Beach on the Brain

Trip Start Nov 01, 2006
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Trip End Nov 21, 2006


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Flag of Morocco  ,
Wednesday, November 15, 2006

A long nap later and we arrived on Morocco's windy Atlantic shoreline. Essaouira is a fishing village that grew up, smoked some weed, and became a beach haven for French hippies and Morocco's artist community. Our two nights in this quintessential sandy mecca were well spent ...

1) exploring the smelly Skala de Port where the fisherman still ply their ageless profession under the watchful eyes of their winged fans, the seagull, and restaurateurs ply their equally ageless profession in small stalls grilling fresh fish and other ocean critters for hungry tourists and locals;

2) shopping in the medina for art from the many artists who have gathered in Essaouira. Some were hokey mass produced prints aimed at the tourist trade, others were high quality pieces that could be had at a bargain price, and many were somewhere in between. We settled on a piece from a local artist who worked with henna on sheep skin-a traditional Moroccan method of painting;

3) walking along the windy beach that stretched out in front of Essaouira. We would have taken a dip or sat on the beach except it all looked too cold;

4) wandering into the mellah, the Jewish district, where we witnessed a gripping titanic struggle between a snipping super aggressive runty dog and a hissing arched cat who soon lost interest and slowly sauntered off;

5) enjoying the street scenes-a big brother, no more than 10, rounding up his two younger siblings from the local barber shop and protectively walking them home with a shout of "Yellah!" (Arabic for "let's go") while rubbing their freshly shorn heads; a butcher displaying his wares hanging from hooks out in the sun; an old man clothed in a jellaba dozing next to his bike while the neighbourhood kids played nosily nearby;

6) dancing at one of the night spots in Essaouira. Hamid gave us a rousing demonstration of Moroccan nightclub dancing-essentially a sped up version of the finger snapping, hip shaking traditional dancing he showed us at the mountain gîte. JT's got nothing on Arabic booty shaking; and

7) enjoying the sunset over the Atlantic ocean from the ancient walls of the city that rise precipitously out of the sea.

After two nights, we had shaken off the dust from the Sahara Desert and the High Atlas Mountains and were ready for our final stop in Marrakech.
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