Mirleft's Kasbah Beach

Mirleft has been my home base for the last few days, but today was my first day to visit the beach just a 5 minute walk from the house where we are staying. It is an amazingly beautiful, clean, and well-organized beach. I say well-organized because chaos usually reigns on Moroccan beaches, but this beach has blue shade umbrellas planted in neat rows, well-spaced apart, clean toilets, and other facilities nearby. Look at the view! ---

To get to the beach, you have to walk down about 150 steps. The wall supporting these steps was decorated by a group of young people promoting international understanding. I found this great blog about their painting of this wall. The words on the wall, from left to right, are written in Amazigh (Berber), French, Arabic, and English. The French reads "La pollution ne connaît pas les frontières" ("Pollution doesn't know borders") and the English says "We share this world". I just loved the messages and having found their blog before I went to the beach, knowing the spirit behind their message --- it was all very moving:

Of course, once settled on the beach, we got to see the mandatory beach camel:

I guess I shouldn't be too sad for this camel. There are worse things than walking along a beach all day, carrying tourists. He could have been someone's dinner.

This beach is known as Kasbah Beach because you have a full view of the kasbah (fortress/castle) of Mirleft in the distance behind the beach. I really wanted to drive up to the kasbah and then climb up to the ruins, but there was no time on this trip. Perhaps this is a sign I will get to come back some day? Here is the view of the kasbah from the beach:

Here are some more pictures of the cliff over the beach, the stairs to the beach, and the message on the stairs. Of course, you'll see me and my trusty "Fund for Teachers" bag:

We left the beach around 7pm to go back and get ready for our evening with the Moroccan Human Rights Association (see the next blog posting for more details).