Tuesday - around Essouira

Around Essouira

Slept like a log and woke up at 8 which for me is quite amazing as I am normally awake at 4 and stay that way til I get up. The night was without doubt cold but the sun had been up before me and so that place was warming up! There was a shower in the bathroom whose hot water tap made the difference broadly between freezing cold and scalding hot and so there were a fair few choice swear words emanating from my direction whilst I got clean!

Breakfast was on the high balcony and consisted of baguette, apricot jam and fresh orange juice. The French and those who consort with the French, such as the Moroccans, haven’t the remotest clue how to make coffee and so what arrived was a bizarre concoction of diluted Nescafe and some warm milk. I am afraid I took over the kettle and coffee on the rooftop kitchen and produced something near drinkable, much to the amusement of the breakfast wallah and returned to my table….. just in time to watch a seagull flying off with part of my baguette!!

He seemed to me about to make a return visit and so scrambled for my camera and amazingly just managed to shoot him in the act as it were. When I looked at the photo it was a one in a million shot as I had managed to photo the little blighter with my baguette in his mouth and with a look of utter triumph on his ugly little face! 1:0 to the birds … but I shall exact my revenge!

I trotted out of the hotel into the sunshine and headed towards the fishing port I had been told was a must. The sight that greeted me was something I really had not expected. This was a ‘real’ fishing port .. not some sort of ersatz port for tourists.  And the whole of the fleet was in!

Overhead the entire place wheeled thousands of seagulls all out to feed on the same delicacy and thus making a noise that belied belief. One would dive for one piece he has spotted and was immediately dive bombed by a few hundred others after the same tasty morsel. It was an incredible and wonderful sight, and slightly reminded me of Hitchcock’s film The Birds (different bird though) -  the main dog, or seagull fights seemed to take place place over the land and in particular over the street lamps and so I was able to snap a few. Seagulls, like spray, always seem to photograph well!

On one side was a boat building yard … building huge wooden fishing boats. It was fascinating to see that sort of industry, long since abandoned in Europe, was still in existence and thriving here.

I was invited to take a look around and so walked up and down the 10 boats that were being build, mainly from mahogany …. With the hulls of wood and steel, each being fashioned and hammered by not a single machine that I could see … but all by hand. It was wonderful.

If I understood the man telling me about the place correctly, one of these boats costs in the region of £60,000.00 which when compared to the horrible plastic monstrosities you see on the Isle of Wight and beyond rather puts the world of boat building into some sort of perspective! The 10 lines up had already een sold, ad there were also a few smaller oats being built for the inshore fishing.

The harbour confirmed every mans imagination of what a fishing port is … there were men bent over their nets mending them by hand, there were groups of other men straining to pull some of the vast industrial nets out of the bowels of the ship onto a lorry so that no doubt they could be sent off for repair before the fleet leaves again in 2 days time for up to a fortnight at sea. I do intend to try and get up at 4am to go and witness the sight of these massive bots all leaving harbour at the same time!

There was a small section to one side where they were selling the days catch with an huge array of freshly caught fish you could imagine. Prawns of course, lots of familiar fish and an awfullot that wasn’t familiar, such as, I think catfish … all sorts of fish I recognise but would attempt to put a name to … and if you want you can buy a fish and take it over to another part of town where they will cook it for you for nothing. I do propose to try that one out if I have the time.

I also had a mooch around the fort which stands guard over the harbour. It was quite high and afforded great views over both the port and back to the old part of the town. Good value for a pounds and I spent a happy 10 minutes photographing various visitors with their own cameras!

I soon returned to the hotel as it was time to check out, but not before some fun haggling almost to the honourable death with a young man absolutely intent on selling me a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses.

It was a great few minutes of friendly banter :

I started off well ….

“What the hell do I want another pair of sunglasses for … I’ve got a pair ON!! Look at all those people over there who haven’t even got a pair …. Go and terrorise them!!  ….

which started off at €45 (“they are real, you know”) and made its way crazily down through €20 Euros (at which point they suddenly became

“OK, they’re fakes!!” .. “NO!! Really … I AM shocked!) until we reached the bottom line of €10

(“You ARE joking”) …and beyond to €5

(“that’s still way too much”!)

and then on down to €3! At which point my friend started to alook a little frazzled and admitted he had bought them for 3.50!

I walked away back to the hotel not having done the deal and en route settled at a café for a cappuccino and orange juice … and and lo and behold my sunglasses friend wandered by, greeted me like a long lost friend … and soon battle was rejoined!

My excellent Cappucino had weakened my resolve and he had swapped the REALLY cheap looking ones for a pair that had metal bits on the arms … and so I am afraid I buckled and agreed to buy the smart pair for €5!! I was secretely rather pleased with them!

But I hadn’t finished ….. oh no!! Not by a long way …. I whipped my own sunglasses off and started to haggle with my astonished sunglasses wallah, telling him I would sell him MINE for €100  … but if he was really nice I would let him have them “for a good price” ….. maybe €50!  I thin he thought I was being serious ….  It was all highly amusing ….

It was time to move to the Dar Skala Riad I had book and so I wandered off down the lanes in search of my new lodgings … which turned out to be accessed down a sort of tunnel and via a secret passage, and up through a trap door.

I was greeted by Jorge, a good looking, peasant man from the Argentine who has lived here for over 12 years, having moved here from living on the Cote D’Azur!  Hard life!

We had a long chat on the general topic of escaping the winter weather in Europe (he thoroughly agrees with the idea) before heading out again in search of the old Medina, or market, some distance away but where the locals go rather than the tourists. It was an older, more dilapidated part of town where the majority of stalls sold practical stuff rather than stuff you might otherwise see in Bond Street or an up market charity shop in Surrey.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Medina (the centre of the town) through the narrow streets. With all the shops and booths now fully open (they do stay open until about 11pm unless there are not many people about as was the case last night) and this evening it was a very different place to the evening of my arrival.

Thronged with locals it was a hive of activity …. With 2 distinct areas. One for the tourists (more upmarket and thus more expensive) with few food shops and the other for the locals, somewhat further away and much more allied to peoples everyday needs.

There were fruit stalls which looked most appetising with a wonderful array of vegetables and fruit all neatly laid out and then there were rather worrying looking butcher’s stands which always make me feel slightly queasy in the Arab worls and they all look decidedly unhealthy. But not many seem to die of food poisoning and so it can’t be that bad!

I returned home for a rest and a drink on the terrae at the top of the house which has a wonderful (even better as we are closer) view over the Atlantic Ocean too and there met a young lady from Marseilles who was travelling alone. We had a chat about women’s rights of all things, which seemed her sort of obsession, on and on she went saying how awful it was that women had no rights at all … blah, blah. I am afraid I rather lost the will to live after a while and started talking to the seagulls about far more interesting topics wuch as where to go for dinner!

The sun was providing a wonderful show as it descended below the horizon with the sky turning a wild shade of orange and pink. It was extraordinarily beautiful.  A man on an adjoining rooftop started singing with a guitar and so I was able to snap a couple of rather good shots of him too! The photo opportunities on this trip are quite amazing, with the blue doors and white walls of most of the houses very striking.

At about 8pm I headed off again into the market on the recommendation of Jorge, who told me a place called “Mayme” in the old Souk, was a great place to go. It turned out to be right at the other end of the market and I had to head down some pretty narrow and dark alleyways to get there but found it in the end.

There were precicely 5 tables in the place and it all looked rather cosy. I was allocated the table by the door and so had a rather good view out into the street for some great people watching whih when you are eating on your own is a good thing to be able to do!

I have to say the food left me disappointed. The soup was out of a tin, of that I am quite sure, or at least had so much flour in it as to render it almost inedible. The ubiquitous Tagine was ok, made with fish, but didn’t have a great deal of ‘stuff’ with it and was rather tasteless too. Still … the fresh orange juice was great! I don’t understand why they insist on making a tagine which is so bland … I suppose they are worried by the fact that Europeans are not used to hot food and so pedal back a bit on what they put in it!

On the way home I stopped off at a jazz bar, where a group of locals seemed intent on beating 6 bells out of a series of instruments, particularly a snare drum, and all in all making a hell of a racket.

There was a strange smell in the place and it didn’t take me long to realise that most of the visitors there were smoking something other than Marlboro. I realised I was inhaling the smoke in a sort of passive way, or whatever the expression is …. And so decided the best way to deal with it was to order another mint tea, relax and enjoy the whole experience, which in the end I did … alot!