ESSAOUIRA WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THE LAST 11 DAYS

WEATHER: A mild 28C – heaven in Morocco

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: The morning tour of this charming town

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing – we are in Morocco heaven after all

BUYS OF THE DAY: Where do I start – this place is the cheapest we have seen all trip

WORD OF THE DAY: We LOVE Essaouira

We haven’t been here 24 hours and we all love this place.  It helps the weather has dropped between 15-20C and a sea breeze pretty much follows you everywhere you go.  We had a walking tour this morning that showed us the main points of interest of the city. 

We started at the busy fishing port.  As the boats come in with their catches there were people milling around to buy a fish for their dinner that night.  It was an organized chaos and great to see how their daily life runs.  So with fish, comes the seagulls and there were what seemed like hundreds all flying around hoping to steal something from the dock.  They seemed a lot bigger than the ones back home and we were waiting for one of them to ‘drop’ a little something unexpected onto us as we walked around the port.  I am happy to report we managed to escape unscathed.  It was a cute port if there is such a thing, with bright blue boats all moored, with the bigger boats to one side, men fixing their nets, seagulls swooping around and the old Portuguese Gates as a back drop – pretty cool indeed.

Essaouira presents itself as a city full of culture: several small art galleries are found all over the town. Since 1998, the Gnaoua Festival of World Music is held in Essaouira, normally in the last week of June, so we missed it by 4 days. It brings together artists from all over the world. Although focussed on gnaoua music, it includes rock, jazz and reggae. Dubbed as the "Moroccan Woodstock" it lasts four days and attracts annually around 450,000 spectators. In the early 1950s film director and actor Orson Welles stayed at the Hotel des Iles just south of the town walls during the filming of his 1952 classic version of "Othello.  Essaouira is also renowned for its kitesurfing and windsurfing, with the powerful trade wind blowing almost constantly onto the protected, almost waveless, bay.

Once we had walked through the gates there were the fish cleaners.  So once you had bought your fish, if you didn’t want to clean the fish yourself you can take it to them and he will do all the ‘messy’ work for you and you can go home with fresh filleted fish.  Not a bad system and I am sure the whole process is not that expensive.

We walked through the Jewish Mellah with its beautiful doorways and alleyways.  Moroccan Jews were encouraged to settle in the town and handle the trade with Europe.  Jews once comprised 40% of the population, and the Jewish quarter, or mellah contain many old synagogues. The town also has a large Jewish cemetery. The city flourished until the caravan trade died.  We also visited the Scala aka the fort, for 12 years, Mohammed III directed a French engineer, Théodore Cornut, and several other European architects and technicians, to built the fortress and city along modern lines. Originally called "Souira", "The small fortress", the name then became "Es-Saouira", "The beautifully designed".  There were also cannons that Dutch made in La Hague in 1744, was installed in Essaouira – pretty impressive.

I can’t express just how pleasant the weather is here and it was great to be able to walk around and not have to worry about the sun, how hot it is or all of us fighting for a piece of shade.  Our last stop was a co-operative that promotes local artists and at the same time gives piece of mind that the visitor is buying quality and also getting value for money as well.  They had a silver shop and also a Thuya wood shop.  This wood is the most precious wood that Morocco has to offer and it is known to be better than cedar.  It was a great tour and Hassan our guide was laugh a minute!  This really is a charming town.

We had free time for the rest of the afternoon.   The guys actually did the fish option for lunch. They went to a fish market; purchased some seafood and then they went to a restaurant that cooks your fish for you for a small fee.  Aimes, Susan, Georgie and I were a little over the fish, so we didn’t join the rest, but apparently it was a good lunch.  We decided to pass on Moroccan altogether and went and had pizza for lunch.  I can’t say it was the best pizza I have ever had, but it was delicious and it was nice to have a break from the tagines, which up until yesterday I had been eating a tagine Kefte every day of the trip.  They are just delicious and it is basically meatballs in a tomato sauce cooked in a clay pot (Tangine).  Now that is DELICIOUS and I will miss that when I leave.

It was a little bit of a shopping afternoon and I can honestly say I haven’t really had one of them at all on my trip.  Mainly due to space in my bag, but also most of the countries up until now, I have been to before, so if there was anything to buy in those places I have done it already.  Where Morocco is all new, new things to buy that I haven’t seen before, so I have gone a little wild knowing that I will be heading to the post office tomorrow to send all my gear back including the 4 tagines I bought in Fez and my carpet I bought in Todra Gorge.  It made a nice change I could buy some stuff, and it was cheap, so there was no breaking the budget either – what a great way to spend an afternoon.

I then headed back to the hotel, as I had to re-arrange my bag.  I had to work out what was going to be sent home and what was going to be packed, this was the million dollar question.  I actually did okay and I rekon, including the stuff I have bought, there is about 10kg I need to ship home, so I am expecting the postage bill to be around the $150 but to get rid of the side pack and to be sending what I am home, I will be happy with that and think it is definitely worth the cost.  Now to re-pack the big back pack without the additional room on the front and the few items that made it from the side pack.  After about an hour, it looks like it is all going to fit in okay.  My main backpack is still going to be over the 20kg, but once again I can’t fit more than 23kg in there, so this is something I just cannot change at this point in time, so I will have to suck up any additional baggage charges that arise.  But once I arrive in London, I will be able to off load my winter things and all my dresses and ‘nice’ clothes at the Royal National storage, as these won’t be needed in Africa, so hopefully this will lighten my load a little more for the next 3 months and then I can collect them again in October on my return back to the UK / Paris.

I also found out today, after 5 schedule changes, my flight from Marrakech to Lisbon has been cancelled and is now leaving a day later.  Bugger.  So I went online to change my accommodation, transfers and my day tour and there is now a fee due to the lateness!!  Double bugger!  If I had of found out a day earlier there would have been no charge.  Anyway it means I now only get 3 nights in Lisbon instead of 4, but the upside is I now don’t have a midnight flight but a lunch time flight, so there is that silver lining again.  If TAP even think about charging me excess baggage when I check-in, I will certainly be saying something to some-one, and I can do it now with a bit more confidence, as I now don’t have the additional hand luggage of the side pack.

We leave Essaouira tomorrow afternoon at 3.15pm.  We will be travelling on a public bus that takes 3 hours to Marrakech.  After the last train we caught nearly 2 weeks ago that wasn’t air conditioned, we are expecting the worst and with the temperatures there in the mid-forties, we are all a little ‘bummed’ that we have to leave Essaouira, but we are now on the last 3 nights of tour and we know it all has to come to an end eventually, so we will head back to the city again after 13 days in small villages and towns.  I think it may come as a bit of a shock getting back to the BIG smoke.

I have to repeat I am super stoked to have rid myself of my side pack – it really is quite liberating that I am now only travelling with 2 bags – it’s a small thing I know, but trust me it was a pretty big deal for me.  WOO HOO!!!!  I feel like a new woman – sad I know – but I don’t care.

On a side note: Susan’s bites have gotten worse and had to go to a doctor to get them seen to.  It looks like she has had a reaction to what ever has bitten her and the bites have turned into red ugly welts and they were painful and super itchy.  So she got a shot of quarter zone in the butt from the doctor, so we will see what happens overnight.  No good – no good at all.