Last stop Essoauira. then straight on the motorway all the way back to J17 :-(
To make sure the trip ended well and just in case living in a small 4×4 for 4 weeks had proved hell.
I had quietly booked a 5 star spa hotel adjacent to the walled medina. However living in the Tardis works so well ,it gets better every time we use it and with the minor list of fixes/upgrades sorted when we get home it will be excellent for long periods or maybe indefinitely and we both felt guilty for abandoning our special truck to the hotel car park. They are strange things human emotions for inanimate objects.
I thought I would post some images of Essaouira for the family and friends, for the ones who have been here and the ones yet to visit. Easyjet fly twice a week from the UK for £35 one way ,that is cheaper than the taxi to the airport!!
The place has expanded its tourist flavour but at the moment not so much that it is destroyed the charm, The docks still sell every living(now dead) thing from the sea and the gulls and cats scrap over the entrails thrown on the floor, every alleyway now has a shop or restaurant with an impossible level of character and charm and unique style , a level that Disney could never achieve, couple this charm with a feeling of safety and a relaxed atmosphere makes Essaouira a destination that is a must for anyone wanting a genuine experience with the feel of the exoticswhile somehow feeling you are in a pirates of the Caribbean movie set. Even the touts selling ‘Space cakes ‘and a ‘good smoke’ appear to be from a Family movie, somehow being rebellious yet unthreatening and charming at the same time. I suppose it’s a sort of perfect puritanical middle class American image of the exotic , you know the boy/girl at school/college that is SO hot but is the local rebel yet underneath they have a heart of gold type shit. I suppose this is the real metaphor for the current Essaouira experience..
It’s quiet here at this time the year (January) and rain is not unknown but the temperature is pleasant and sunny, even so in this quiet time we counted 4 bar/restaurants with live music ,we made our way down hauntingly amazing alleyways beside the fortified sea wall to have a pizza in the restaurant that we sat in 11 years ago while watching Ridley Scott film ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ with the girls, Casablanca beer on tap made for a great night out. Some live Moroccan/Berbere music in a bar overlooking the main square and harbour finished the trip off just great.
In any other place the alleys of a unknown town are not the most relaxed places to be, but this is not the case in Essaouira
A small glimpse of a treasure to behold.
So we both agree until we are 80 years old and in a large plastic motorhome, or maybe a training session in a race car then we are done with Morocco for the coming years, the Tardis has more exciting places to take us.
Also I may be onto a real treasure maybe even a novel …
look at this customs building on the gates of the harbour, half way up is a cryptic symbol
Looks like a secret symbol of the Da Vinci code type, don’t ya think???
