Essaouira, Morocco

Our last chunk of time in Morocco was spent on the coast in Essaouira. It was a lovely four days of relaxation, sunshine, beach, and some different food for a change! Matt & I spent a lot of time wandering around the city exploring. We took walks on the beach. We had fresh squeezed grapefruit juice…yum! We explored the port which was teeming with fisherman, smelly fish and cool boats.

One day the four of us drove down the coast a bit to a more deserted, pretty beach and spent the afternoon lounging there and playing in the Atlantic. We also saw the famous ‘argan tree goats’, which climb trees! We had heard they were mostly in the Agadir area, which was further south and we didn’t feel like driving to, but discovered a few in the trees on our trip down the beach. The environment is extremely dry and they don’t have anything to eat except for the fruit on the Argan trees, which they have to climb to reach. Thought it was pretty interesting.

There was seafood there, which was a wonderful change from the never ending tagine and cous cous. We gorged ourselves on calamari and other fish things which we could not identify for lack of French vocabulary.

Our last day we went to a ‘hammam’. A ‘real’ hammam is a traditional Moroccan communal bath house where people go to bathe and scrub themselves. We went to the touristy version, which was really more like a spa day. We got to sit in a sauna, be bathed and completely exfoliated, and finish up with an hour long massage. It was delightful! So nice and relaxing. By ‘exfoliated’ I really mean that some Moroccan lady takes a scotch-brite pad to your entire body. Pretty strange but actually felt great and left you feeling amazingly clean.

**Coming up, our very last day in Morocco: Casablanca