Morocco
Tarfaya
Where Saint-Exupéry wrote from a tin-roofed airmail station on the edge of the Sahara.
The wind never stops, the sand gets into everything, and the only reason this outpost on the edge of the Sahara is remembered is because a French airmail pilot named Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was stationed here in 1927 and, between flights, began writing the stories that became The Little Prince. A small museum occupies the restored airstrip. The sea is rough. The town is quiet. The sky is the kind of enormous that makes you understand why a man here might write about a boy on a planet.
Tarfaya is a coastal town in the Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra region, roughly midway between Tan-Tan and Laâyoune. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry served here as an airmail pilot for Aéropostale in 1927-28, and his experiences in this remote posting informed his later writings, including The Little Prince and Southern Mail. A small museum dedicated to Saint-Exupéry and the Aéropostale service occupies a building near the former airstrip. The town's other notable feature is the Casa Mar, a partially submerged British trading post visible offshore. Tarfaya is remote, windswept, and sparsely visited — its appeal is literary and atmospheric rather than conventional.
Solo
A pilgrimage for readers — standing where Saint-Exupéry stood, wind-blasted at the edge of the Sahara, understanding the loneliness that produced one of the most beloved books ever written.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was stationed here as an airmail pilot in 1927-28, writing letters to his wife.
- A small museum and the remains of the Casa Mar (sea house) fortress commemorate the aviator era.
- The town sits on a windswept Atlantic headland where the Sahara meets the ocean.
- Virtually no tourists reach Tarfaya — the isolation is its own reward.
Simple grilled fish and Sahrawi tea at the one restaurant in town.
Camel meat and root vegetable stew cooked in the desert wind.
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