Day 49: The Sea

Day 7 of our 9 day trip

Plan: Marrakesh to Essaouira

Deaprture at 10. Woke-up, had breakfast, showered, got in the van, tried to ignore my iPhone weather app which once again said the high for the day in Marrkesh was 104. The two hour drive through the arid fields to Essaouira was painfully hot and I passed the time reading our next book, Leaving Tangier, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. It's all about a Moroccan boy who gets his sister and himself tickets to Spain by being a Spanish artist's gay lover. It's a decently explicit book, but a good read nonetheless. 

We stopped at an Argan oil co-operative on the way to Essaouira where women walked us through the whole process of shelling and grinding Argan seeds to make Argan oil. It was a more enlightening trip than the visit we made to the women's NGO with Prof. Sadiqi.

We pulled into Essaouira at 1 to a cool sea breeze. We were officially free to do as we please from this moment until Sunday morning at 10 am. Our hotel, Dar L'Oussia, is gorgeous, right inside the medina walls and a minute's walk from the huge curving beach. Essaouira is located on a point with a big protected beach stretching out to the south and a windier and more exposed beach extending north from the city. The medina strikes a perfect balance because it's walled-in, busier than Fes but not as fast as Marrakesh, open streets, and lots of shops. It's also very well maintained. 

For lunch, Marissa, Ariel, Elle, and I went to these fish stands near the beach. They put out a huge selection of the catch of the day, you choose what you want, get your hag' on, and then they grill it and serve it to you right there. They have snapper, dorado, live lobsters, prawns, sea bass, shrimp, even whole eels! So many options and all sitting there for the choosing. I got a big squid and a dorado and it tasted so good with some lemon squeezed onto it. I HIGHLY recommend checking out the fish stalls because it was one of the best meals of the trip.

Afterwards, we walked around the medina to get our bearings and climbed on the ramparts some. My inner Laura Roberts has emerged and decided that there is definitely some shopping to be done here. Hopefully, I'll knock out all the presents I need to get during the day tomorrow. 

After parting with the ramparts, we rendezvoused with everyone else on the beach. It is so flat that the high tide takes away like 200 ft of the beach's width. Everyone was playing soccer; there were so many concurrent games that I even saw one game being played long ways and another game being played across, all on the same plot of sand. The water was chilly but I took a couple dips while we were there. Christy took the quote of the day.

Meredith: "It's so cold in the water"

Christie: "It's not so bad over here"

(meredith paddles over 10 ft)

Meredith: "I don't feel any warmer…"

Christie: "What are you talking about?! You're closer to the sun!"

Unfortunately for Meredith, that's not how the Pythagorean theorem works, so she never got warmer. Swimming was also interesting because Tash doesn't know how to float or swim (or drive nor has she heard of Jack Johnson, among many other lacking features. She's currently enrolled in an "American FSP" being taught by Meredith).

Coversation 2: Tash is half swimming back to shore but getting pushed around by the waves

Meredith: "Ahhh! Tash is floating away!!!!!"

Andrew: "How? She can't even float!"

We stayed at the beach from 4 to 6:30 and then went back to the hotel to shower. For dinner, Elle, Marissa, and I got take-out chawarma and ate it on the beach. When we went back to the hotel, it was time to start getting ready to go out. We left at 12:30 for some bars right outside the medina. One of them was a really nice club that had a live band and no people. This can be attributed to the Moroccan Billy Crystal who performs nightly, whose performance didn't really lend itself to doing much besides sitting and listening to him in a space that could have been a banging club. Right next door was a bar called Le Chrysalis that had a great band with a female singer that sang American covers. We ordered a 10 shot special that had all these neon and multi-colored shots, so each person got their own color. The music was fun and we danced some. After we walked really far down the beach to another club that had a talented band but was just too far and it was too late for me. Elle, Marissa, and I went back to the hotel at 2:30 and everyone else came back at 3.