It will be golf for the next couple of days, and I can’t wait to take another run at this Al Houara golf course. I’ve booked the first tee time for both days……..9:00am although Mohammed the young guy we check in with knows we will be the only group going off at that time, and there will not be anyone behind us for at least an hour. I just can’t believe this place doesn’t get more play……..but first we must have some fuel in the tank.
Back to the buffet. There is an incredible amount of food laid out here, and three cooks making omelettes, fresh eggs, pancakes, crepes………and, as a sausage oficianado I must say theirs suck, but plenty of other things to eat…….don’t worry I am getting fed. The bread station has two of those rotary conveyor toasters and there is a lovely big loaf on the board that I carve a slice from and set it on the tracks. Away she goes, but after the usual minute or so it does not appear on the tray below……the last thing I want to be is the guy who gets his bread stuck in the toaster so the whole restaurant smells like burnt toast all morning. I wave down some help, and we find my slice on the floor way back underneath the table……..he does some jiggy jiggy at the back of the toaster, slides it back in place, and gives me the thumbs up. I tried one more slice and the same thing happened, so I’m not pressing my luck…….I’ll have a roll please.
Warmups on the driving range before heading over to the first tee…….I feel guilty taking a divot as it is so perfect out there. I have come back to my senses and will play the gold tees today at 5,900 metres……6,400 yards…..which should be a lot more manageable than my first attempt. The ladies are still finding the course difficult from the forward tees at 5,500 yards even though they are striking the ball well……just hard to score, especially with tough terrain and velcro rough around the greens.
I have gained some intel about the course and this big unfinished shell of a building overlooking the property. There is a group of 14 golfers here from a private club in Belgium, with two of their pro’s along providing lessons and playing in different groups each day. Chatting with the pro’s, they tell me it was Qatari money that built the course, and the empty shell was to be the clubhouse +++, possibly some shopping, banquet facilities, etc.. The bad thing was that they opened in 2021 in the midst of COVID, and really haven’t recovered from that dismal beginning. Too bad.
I know a lot of you will be interested, so here we go…….most of my prices are in dirhams, Moroccan $, and they equate across the board at roughly 10% of US dollars……1,000 dirham = 100 US…….after that, you do the math.
⁃ every morning I pay Mohammed 1,600 dirham for two green fees and a golf cart
⁃ our sea view room at the hotel…….very nice but not over the top in any way 1,900 dirham/night….Sib at 1,600 garden view
⁃ dinner at the buffet was 400 dirham and if properly prepared, you could walk out after dinner with that much food in your jeans for a late night snack
⁃ car and driver charges are very reasonable and I’m not even second guessing not having a rental car.
We don’t think Morocco will stay this way for long…….sooner or later the word will get out……it might already be out…….we love it here.
I’m gonna let the pictures do the talking with my captions for the rest of this one, but please follow through to the end to catch our apres golf excursion yesterday. I finally got the goats to take a cart, selling them on the fact that we could play faster if I didn’t have to wait for them to walk to their balls all frickin’ day long. My sales pitch was that they could always go for a nice long beach walk after saving an extra hour on the golf course…….worked like a charm. I had taken a look at restaurants off the property as alternatives to the buffet and a la carte offerings at the hotel…….I came up with one called Chez Abdou on the beach just north of us…….no menu…..whatever they catch that day is what you can choose from to eat…….pictures on the web tell me that includes obviously fresh fish ( sea bass, sole, snapper, etc), calamari, and shrimp, but also a mean looking salad and buckets of French fries. Getting there could be a long sandy hike for me, so we decide to rent the ATV’s, or as Sibylle would say, the AVT’s. Story under the pictures.
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