Morocco Part 2: Skydiving PACMA Beni Mellal

For the purposes of regular travel, Morocco is often bundled in with Europe. When you are checking and double-checking your arrangements, you might find that your travel insurance, breakdown cover, phone breakage policy, and other such affairs need no further investment. This feels true and fair as you convoy down the toll roads with white box camper vans from Schengen zone nations, past new-build rest stops, and global fast food establishments. The further South and deeper inland you go, the more things feel like a proper adventure, with the familiarity of usual procedure slowly ebbing away to be replaced with the full North Africa experience. The odd donkey cart becomes the default mode of transit, the towns get grubby, vibrant and exciting, and it becomes a long time since you have seen an old German couple in a Hymer.

Beni Mellal is in central Morocco and has few tourists, which means that when parachutes start appearing in the sky it can draw a crowd. Outside the perimeter of the airport, locals make a picnic of it – heading down as families to watch the action in the otherwise quiet sky. There are a few commercial flights a week here, causing the dropzone to pause while the single daily budget airline arrival does its business. The airport proper was built in 2014, but the location has served the parachute club for decades – with a hangar decorated with a small-scale but rich history. With police and guard towers looking to the perimeter, everyone must leave after sunset – but a shabby but friendly hotel in the city serves as a base of operations for all the arriving and departing groups.

In a similar way to Tarodaunt, Beni Mellal is open for jumping when the aircraft and equipment are available from an operation in France. Here the connection is primarily with Arcachon, with many of the staff remaining here for the Winter months to both work and enjoy the escape to somewhere else. The busiest period is during the event built and organised by the Arcachon locals – with well over a hundred French skydivers present and a good few Moroccans also – yet across the spread of days and weeks that jumping can be achieved here one can find Frenchies from dropzones all over their home country – plus maybe the odd wanderer from somewhere else.

Taking the tour further afield is a great thing to be able to do. The presence of a good quality demo tent can have a very positive impact on a community that has not had a visit in a while, as everybody present is keen to engage with some industry attention. The balance of value is largely understood within the greater skydiving community – being such that it is not going to cost anything in either direction to be present on site. Your community will benefit from the visit and the brand gets solid promotional value in return. When a place has never experienced the presence of a manufacturer before, things can get busy once people engage. During back-to-back dropzone visits, it can be easy to overlook that not everywhere understands automatically why you are there. Any confusion gets quickly smoothed over after only the first few hours of only giving things out and taking no money in return.

Heading to Morocco for an adventure presents some interesting alternatives to the traditional escape destinations for Winter skydiving. Getting there is pretty easy, with cheap flights to various cities, or an easy ferry from Spain. You can spend if you like, but for the most part, things are cheap – plus away from the tourist hotspots the anticipated anxiety of difficult interactions proves easy instead. Any part of Africa can be challenging for the soft visitors of Western Europe, but overall the places where dropzones periodically exist in Morocco are fun, friendly, and feel generally safe. The French skydiving community has made a good solution for the Winter shutdown at home, as down here the aircraft and the gear get used, staff so inclined can relocate for work, jumpers get a warm place to holiday, and nobody goes crazy trying to jump at home.