Essouaria

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We took a bus to Essouaria on the Atlantic coast, about two hours from Marrakesh.  It’s a fortified town from the time of the Portuguese. In the late afternoon people walk up onto the ramparts to watch the waves crashing to the shore and to see the sunset.

Another big attraction at the end of the day is the harbour where fishing boats, small and large, are tied up and the fishermen are selling their catch. The concrete pier is scattered with weeks’ worth of dried fish scales. You can locate the pier from far away by the hundreds of seagulls screeching and wheeling around.

Some of the fishermen are cheerful and pleasant to the gawking tourists, some are too busy scaling fish, mending nets or tidying up for the next workday to even notice and others are downright  fed-up with the camera-toting tourists. Ian got the universal sign from one man baiting hooks.

We stayed in a Riad with the most colourful bed in Morocco. Its other distinctive feature was the pilliest polyester no-thread-count sheets in Morocco. Ian slept in his trousers because his delicate skin couldn’t handle the pills!!

There are comfort-seeking cats everywhere.

Essouaria’s other business aside from fishing is souvenir-selling. Stall after stall after stall of souvenirs. When the man pictured here began to swathe Ian in his desert garb Ian and I laughed. The exact same thing happened in Quetta, a town on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, about 18 years ago. Even the script was the same,. ”Sand is coming, you put this.” wrapping the cloth over Ian’s face.