ahead of me all to myself, until dinner date with my son.
I decided to start with another climb up, this time to the skate park. It was worth it. A great viewpoint and the skaters were on top of their game. I stayed there for at least an hour, snapping happy.
After that, I did some trinket shopping. Bought a few pieces, not sure now if they are going to be gifts for other people or for myself. I did some half-hearted haggling with the sellers, got the first asking prices down a notch, which I am pretty sure was still well above their last price.
The shopping done, at least for today, I felt hungry, so I went for a simple lunch of cheese omelette and a coffee.
After lunch, I decided that my frantic morning activities, the goats, the skate park, and the shopping needed to be balanced out by a relaxing afternoon at the beach. I walked past the main surfing crowd, paid 30 dirhams for a deckchair, and read my book for a few of hours.
Deckchairs are folded away at 6pm, so I got walking again. Sunset was at 7.29, I made sure I got a good view of it at the small beach in Taghazout centre and let myself be mesmerised by the daily show of the big ball of light going down.
After sunset I met my son and his friend for dinner at Cafe Tayoughte. Chicken tagine and Moroccan tea, lots of talking and laughter. I got to my hostel around 9.45pm, went through the daily black tea ritual on he rooftop, WhatsApped with family back in England, and read Flowers for Algernon before sleep.
The best thing about travelling solo is that I can do only the things I want to do and at the pace I want to do them. I choose how long to sit over breakfast, without having to respond to ‘shall we make a move then?’, or having to be the one asking the question if my companions take taking their time to an absurd level.
Today I chose how long to stay at the skate park and I chose how to fill my whole day. In the evening I felt that I did everything exactly how I wanted to.
The worst thing about travelling solo, for me, is having nobody to share my reactions to what I see and how I feel the moment I see and feel it. Today, that meant nobody to comment to on the skate boarders amazing skills, and nobody to discuss how close I should come up to the goats, especially that there were two baby goats among the group and perhaps a protective goat parent might try to chase me away if I came too close.
If it hadn’t been for dinner with my son, the only conversation I would have had all day today would have been with a metal detectorist guy, who was also the person in charge of the deckchairs. He showed me his loot, several old looking half-rusted coins. He tried to tell me something about them, but he had no English, and my French is, well, let’s not dwell on it. He said something with the word fifty in it.
The freedom to do what I want and the aloneness of it clash constantly in my mind.
I cannot decide if I like it or not. I enjoy the free moments, and I love Taghazout, I think that it is one of the perfect places to go solo. Logically, I am also aware that in a few short days I will be back home, no longer solo. The jury is out. I will keep debating the topic tomorrow, another day with me, myself and I.Â
Ania Heasley 