Essaouira, Morocco a small, beach side town two hours from Marrakech is the setting for my latest travel destination.
Never one to turn down an invitation to travel to an exotic place and stay practically free, I accepted an invitation from my friend JC to stay in a private house in Essaouira with him and some friends.
I traveled with Vincent and two close friends from San Francisco who had never been to Morocco. I was in Marrakech 20 years ago and did a day trip to Essaouira When I visited, it was a sleepy fishing village and I now heard it was a somewhat trendy resort that had been “discovered” and I was excited to see how it had changed.
We arrived in Marrakech on Friday morning and soon as the plane door opened you could feel the stifling heat- it was supposed to be 108 degrees that day. Unfortunately our 2 hour plus taxi ride to Essaouira was not air-conditioned and we suffered through the unbearable heat sticking to the velvet upholstery with sultry hot air practically blowing our heads off. We passed through poor villages, farmland with tons of aragon trees, and flat uninteresting desert land.
Essaouira is a walled city with no cars allowed inside, so the taxi driver dropped us off at the gates and a young man loaded our bags in Moroccan style wheelbarrow to take to us to the house. After navigating the unmarked, narrow, chaotic streets we arrived on a dead end alley in front of a small bright blue door. On the other side of the door, the house was a large mosaic tiled and stucco 3-story atrium with an open-air roof and a lush garden in the center. The house was built in the 1700’s and had had barely been modernized. Our spacious rooms were on the main floor with the furniture low to the ground overlooking the garden. Unfortunately, JC was not arriving till the next day with his friends so we had to fend for ourselves to make our way through this unfamiliar city. With undecipherable street signs and dark, maze like streets, we left the house scared that we would never find our way back. I thought of doing the Hansel & Gretel breadcrumb thing so we wouldn’t get lost. Keeping our eyes glued for directional landmarks, we explored the city. We came upon a feast of shops with hand crafted wood objets, vivid multi-colored pointy flat mules and other shoes in raffia, fabric, and leather, local handcrafted silver jewelry and of course your magic carpet shops. Tempted with low prices, an enormous selection and hours till 11PM, we shopped till we dropped day and night for the next 4 days. Bargaining with the shopkeepers is customary and surprisingly my non-Jewish friend got the bargaining process down to a science: Pretend that you could take or leave the item (even though you can’t live without it) and then offer half the price they quoted you. We also learned never to stare at an item for more than 3 seconds, otherwise the shopkeeper will force you into the shop with kindness, call you “my friend”, offer you mint tea and will not let you out of the shop till you buy. Browsing is not an option in Morocco.
One of our more interesting shopping expeditions was with the woman who ran the house. Aisha was a handsome woman in her 40’s with classic Moroccan features: jet black hair, olive skin, and angular face. In addition to running the house, she did bodywork and practiced some of her knowledge on me. She took us to what appeared to be a tiny spice shop and introduced us to the owner, Mohamed, who took us to the back of the shop and for the next hour brought out bottles of rare oils and essences of amber, aragon, rose, cedar and many others. It turns out Mohamed is a third generation chemist who formulates natural remedies for common ailments. Fascinated with his knowledge of the body and smitten with the intoxicating smell of the oils being rubbed on us at every moment, we succumbed to Mohamed’s magic healing powers and ordered remedies for migraines, digestion problems, and high cholesterol. He took our orders and said to pick them up in a few days as he smiled and warmly shook our hands goodbye. When we picked them up we experienced sticker shock with our 2 remedies and a 2 bottles of oil costing us over $150. I think Aisha’s benevolent act of taking us to Mohamed was rewarded with a hefty kickback from him.
On Sunday, a simple trip to a remote beach became a very weary adventure. Aisha had arranged for taxis to take us a to quiet secluded beach 30 minutes from town. What followed was a string of mishaps as we were first taken to a remote riad (small hotel) in the middle of the desert, nowhere near the beach and having to wait an hour for the taxis to come pick us up again. Two hours later we finally ended up at a wide, beautiful beach but the intense wind that was great for the windsurfers turned out to be too much for us, so we could only endure about an hour. Aisha arranged for lunch in a stifling, airless restaurant on the beach with all the windows closed because of the wind. Overheated and exhausted, we ate the totally weather inappropriate lunch of steaming hot beef tagine, and we couldn’t wait to get back to Essaouira. Aisha’s best-laid plans were disastrous and cost us unnecessary money.
Culturally, there wasn’t much to do so we spent our time shopping, eating and drinking on rooftop terraces with panoramic views of the sea and the city, and having long wonderful dinners at the house with fun conversation and delicious home cooked meals of kebabs, tagines, and couscous prepared by Aisha.
Essaouira had changed from a small fishing village into a thriving small metropolis that wasn’t so trendy as it was still primitive in many ways. We left Essaouira on Tuesday morning for Marrakech happy, relieved, shopped out (in a good way), and filled with exciting travel tales to tell our friends.
Read about our Marrakech adventure in my next posting.
