We stayed up all night before having to get up for the coach to the seaside on Monday morning so were exhausted by the time we got here! The drive here was pretty incredible, we drove through the desert for ages past lots of one storey houses which cast a tiny shadow on one side of the house in which donkeys and humans press themselves into to avoid the scorching sun. The bus over there had a lot of Brits on it, we soon found out that Essaouira does too. The positive is that they are respectable well behaved Brits, not the lager lout yobbos we feared they may be! After getting here we explored the town.
It is an old Portuguese fishing town so the architecture is different to Marrakech, the shopping however is pretty much the same! After checking out the surroundings we had an incredible lunch of fresh sea food at one of the many stalls selling fresh fish on the sea front. A picture is attached of what I ate, Verity said I had eaten half the sea but she is a recovering vegetarian and is therefore prone to exaggeration… I did eat an enormous crab though, it was incredibly good and much fun to pick apart. We spent the evening trying to find a cashpoint that worked and trying to avoid the local men, they seem worse than in Marrakech here although the shop keepers are much less persistent. We were properly cornered by one guy last night and got a bit vocal, another guy came along, we thought to help us but he harassed us too, we got away without any problems but were a bit worried because it did seem quite full on. It is strange to entirely ignore everyone but is the only way to survive, any eye contact or smile or answering back to cries of hello or can I practice my English leads to even worse harassment. It is unfortunate because in the odd moments when we aren’t harassed we relax and enjoy things much more. It is also very upsetting because the men here are amongst the best looking I have ever seen and I’m sure if they were less sleazy and aggressive they could do very well! To be honest though I’d rather be harassed by someone really good looking than someone ugly, but it is to such a degree that they become unattractive anyway! Sods law huh.
In any case we ended up having fun last night, I had green tea with rose petals because I am becoming a bit of a hippy here, this place is like a hippy refuge centre which I really like, I am going to start using expressions like ‘far out dude’ soon. As it is we are starting to react to our harrassers by saying Vicky Pollard things such as; ‘Yeah but no but SHUT UP’ and ‘Don’t give me no evils’ and ‘for a JOKE’ as well as constantly saying ‘I want that one’, all of which amuses us and confuses the slimy men so much they leave us alone! Today we went on camel rides, Verity claims it has changed her life and made her a more relaxed and tolerant person, I am inclined to agree! It was very cool although we did scream quite a bit when going through water and up and down steep sand dunes (pictures are attached). Verity’s camel was called Jimmy Hendrix and was available for sale for a mere 500 UK pounds. Well it is no coincidence that this is my max on my Mastercard, I had already thought about the positives (no congestion charge I am sure, and I have space for another vehicle on my Westminster parking permit) before realizing that it would be hard to get it back to England unless I rode it back through Europe and my term starts in 3 weeks so there is no time for such things. So I resisted the temptation to buy Jimmy Hendrix and instead had another enormous plate of fish and seafood in the yummy food stall area.
Tomorrow morning we return to Marrakech. Tonight we may go horse riding, maybe across the beach during sunset depending on how tired we are. Verity hasn’t been horse riding before so it would be great if we could. Beach attire here for women is still covered up so no sunbathing in our bikinis, I did however get my shoulders out for the first time all summer today which felt quite daring!! They went a bit less white too which was very exciting. We return to England on Friday, far too soon but it can’t be helped.
|
