10 Days
Road to Dakhla
Dakhla sits on a peninsula where the Sahara meets the sea and the wind has been blowing since before anyone arrived to notice — and it has not paused to check whether anyone has arrived since. Getting there is the journey. Through fishing villages where the catch dries on racks in the sun. Past Plage Blanche's forty kilometres of untouched sand. Across the Western Sahara's empty highways where the road runs straight to the vanishing point and your thoughts stretch to match. Military checkpoints wave you through. Camel crossings appear without warning, which keeps the driving interesting and the camels indifferent. You arrive at the edge of Africa — a lagoon of impossible turquoise, kitesurfers carving tracks across flat water, the wind constant and warm. Ten days south. The further you go, the simpler things get. The simpler things get, the harder it is to leave.
Your Route
Day 1
Agadir → Sidi Ifni
South past Tiznit the coast turns wild. Fishing villages appear between cliffs — nets drying on rocks, blue boats pulled above the tideline. Sidi Ifni materialises in Art Deco and sea mist, a former Spanish enclave where the architecture remembers a different flag. The main square still has the bones of colonial geometry. The beach curves below town, long and windswept. You eat grilled fish at a plastic table overlooking the Atlantic, the waiter bringing bread still warm, the oil green and peppery. Spain handed this town back in 1969. The buildings stayed. The light stayed. The fish got better.
Day 2
Sidi Ifni → Guelmim
An inland drive from Sidi Ifni to Guelmim, transitioning from the coast to the pre-Saharan interior.
Day 3
Guelmim → Plage Blanche
The track west from Guelmim finds the coast at the emptiest beach in Morocco. Plage Blanche stretches forty kilometres — white sand, no buildings, no people, the Atlantic rolling in with nobody watching. The dunes behind the beach rise high enough to block the wind. You walk until your own footprints are the only evidence of humanity in any direction. The sand is cool and fine as flour. The water is cold enough to gasp. This is what coastline looked like before anyone thought to build on it.
Day 4
Plage Blanche → Guelmim
East from the white beach. The sand gives way to gravel, then scrub, then the track that finds the road that finds Guelmim. The emptiness stays with you — forty kilometres of untouched coastline now behind you, already feeling like something you dreamed. Guelmim appears where the trade routes converge, a market town that still holds a camel souk on Saturdays, the animals brought down from the desert by Sahrawi herders whose sense of distance makes yours feel like a hobby.
Day 5
Guelmim → Khenifiss
West toward the Atlantic through country that thins to almost nothing. Scrub and dust and a sky so wide it presses down on you. Then Khenifiss appears — a lagoon of impossible blue behind the dunes, flamingos standing in the shallows like a painting someone left in the desert. The silence here is total except for wingbeats and water. Morocco's wildest coastline stretches in both directions, empty, unsignposted, the sand untouched. You are standing where the Sahara meets the Atlantic and neither has won.
Day 6
Khenifiss → Akhfennir
East from the lagoon. The flamingos shrink in the mirror until they're just pink points against blue water. The road follows the coast through country so empty your mind goes quiet without trying. Wind turbines turn on the ridge. Akhfennir appears — a fishing village on the edge of nothing, where the daily catch comes in and the Atlantic never rests. The café serves coffee thick and sweet. The fishermen mend nets with hands that know rope the way pianists know keys.
Day 7
Akhfennir → Tarfaya
South along the emptiest stretch of coast in Morocco. The Atlantic on your right, the Sahara on your left, and between them a road that runs straight as a held breath. Akhfennir disappears in the mirror. Wind turbines turn slowly against a sky so pale it barely qualifies as blue. Tarfaya appears low on the horizon — the town where Saint-Exupéry was stationed, where the airmail pilots refuelled before crossing the desert. A rusting ship sits in the shallows. The wind has never stopped here. It polishes everything.
Day 8
Tarfaya → Dakhla
A long southbound coastal journey from Tarfaya to Dakhla along the Atlantic Sahara.
Day 9
Dakhla → Guelmim
The long road north. Hours of Western Sahara scroll past the windows — sand, tarmac, occasional outpost, then more sand. The emptiness is not oppressive. It is expansive. Your thoughts stretch to fit the landscape. Somewhere past Tan-Tan the country begins to thicken — scrub appears, then a hill, then a village. Guelmim materialises where Morocco gathers itself again, a market town at the crossroads of coast and deep desert. The café serves harira thick with lentils and the warmth spreads through your chest. You have crossed the emptiest corridor in North Africa. The silence stays with you like a second language.
Day 10
Guelmim → Sidi Ifni
West to the coast through the Anti-Atlas foothills. The road climbs and drops through dry valleys, argan trees twisted by decades of wind, villages where women sell amlou — almond butter mixed with argan oil and honey — in recycled jars by the roadside. Sidi Ifni appears on the cliff edge, Art Deco facades bleached by salt and sun, the old Spanish cinema still standing though the projector stopped decades ago. Below town the beach curves wide and empty. The fish market sells the morning catch by the kilo. You eat it grilled, on a terrace, watching the Atlantic turn silver at dusk.
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