WHERE ARE WE ANNE?: PUSHING ON TO THE SAHARA

LA GITE DE PALMERAI - RISSANI - TISSARDMINE

THE STUDIO, CAFE TISSARDMINE

CAFE TISSARDMINE, MOROCCO

SUNDAY 17TH NOVEMBER 2013

A couple of hours drive got us from La Palmerai to Rissani to meet Karen who runs Cafe Tissardmine in the tiny village of Tissardmine on the edge of the northern Sahara Desert.

We parked the car near a busy market in Rissani but before we could text Karen to say we had arrived, she stepped across the street to greet us. We had lunch in Rissani and wandered through the markets while Karen did some business and used the internet signal that she could only get in town.

Tissardmine is 17 kilometres out of Rissani. You leave the bitumen and then leave the dirt roads to pick one of the many tyre tracks that heads very much off road across the flat stony ground.

Karen and her business partner Youssef have recently built a series of buildings and accomodation on the edge of a tiny Berber village. Solar powered with water from the well in the oasis, they are very much off-grid. A lot of thought and love has gone in to the design and execution of what is a very lovely, very comfortable place in a staggeringly beautiful landscape. The buildings are made of bricks and Pise, a mixture of sand, clay, mud and straw similar to the rammed earth used in my own house in Australia. The complex is perched near the edge of the golden orange sands of the Erg Chebbi dunes of the northern Sahara. Indeed, the sand drifts against the walls are quietly building.

Your money buys you full board as it's nicely isolated. Karen runs the place as an artist retreat as well with residencies available for artists. Karen is a gem and so unobtrusive that mint tea left at our door each morning went cold because we didn't know she had been. All in all it was one of the most memorable stays and location that we have had.