Happy New Year! Please consider this picture my 2010 greeting card to all, as "Saida" means "happy" in Arabic, and well, this gull kind of looks like a dove, right?
I returned late last night from a four-day jaunt to the southwest coast of Morocco, where I traveled to escape the wintry rain and wind of Rabat. My first stop was yet another fabulous beach town, Essaouira, and then I moved on to the tourist favorite Agadir. Both cities are pretty far away from my home base in Rabat, and far from each other. All told, I was on trains and buses for about 25 hours of the four days, but really enjoyed the passing scenery and the company of fellow travelers.
Essaouira is a hippie favorite, because it's low key, warm, friendly, exotic, quite removed from the rest of the country, and seemingly the world at large. Most of the time, the town enjoys a rather stiff wind blowing in from the sea, and consequently is popular with wind- and kite-surfers. In the winter, Essaouira is apparently also a favorite hangout of junkies, n'er-do-wells and various perverts, but they seemed to stay indoors during the day!
I did see lots of European and American people in their twenties, sporting unusual combinations of Rastafarian/Moroccan garb and hairstyles, looking bedraggled, but content.
Once again, the small blue fishing boats dominated the waterfront scene. (In the background you see the ramparts and bastions commissioned by the local sultan in the mid 18th century, but designed by a famous French military architect.)
The fisherman seem quite accustomed to foreigners staring down at them from the docks as they conduct their business. The man in this next picture is pushing the boats apart, moving his boat out from the tangle of moored vessels, so that he could load it up with baited lines, and then head out to open water.
I was stupified by the warm air and peaceful setting, so hung out at the docks watching the activity for almost two of the five daylight hours I had alloted to see the town.
Now if I had been looking for a peaceful setting of the eternal kind, there's the Christian cemetery just outside the gates of the old medina. The gravestones there date back to the 1800's, but others are as new as June of 2009. Some of the people interred there are clearly Portuguese, Dutch and French officials or merchants (and their wives), but I guess today's non-Moroccans (non-Muslims) who find themselves drawn to this quirky spot also need a final resting place.
While in Essaouira, I also shopped for wooden items made from the local "thuya" tree, a hardwood that Moroccans use for charcoal, carving, inlay and to feed their goats. (I actually saw, on my way to Agadir, with my own eyes, goats that had climbed way up into the thuya trees to nibble on the upper leaves.) Essaouira is also one of the few places in Morocco where you can get interesting paintings (as pictorial art tends to be undeveloped in Muslim countries), so I bought just a wee one, and was able to talk with the Berber artist.
I spent less than 24 hours in Essaouira, but it was worth the effort to spend the first day of 2010 in such a low-stress and pretty place. Next blog: Agadir, haven for European tourists in need of a mid-winter break and site of the most fantastic sunset I've ever seen. B'salaamah.
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