Essaouria is a beautiful little beach town that is much more touristy than the other beach town, Sidi Ifni, that I visited just a few weeks ago. It is a medina town (walled) and has these great little alley ways inside the medina that remind me a lot of my time in Thailand. The streets are filled with gift shops, patisseries, café’s and other assorted little shops. It wasn’t super busy when we were there, I think we came just before tourist season kicked off, but I can imagine it being extremely chlosterphopic when the medina gets more crowded. The other great part about the city is that it is very used to European tourists. For someone visiting Morocco and wanting a “real” Moroccan experience, these touristy places are not ideal, but for someone looking for a sense of normalcy, it was ideal. Its nice to walk down the street and not seem out of place for a change. Mind you, the people of my village are extremely welcoming and kind to me, but there are still may interested people who can’t help but stare.
Martin coordinated the renting of a great little riad (open in the middle) apartment in the middle of the medina. The place was great with plenty of rooms, beds, a fully stocked kitchen and even a rooftop terrace. It was also extremely cheap when split between the people we had staying there, which was a nice change from some of the more expensive hotels in Agadir.
We spent most of the weekend exploring the medina, walking around the beach and fishing port and just enjoying some time spent together. The 5 of us spent 8+ hours a day together for nearly 2 months, and then we were separated pretty drastically, so it was nice to catch up. We even visited a little co-op festival that was going on, similar to the festival I worked when I was in Sidi Ifni with my local co-op. Of course we bought some more Goat cheese and chowed down on that with our fresh baked bread from the local patisserie.
There was a little English run “Mexican” restaurant, that didn’t serve anything close to Mexican food, that we ate lunch at and it was one of the more delicious meals I have had in Morocco. On Saturday night, some of the other volunteers in the Essa region cooked up some stir fry and it was great. It made me look forward to getting the chance to start cooking on my own. Mind you, having someone cook three meals a day for you is nice, but nice like dorm food. You eat it because its there, but given another option you jump at the opportunity.
It turned out to be a great weekend, despite the hellish road we had to take to get there. As far as mileage goes, Essaouria isn’t too terribly far from were we live, but the roads are TERRIBLE. The ride from my site to Tiznit and then onto Agadir is not bad in the slightlest. Once we got in the cab to head from Agadir to Essa, I knew we were in trouble. First off, our cab driver was trying really hard to commit suicide, I can only assume. We were easly doing 100+km/ hour around these hairpin turns through the mountains next to the ocean. The other thing to remember is that there are 4 people in the back of a normal sized car and its HOT outside. None of which helped my progressing carsickness. About ¾ of the way through the 2.5+hour trip, our driver stopped to get gas and all 4 of us in the back, flew out of the car embracing the cool air and stable ground. The greatest part of this cab ride was the fact that whenever there was a bump or something in the road that would hurt his taxi, he slowed to a crawl to cross it, but anything that involved almost certain death, he sped up for. It was quite a hilarious experience. The ride back was much better, only it was hotter.
When we got back to Agadir, I asked the taxi driver to drop us off at the Marjane, so we made our obligatory stop and picked up some American snacks (ie Doritos, gummy bears, Oreos, cheese and Snicker’s bars) and I even got a pillow! The pillow has made all of the difference. The coolest part was that next to the Marjane is a little café that is remarkably similar to a college cafeteria with pretty good food and FREE WiFi. The WiFi was so fast I couldn’t get over it! After we spent too much time at the Marjane and café, we headed back to Tiznit and back to our villages.
All-in-all it was a great weekend and a nice chance to see a new place and catch up with some friends.
Love you all.
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