beach – Ania Heasley

Time flows differently here. The practice of looking at your watch every few minutes is virtually unknown. If you only have half an hour for a coffee, or an hour for a tagine, you might run out of time in some Taghazout seafront restaurants.

Cats are everywhere. On the beach, on the chair next to you in a cafe, under your table. There are thousands of them and new ones are born all the time. Not all of them are in the best of health, some of them look like they’ve been in wars.

Taghazout is a cash only village. Leave your cards safely locked away in your room with your passport.

Everything is cheap, but because it’s so cheap, it’s only too easy to lose track of how much you spend a day on all these cheap things.

When you are buying souvenirs, and you hear that something costs 200 dirhams, please say 150 or go as low as you dare. Mild haggling is expected as part of every transaction with street sellers. You will know when you’ve gone too low, because they will stop smiling and will shake their heads firmly. I was mindful not to go too low in Taghzaout. I did that years ago in Egypt, the seller walked away, and as he did, he shouted at me ‘you no good woman!’. I felt ashamed and very small. Since then, I have probably overpaid for many bracelets and fridge magnets, just to make sure I did not offend a North African market trader again.

Be careful who and what you photograph. Do not try to take sneaky snaps of old men in their hooded jalebi robes. The ones who look most Instagram worthy already know it and they do not wish to feature in your reel. When they spot what you are doing, they will shake their walking sticks at you in a menacing way, and will give you a dirty look and you will feel ashamed of yourself, as you should.

Dress code. To state the obvious, Morocco is a Muslim country. You will be more comfortable wearing loose modest clothing to blend in and to show respect for the culture. Leave sexy outifts for Magaluf or somewhere they will be appreciated. Tshirts and 3/4 trousers or long skirts rather than short shorts and revealing vests in town. Beachwear on the beach only.

I am staying at Onda Surf hostel. Every place in Taghazout seems to be a surf hostel.

If you don’t surf, don’t do yoga, don’t sketch or at the very least are not half way through writing a book, why are you even here?

Onda Surf offers the perfect view of the sea and a long stretch of the Sable D’Or beach. Additionally, I was tricked by booking.com clever photography of Onda’s dreamy balcony into thinking this was going to be my private balcony. It is not. It’s a communal rooftop, a focal point of every surf hostel in Taghazout. Rooftop is where breakfast is served, from 9am to 10.30. Rooftop is where guests bring their sketchbooks, their George Orwells, and their surf stories. It’s where they mingle. It’s where I watch them and where I write.

It’s also where I am most acutely aware of my age, because no matter how earnestly my son tries to convince me otherwise, hostels are ruthlessly agist, even if they do not mean to be. They make me feel I had missed the vibe by 25 years, give or take a few.

In the evenings, I loiter on the rooftop anyway. I come up every night after dinner to make my Lipton Yellow Label.

I align my tea time with the communal dinner time, which gives me a chance to eavesdrop shamelessly whilst my tea mug gives me a reason to be here and the feeling that I belong on the rooftop too. Almost.

The other guests are all surfers, they come from all over Europe. They have strong bodies, piercings, tattoos, and flawless skin. A lot of them smoke, which was a surprise. They wear cool baggy clothes and are all so bloody young. Quite a few of them are here on solo adventures, with no definite end date. They are living their best lives, and they use the rooftop dinner time to swap stories of how their day went.

They are friendly to me, and we have had some perfunctory chats, but I feel acutely out of place. Not badly enough to give up my rooftop tea time, but pretty awkward.

Taghazout beach is a beginner surfer’s paradise. Surfboards are everywhere, and surfers get in your way, cut in front of you along narrow winding streets of Taghzaout, akin to cyclists in London.

They give themselves the right of way, and if you know what’s good for you, you do not argue with a surfboard.

Today I went to Anchor Point, some 20 minutes walk out of town in the opposite direction to the vast long beach on one end of it. Do not ever ask me for directions.

I was told Anchor Point was where more experienced surfers strutted their rubber-clad stuff, so I thought I’d check it out.

I perched myself on a comfy rock, and stared at the sea littered with black figures gyrating acrobatically in gusts of wind. It took me two hours to realise that my brain had not registered a single full surf run. I totally zoned out and could not zone back in.

I got up and walked back to the village. It was time for another cappuccino.

Taghazout has a vegan cafe, called Red Clay. I made a mistake and asked for normal milk with my cappuccino, but normal turned out to be oats milk at the Red Clay.

Put that in your pipe, Costa.