It all went so
smoothly, thanks to Paula’s careful planning.
We woke up
in the flat in Seville where we’ve been for the month of January. We spent the
morning making final preparations, and by the end of the day we laid our heads
to rest in a hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. The hardest part was the walk to the
train station in Seville, hefting our backpacks, our laptops, and towing our
stuffed “wheelie” suitcases, bouncing and rattling over the cobblestones
The bus ride
to the Seville airport, standing room only, was only slightly easier. . (“Next
time it’s a taxi!” we both mouthed to each other.) But once we’d dropped the
bags off at the airline (accepted even though we were 1 kg over the 20 kg
limit), things got much better. Riding in a crowded, cramped airplane is never
my favorite thing, but requires no effort on our part. Soon enough we were on
the ground – it’s not very far, the south of Spain to Marrakech –meeting up
with our driver (Paula had arranged for that in advance, too), and speeding through
the modern streets of Marrakech to our hotel.
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| Exit from the new super-modern Marrakesh airport |
The hotel
was upscale in the newer part of town, but still only $40 USD for the night,
selected for its proximity to the bus station. Once settled, we walked the 15
minutes to the station and got our tickets for the next day.
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| Entry to the train station. Pretty cool! |
Next day?
Why are we leaving Marrakesh so soon? Because we’ve been here before, and know
what it’s like. Vibrant, busy, crowded, modern and exotic, old and run down.
Lots to see and do, but not our favorite place in Morocco, and certainly not
for a whole month. So the next morning, after breakfast at the café we’d
spotted the night before, we were once more walking down the street towing our
wheelies, and loaded with our backpacks and laptops. (No cobbles this time,
though!)
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| The new super-modern Marrakesh train station. The much less interesting bus station is behind it |
Since we’d
been here and taken this same bus ride a few years ago it was old hat. Sit
patiently in the bus station, watching people come and go. Finally we load our
bags aboard the bus and climb up with dozens of others to find our reserved
seats in this large, modern, comfortable, air-conditioned bus. Then through the
suburbs – which seem much larger now than they did three years ago – and out to
the highway. We watch the fields pass by, mostly flat and often dry. Hundreds
of acres of olive trees, and orange trees; old men and young boys with herds of
goats. Plain low houses made of drab mud bricks. And always, sooner or later, a
minaret, the distinctive square tower of the local mosque from which the call
to prayer is issued five times a day.
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| Market Day! A city we passed through on the bus |
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| View from the bus window, near Essaouira |
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| Our first view of Essaouira and the Atlantic Ocean |
About two in
the afternoon we reach the coastal hills, and have a brief view of the city of
Essaouira stretching along the ocean. Soon after we pull into the unpaved
turnaround of the bus station, already crowded by the porters and touts
offering their services to carry bags or guide the newly-arrived to their
accommodations. Paula has made arrangements to meet with Bouchra, the caretaker
for our apartment. By the time we connect with her the bus has left, the crowd
has thinned, and we make the quick walk to a modern apartment building just
down the street from the medina, the old town within the ancient city walls.
Inside the
fourth-floor apartment we were greeted by the woman’s adult daughter, who
speaks perfect English, offering us anise-flavored cookies (biscuits, to our
English friends!) and glasses of the traditional Moroccan mint tea, hot, sweet,
and refreshing. After introductions, and a run-down on use of the apartment,
how the keys work, don’t put laundry on the terrace use the roof instead, etc.
we are left alone to contemplate the view of the city and the ocean.
First order
of business was the Internet. Apparently we buy it by the day here; still not
sure how that works. As instructed, we found a tobacco shop and gave the owner
the phone number and 100 dirham ($10USD). After a few minutes of doing
something behind the counter he said we were good for 30 days. (Whatever that
means!) But yes, the apartment does have Internet now!
Second task
was to find a bottle of wine, a delicate issue in a Muslim country… not really.
There’s a shop just outside the old town walls, and while it looks edgy in a
run-down, skirting-the-law sort of way, so do the machinist shop and the
carpenter shop and the hair dressers that surround it. (We’re spoiled in
California, one of the richest states in one of the richest countries;
everything else can look tawdry and run down. Realizations of the traveler…)
Now we were
prepared to sit on the terrace, glass of wine in hand, and watch the sun settle
into the ocean, past the palm trees and next to the nearby rocky islands. Yes,
this will work just fine for the rest of the month!
The next day
our goal was a major food shopping expedition. While the medina (the old town
in most Moroccan cities, typically inside the original walls) is full of
vendors, we’re not yet sure where to get what we need. To shorten the shopping
part, and make sure we’ve got the basics, we headed for the Carrefour (means
road intersection in French), a large French supermarket chain, out on the edge
of town. It is about a mile and a half away (3 km or so); walkable one way, but
tough on the return when laden with groceries. But, taxis are cheap here, we’re
told. So we headed out, backpacks empty except for some extra shopping bags (including
our special Trader Joe’s bag).
The streets
through this newer part of town were fairly clean and wide, lined with 3- or
4-story apartment buildings. (Floor numbering, and hence number of stories, is
a bit of an issue: in Europe the ground floor is called, well, the ground floor,
or floor 0, with the first floor above that called, well, the first floor. In
the US, of course, the ground floor is number 1, and the second floor is the
first one above that. So we push button 3 on the elevator to get to our
apartment here in Essaouira, which makes it the fourth floor. Right?)
Along one
side of the street is a rusty old fence, with vegetation beyond. Our map shows
some kind of park. We follow the fence along, trying to see in; we do catch a
glimpse of a lake of some kind. Then we come upon two camels.
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| Camels going on about their business (whatever THAT might be) |
This is
about as surprising as seeing horses in downtown San Luis Obispo. Sure, there’s
lots of horses in California, probably more now than before those horseless carriage
things came along. But they’re not very practical for day-to-day use. I know
there are many camels in Morocco; they are still used for transport in the desert.
Desert camel rides are certainly a staple of the tourist industry. But here we
are at least a three-day camel ride from the desert!
It seems
this fellow was on his way somewhere, and had stopped in the shade to rest, or
adjust something. Uncertain of camel protocol, we were hesitant to approach.
Would he offer us a ride? Let us take his picture for a fee? As we continued
along the road, following the edge of the park, he finished his preparations
and mounted the lead camel, then rode off ahead of us. Later we came to an
intersection and saw him in the distance, riding the one camel and leading the
other, with us none the wiser.
Meanwhile,
we were discussing getting a roast chicken. In Montpellier during the first
three months of our trip we found any number of chicken rotisserie places, and
tired several before settling on our favorite. In Seville, the one chicken
roaster we found wasn’t very good, but we had an oven in our apartment for our
last month there, and turned out some very good oven-roasted chickens. Our
apartment here has an oven, leading us to wonder if the raw chickens here would
roast up as well as those from Andalusia.
Right about
then I saw a shop down a side street with a drawing of a chicken on the sign.
There were crates of produce around the doorway, but we were interested in
chicken. I stepped into the darkened shop and found a powerful and not pleasant
odor. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I noticed cages near the
ceiling, with live chickens in them. Not exactly what we were looking for! The proprietor,
busy pulling things out of a chicken carcass (don’t ask!), did not seem to
speak a language we knew. Another customer, though, helped us understand, in
French, that no, no roasted chickens were available here, but we could try down
the street and around the corner somewhere. We thanked him and continued on our
way.
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| A local market in suburban Essaouira selling produce and chickens. Live chickens... |
We arrived
at the Carrefour, a large, low, plain-looking building surrounded by a
nearly-empty parking lot (not a lot of people here have cars; on the other
hand, we saw no place to tie up camels, either…). Inside it was like most
supermarkets, with large wide well-lit aisles separating high shelves loaded
with brightly-colored stuff. We quickly found the liquor room, a separate part
of the store with a good wine selection and all the usual hard liquors. We were
told we were not allowed to take our purchases into the other part of the
store; most likely, I figure, to avoid putting off the more devout Muslims whose
religion forbids the consumption of alcohol. So while we won’t find a liquor
store on every other corner here in Morocco, alcohol is hardly a banned substance.
We wandered
through these familiar aisles we’d never seen before (are supermarkets an archetype?)
selecting the products we needed. I found raw chickens, carefully cleaned and
safely protected behind tight plastic wrapping. Great! We’ll roast this in our
oven and see how it compares to the ones in Seville. (Spoiler alert: We liked
the chickens from Mercodonia – a supermarket chain in Seville –better.)
Finally, our
packs bulging with bottles of wine and packaged goods, we needed to find a
taxi. But it didn’t take long, waiting forlornly in the near-deserted parking
lot, before someone arrived in a taxi, and we were on our way home. We had a
bit of a problem explaining to the driver where the apartment building was; I
inadvertently stumbled on a good solution: I held up my cell phone so the
driver could see the mapping program showing the route. He appreciated that,
and we were soon at our door. The cost for this 10-minute ride? Less than a
dollar! (Camels can’t compete with that, I imagine.)
After four
days or so we are getting settled in, exploring the medina and the newer parts
of town to the north and south, finding shady cafes and stores selling everyday
food supplies. In the next blog we’ll talk about what we’re finding, here in
this ancient coastal city.
