I know.
I can’t say it either.
Essaouira… “Ewe serious?”
Actually, it sounds sort of like “Es-sweera.”
It has every vowel in the name.
Bet’cha didn’t notice that one.
So does “Sequoia.”
Bet’cha didn’t know that one either.
I could go on and on. As my friend says, “Did you know?”
Our last breakfast in the beautiful dining room at Riad Eden, then we walked up to the Petit Taxi stand and chose a driver.
"English?"
"Non. Francaise."
“Combien, pro SupraTour station de bus, s'il vous plait?”
-- What is the cost to SupraTour bus station?
“Quatre-vingts.”
— Eighty
“Non. Trente.”
— No. Thirty.
“Oui. Trente.”
I’m getting better at this already.
We grabbed the 9:00 SupraTours “Confort” bus for the 2.5 hour ride to the coast. This is the national bus service, and the busses are huge and comfortable. The regular bus costs $8 USD for the trip, but we splurged and bought the first class, “Confort” tickets for $12.
That’s because I am a rich American.
General impressions on the 2.5 hour ride to the coast:
I got my book out to read, but didn’t even look at it because the view out the window was so interesting.
Morocco is a lot like Mexico, new next to old next to rubble. Kind of like Albania too, in the building construction and deconstruction. But if you like Mexico, you’d like Morocco.
We head through palm groves. On one tree alongside the road, someone has their clothes hung on the branches to dry. A couple men are drinking tea by the side of the road; sitting on boxes they still look elegant. A donkey… or is it a burro? Hell, I don’t know. I will call them all donkeys from now on out. A donkey pulls a cart of hay right down the highway, and traffic is backed up behind it. Lots of little settlements, each with their own miniature minaret. Hay bales, stacked ten high, two side by side cross crossing, like that game Jenga. Bare dirt desert, flat, all the way to the far mountains, with only scattered bushes.
Herds of sheep, grazing on what? Bare dirt? Rocks? Tended by a lone shepherd sitting in the sun, dressed in robes and a hat, staring, staring, always staring…
Every home, no matter how rich or how poor and run down, torn apart; even the ones made of rock and mud, every home has a satellite dish.
Two farmers on one of those motorcycle - trucks, sorting out watermelons. The ground is littered with busted ones, guts bleeding bright red onto the dirt. A small olive plantation, walled in by a rock wall. A Palm oasis. A vineyard?
A vineyard!
A donkey (burro?) pulling a dump truck wagon. Really. A dump truck, but in the form of a wagon. I need one of those. And a mule.
Yes, perhaps these are all mules?
Moroccan music is softy playing on the bus radio, and the music soooo makes it seem real. A mud wall compound, smoke going from the outside fire, a lady in full robes is doing the wash in a tub, and there is what on the roof?
Satellite TV.
I don’t have satellite TV. I am behind the Moroccans!
Women walking along the road with huge bundles of ??? balanced on their heads. “Look, No hands!”
Modern bridges crossing over the freeway, their nicely paved ramps dropping down to dirt tracks on the desert floor. Most of the road signs are written in French as a courtesy, thank allah, because who can read that squiggly Arabic?
A failed highway beautification project consisting of a concrete median and a mile of dead palm trees in a perfect line.
More sheep, goats, burros - slash - donkeys slash - mules grazing in the bare rocks and dirt.
A man in dark robes strides purposefully across the dirt, miles from anything. Rock walls, rock pens, rock corrals, rocks piled up waiting their turn to be useful.
A rug merchant is a colorful splash; a rainbow blur in the brown as we zoom by. White dirt roads leading across the red dirt desert going to ? They are marked out by stone cairns, rocks stacked five high.
Halfway to Essaouira we stop at the Cafe Restaurant Atlas for a fifteen minute smoke, coke, pee and food break. Across the street they are building a new public housing project. Looks like Albania, buildings three, four stories high, unfinished. A mule pulls a cart of bricks down the street.
In this small settlement, out in the desert, there must be maybe a thousand people? Yet I count one, two, three, four, five minarets before I quit looking. My god. I mean, my allah. How many damn mosques do you need? Really? It reminds me of Europe, especially Italy, where it is like a contest to get a full fledged cathedral on every block. Can you say, “crowd control?”
The town itself is half in ruins, crumbling right before our eyes. The roar of the bus is probably knocking down another building. It must be market day as everyone has goods spread out along the side of the road.
It is dry and barren, but it is not hot, just pleasant out.
The closer we get to the coast, the greener and more lush it becomes. In this case however, “green” is a loosely applied term, and “lush” is all relative. The dirt turns to rock and dirt, and there are actual hillsides of olives, plots of corn, and gardens.
So many mules I feel like I am back in Hydra, Greece. Everyone rides the mules side - saddle.
Mules.
And yet, we are cruising along in air conditioned “confort,” on a huge bus with WiFi, airplane style seats, individual A/C and lighting, recking seats with rising leg supports like a LazyBoy, and a big screen TV up front, on a four lane modern superhighway.
Well, we arrived in Essaouira and Sandra, our host at Riad Remmy was there to meet us. It would be hard to find the Riad on your own, but what a gem of a place. The TripAdvisor reviews were right: this is one great little place to stay. Very charming and so well thought out, the ceiling of the riad is just open to the sky, so you can hear the seagulls cry and smell the ocean all the way through the interior. So we settled into our room, had coffee and fresh melon, bought a couple bottles of wine for the hot afternoon siestas, unpacked and set out to explore.
It is like a little maze, these cool, winding streets, and everything is so colorful, almost cute. There is none of the grabbing and yelling and commotion of Marrakesh, instead it is calm and quiet. Yes, there is the touristic area, but there is also the very artsy side to Essaouira, and it is charming. And the beach… the beach curves away in a huge, mile long arc fronting the Atlantic. This is a pretty well known surfing area as well.
This should be a fun two days!
So we whiled away the afternoon, wandering here and there, poking our noses into back alleys and dark corners where we didn’t belong, smelling the smells and being eye - assaulted by the outrageous colors; overwhelmed listening to the French and Arabic mix around us.
We ended up down by the port for a lunch of fresh caught fish cooked out on the grill. We went to fish seller #14 as Sandra recommended, and the next thing you know they pulled and cooked fresh sea bass, prawns and a big lobster, along with a nice tart salad of tomato, pepper and onion, some of the best bread we have had in years, and water. Gail loved the sea bass, and didn’t like the lobster so it turned out to be my lucky day as well. Sitting outside, by the waterfront, looking back at the fortress walls containing the town, this was really great.
Walking along the docks where the fishing boats are parked and pulled up for repairs, we saw men fixing old, or making new nets. Everyone was out selling fish: little shiny silver sardines, long eel types, skates, tuna, boxes of crab, shrimp and everything. Gail says, “Can you believe this all came from the ocean today?” and it is hard to take in the quantity of it all.
The cute little blue fishing boats that Essaouira is known for are all tied one to another in the harbor, like a solid cobalt raft across the water. The fish smell is overpowering, and a woman in full burka walks by carrying one fish with a finger hooked into a gill; a young guy carries a plastic bag full of flopping sardines home to momma.
And so the day quickly passes; we just keep finding more little places to explore and suddenly it is 20:00 and our legs are tired, and we have not yet looked for a place for a small dinner.
This is when we hit the jackpot.
Off the main street, a little sign points up a dark alley to Caravane Cafe. We go look at the posted menu; it’s in French but we can read it, and it sounds really good, really different, interesting in fact. We walk in and are greeted by a snappily dressed French man, who ushers us upstairs to a table. It is a converted Riad, so we are sitting, looking down into the center of the courtyard, with rooms off to the sides. There is art everywhere, the side rooms are like little private seating areas, each one different, each one filled with massive and intimate art treasures. The shutters and doors and railings are painted these crazy colors that all work together, there are lights strung up everywhere, and the trees in the lower courtyard reach up to us here. It all works together to provide a kind of exotic, yet relaxing ambiance, and we feel immediately at home.
The menu is filled with interesting sounding foods such as Pastilla of Chicken and Almonds (with honey and cinnamon, Tahitian Fish marinated in juice of limes and coconut milk, Wild West Indian Plate of avocado and cod fish cakes with Creole sauce, and Mozzarella di Bufala in salad. And so this is exactly what we order.
All these were just appetizers; we never actually made it to the main menu part.
While we were reading the menu they brought us a bowl of olives and marinated fresh vegetable slices, nice treat. Then, after ordering, we were presented with fresh calamari salads, so beautifully done that Gail, who will refuse to eat things like raw fish, actually ate and enjoyed hers. It was a real treat, and so fresh.
Well, the food was better tasting than it even sounded, and before you know it, the night was passing. A variety of great, live African - Reggae fusion music, a lady dancing to the music, a wandering magician who stopped table by table and made foam balls appear and disappear in my fist… we wanted the evening to go on…
So we ordered a lemon tart for dessert, along with espressos, and sat longer.
Sometime around 23:00 that pesky Imam started yelling over the top of it all, “Stop having fun! In the name of Allah! Come and pray now!” in a thunderous voice.
We ignored him, as did everyone in the place.
For that, I will probably burn in hell, but I will be in good company and will remember tonight’s meal.
Walking back around midnight, we are surprised to find the streets full; it is the local market, and everyone is out buying food and supplies from stalls set up in the souks. People are dressed nice, families walk together, and friends just hang out. A typical Saturday night.