DAY 11 Agadir to Essaouira
09 December 2005
Rough from night before, and already pretty sick of Agadir, we determined to get away as quickly as we could, which wasn’t all that quick. We headed North along the coast, after a while the road turned inland slightly into a hilly area. In the fields I could occasionally see men working the land with beasts and mattocks, which seemed primitive given you can get mobile phone reception virtually everywhere in the country. The land was very rocky, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the main crop was stones as we didn't really see any plants.
By the side of the road, miles from anywhere, people sat under umbrellas waving bottles. Curious, we stopped to find out what they were selling. It turned out to be argan oil in the bottles, and they also sold a sort of sweet argan paste eaten locally with bread for breakfast (tastes a bit like peanut butter), and argan honey.
Goats in an argan tree. Enlarge image
Further along the road we came across herders with their goats. As there are very few plants growing at goat height, the goats climb up into the argan trees to eat the leaves and nuts. A few coins are required to secure some photos. The road then turned west, taking us closer to the coast again. Just south of Essaouira we stopped off in Diabat. Diabat’s only claim to fame is that Jimi Hendrix once stayed there for a few nights. We ended up driving out of the other end of the village sooner than expected, and so stopped at the last building which was a small café. Over a tagine lunch the chilled out, cricket hat wearing proprietor attempted to convince us to take a camel ride, taking in various features which supposedly inspired Jimi’s songs, including All Along The Watchtower (actually written by Bob Dylan). Despite him being a nice man we declined, even though he introduced us, in depth, to all of his camels, one of which attempted to bite my hand off when he insisted that I stroke it.
We did our usual trick of getting lost when entering a new city, and ended up in Essaouira’s roughest area which looked like a French addition to the town, outside of the old city walls. Eventually we got to the old town, which is an attractive fishing port, and found our target hotel which has a 2 bedroom apartment on the top floor. Whilst Andy stayed behind for a sleep me and Olly went out for a look around. Whilst trying to investigate a bar mentioned in a guide book we met a couple of friendly lads. After trying to sell us some dope (a common occurrence in Essaouira, where even waiters tried to sell us the stuff after meals) they took us to a nearby bar that normally only locals go in. After a bottle of Flag apiece we picked Andy up and went on to a grill-stall near the fish market for dinner. An unending medley of seafood was brought out to us – prawns, squid, sardines, plaice, bass, other unidentied fish and large crustaceans. This was served with a salad, but there was too much fish to even think about eating the accompanying bread.
