Morocco
Oualidia
A saltwater lagoon where oyster beds gleam at low tide and flamingos wade.
Halfway between El Jadida and Safi the coast opens into a run of lagoons some forty kilometres long, and Oualidia sits at the far end of it. A dune keeps the Atlantic out, so the water inside stays flat and clear while the surf works the beaches on the seaward side, where the advice is to stay out of it. Walk the top of that dune and you have the ocean on your left and the oyster parks on your right the whole way.
Moroccan oyster farming began on this coast in the early 1950s, at Sidi Moussa first and then Oualidia, where the lagoon's sheltered salt water suited long cultivation. Behind the beds, salt pans first laid out in 1938 add another human geometry to the wetland. The complex has been a Ramsar site since January 2005, and mid-autumn brings gulls, sandpipers, stilts, plovers, ducks and flamingos through on the southward migration. Winter upwelling draws dolphins offshore, so one walk along the dune can hold aquaculture, salt, birds and open Atlantic at once.
Couple
Take a kayak up the channels through the glasswort early, when a quiet boat gets you closer to the birds than any hide would, and keep well off the two sea entrances on a falling tide. Later, walk the dune north with the Atlantic on one side and the parks on the other.
Family
The lagoon side gives families the shallow, sheltered water this coast almost never offers. Walk the dune between lagoon and Atlantic, then let autumn bird migration provide the day's moving spectacle.
- Oysters are grown for close to four years in the lagoon, then finished under ultraviolet light and chlorine before they are sold.
- Moroccan oyster farming began on this coast in the early 1950s, making cultivation part of the lagoon's modern history.
- Around mid-October the birds arrive in tens of thousands, gulls and sandpipers and stilts and plovers and ducks and flamingos, on a major stop of the southward migration.
- In winter, pods of about fifty dolphins work the upwelling offshore, and they are now an easier sight from the dune than a fishing boat.
Lagoon oysters shucked beside their growing beds, brightened with lemon and a glass of local white.
Fisherman's soup with crisp croutons and a spoonful of red aioli at a restaurant overlooking the lagoon.
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