A GLIMPSE OF THE ESSAOUIRA COAST

A GLIMPSE OF THE ESSAOUIRA COAST, written by Gloria Abad Jara

I came recently back from a trip to Morocco, specifically to Marrakesh and the Essaouira coast. 

This was a trip I was eager to go on, when I first saw it on the web of Geographica, a travel agency specialised in trekking tours, in 2021, still in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemics. That year I decided to trek the Pyrenees instead, but promised myself to go on that trip as soon as I could. So this summer, with the pandemic situation apparently under control, I decided to finally fly to Morocco. 

We were a group of seven people that didn’t know each other -except for a couple. A guide, Meki (Balmekki Lamlih), who is a local guide that could speak Spanish, French, English, Arabic and Amazight, a cook, Houssein, for the days and nights of the trekking, and a cameleer, Mohammed, came with us most of the trip. Thank you all again for making that trip possible and amazing. The trip consisted of one night in Marrakesh, five days of trekking on the Essaouira coast (from Sidi Kauki to Imerdessen) and two nights in a Ryad in the city of Essaouira. On these nights between Sidi Kauki to Immerdessen, the original idea was to sleep in tents under the stars on the beach.Three camels carried our luggage. 

After an afternoon and night at Marrakesh, we hit the road to Sidi Kauki, where our local guide, Meki, introduced us through the wonders of the Essaouira landscape. 

The first thing that comes to my mind, for one reason or another, is the beach. I’ve been to several beaches, mainly in Spain and Portugal, but never experienced beaches like the ones in Morocco. I got a sense of calmed joy and authenticity. Families arrived at the beach in donkeys. I also saw some people using camels to move through the beach (mainly tourists), and even a boy riding a horse at a gallop. Children played climbing up and rolling over in the dunes, smiling at us and funny to see our foreign faces. Unfortunately, I saw that in Morocco, as well as in Spain, some people have the not so nice habit of littering trash: they do not take care of their nature, of their beauty spots, as I could find all sorts of trash and plastic items thrown not only in the sand, but in the sea as well. That was quite heartbreaking. 

I can’t avoid making some comparisons in my mind between any of the beaches I visited in Essaouira and some beaches I visited in Formentera, like the beach of Ses Illetes, when I visited it in August some years ago. Both are natural wonders. While the Essaouira beaches either are quite empty or they offer a very familiar environment with whole families spending the day with no rush, women bathing or “sunbathing” completely dressed, arriving at the beaches in their donkeys, talking to each other and apparently living in the present moment (this is only a feeling which of course I cannot really know); that beach in Formentera, which was of course a natural beauty,  was absolutely crowded (I remember the ferries that came with extra people from Ibiza just to spend the day on that beach) with people that were either drinking something in their plastic glasses (which would afterwards throw wherever they felt like except for the bin) and making pictures with their selfie sticks in the middle of the water of their well-built in the gym bodies, who would almost immediately post in their Instagram, since, what was the point if not of all that? It occurred to me they were two antithetic places, with only one thing in common: a beautiful landscape punished by humans’ lack of awareness. 

Some other memories regarding the beach: during our five-day trekking, we were supposed to sleep all four nights camping at the beach. However, we only made it two out of four nights: the other two, our guide explained, it was banned for us to camp at the beach, since la Gendarmerie guarded the coasts to refrain migrants from fleeing to the coasts of the Canary Islands. That sad reality check led us to get in touch with two local families.

The day after we walked amongst the argan trees under a fiery unmerciful sun, running out of water and of energies, Meki, our guide, decided to take a shorter route. He advised us to wear long trousers, since we were going to go to a village. That day, before arriving at our destination, which was a local family house, we went close to what looked like a caravan of people (I am not used to seeing so many people camping freely together on the beach, not in a camping facility, but in a spontaneous way). They were Moroccan families on holidays. Their outfit was quite traditional, and they camped in caves carved in the rock and flat rocky surfaces far enough from the sea tides. I would have liked to take several pictures of them, as I found them to be different and interesting, and had never seen anything like that before, but I didn’t want to be offensive or rude to them. 

After we ended climbing the rocks that led us out of the coast into the interior where the argan trees were, we arrived at the entrance of a village, Iknioun, at the foot of the Anti-Atlas, where our guide took us to the home of a Moroccan family, thus ending early our daily route. I was so tired and so battered by the heat, that I abandoned the old habit of controlling all the time if we did the whole route, if we were going to make the most of the place where we were about to spend the rest of the day, etc. etc. and let myself go and enjoyed the present moment the best I could, no longer worried either for my smelly armpits nor for my unglamorous appearance. To be perfectly honest, at that moment I didn’t even know where I was, and I didn’t care. 

So, we were enjoying the hospitality of that Berber family, who earned their living with the harvest of argan fruits, as we could see when we entered one of the main interior patios in the house. The house was quite Mediterranean, whitewashed walls with two interior patios, a backyard, a farmyard for the goats, which the eldest daughter of the family, Hadiya, kindly showed to me, a couple of latrines, several rooms with a picture of the Koran, a kitchen with a stove. There was a small well in one of the patios, where the people of the family took water occasionally, and from the top part of the walls one could see structure iron wire coming out of the walls. Apparently, this was the trait for unfinished houses, which were a lot, at least in the rural areas, as Meki told us, since once the houses were truly finished, a tax was applied. 

If I had to choose my happiest day of all the days we spent in Morocco, I would probably choose this. When we finished our lunch, which was beautifully displayed on a low table, some people from the group went for a siesta and three of us stayed in the dining room. As the children of the house were curious for us, I tried to practise my Arabic with them (the one I could learn from my Arab-Spanish conversation guide). Thus, I discovered the girl’s name was Hadiya, that the boy’s name was Abdullah, and that they were 11 and 5. I wasn’t successful in communicating any more in Arabic, but mutual curiosity and a Spanish deck of cards did the rest. We taught the kids how to play cinquillo, an easy game they could easily pick. Then we played with a paper plane my travelling companion, Lluisa, made for them. You know kids… when they like a game, they do not mind the repetition! After that, Hadiya tried, with the help of cards and a lot of patience, to teach me some Arab numbers… and I did my best, but today I can only remember numbers 1 and 5 (wahid and khamsa). As a translator, I thought it was going to be easier for me to catch a few phrases, but I must admit that Arabic is quite a challenge!

After that, Hadiya gained more and more confidence with me and I think that we grew fond of each other, so she brought her henna stuff and asked me to sit down and held my hand. So, there I was, experiencing how this super nice girl made Henna drawings in my hands and arms. I really felt like a queen, I was feeling so grateful to that girl that found the way to communicate with us with no words and lots of kindness. She drew some flowers, a heart, and the Tamazight letter, which apart from meaning “z”, is the language of the Amazigh people, the Berber people. Suddenly, I became all proud to wear the symbol of their people on my wrist, it was quite a compliment. I gave the children my deck of cards as a present.

After this, our guests invited us to see the preparation of a lamb “tagine”, which my travelling companions Carmen and Lluisa helped to prepare. At the same time, while the “tajine” was cooked, Meki explained to us the ritual of tea, how it was used when people in a tribe had to negotiate something, how it was used to appease and to cool everybody’s heads, the noises they made -apparently it was a habit to noisily sip the tea in this kind of meetings. He also explained the importance of sugar for their people. They had these gigantic -1 kilogram or so- traditional Moroccan sugar cones that they used to prepare Moorish tea, which they cut with a stone. Moroccans, or at least our guide, do not hesitate to use big lumps of sugar in their tea… Apparently, sugar is a very important trading object for Moroccans. When a man wants to marry a woman, he needs to offer her several cones of sugar as a sign of appreciation. The bride must give an answer between one week and a month after the proposal; if the bride rejects the offer, her family must return all the sugar cones. In some regions, instead of the sugar cones, the woman’s family returns eggs instead, which is a bit like an insult, as eggs are considered there as of less value than sugar. Our guide told us this story laughing…

After this, everything went crazy and funny. Many people had arrived in the afternoon, Hadiya’s father, and what we thought were Hadiya’s cousins -or friends. Therefore, at that moment, the house was really busy! Hadiya and her friends stayed with us, we took some pictures with them in their backyard, and then, at dusk they played some Arabic music in their music player and the adults took out some chairs so that we, their guests, could sit down (this is a habit that Spanish people in their villages share as well, or even in some city neighbourhoods, which we call  sentarse a la fresca -to sit down outside one’s own house in some chairs around dusk when the weather is fresher and cooler in the summertime. Then Hadiya started dancing and invited us to dance as well, which I did, followed by the other women in the group. All of a sudden, the whole family gathered around and watched us dancing and invited us to wear their traditional clothes to perform better, which we did, all the women and men in the group with no exception, and we laughed a lot. Our hosts laughed a lot too, indeed, they were laughing their heads off at the sight of some clumsy weird looking foreigners disguised as traditional Arabic men and women. They must have found us quite funny, I guess!

Next morning, the grandmother of the family asked us for medicines, since her head, she told us, was aching. The fact that this same thing happened in the other Moroccan home, makes me suspect that they only pretended to be in pain so that they could gather some medicine for when it was needed. This is quite revealing of a country lacking a national health system as the one we have in Spain or in the UK. 

When we said our goodbyes to our welcoming hosts, we decided to give a tip to the family for their hospitality and for the henna paintings - this is something expected in Morocco, if you have doubts on how big the tip should be, ask your local guide, if possible. The girl, Hadiya, gave me a last grin before we left, which I will remember forever with infinite gratitude. 

After that day in Iknioun with the Berber family, we started our last day of trekking. Our last day of a landscape full of similarities with my beloved Almeria coast - specifically, Cabo de Gata and San José; stray dogs that followed us -which apparently is a habit of Moroccan stray dogs, Meki’s mixtures of dried fruits and krichlat -small spiced breadsticks which are typical from Morocco and are usually served with tea- and super sweet and bigger than usual dates; baths on the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean and treks between argan trees- again… such a similar sight to Andalusian olive groves… But we were leaving behind as well the Decathlon showers with bottles of water, sleeping in sleeping bags, the packing and unpacking of our backpacks every day… to sum up, the lack of comfort of our adventurous days which would turn into sleeping in a bed in a quite luxurious room in a riad in Essaouira -the city-, privacy in a single room for a single person, real showers and all the conveniences a petite-bourgeoise tourist like me wants to have - at least once in a while. Although I will never forget the night we slept in tents in the dunes next to the beach under a magnificent canopy of stars on Sidi Ahmed Sayh beach…

In Essaouira, the city, I had a first taste of haggling which left me with a strong feeling of having been cheated somehow… I definitely have to improve my negotiation skills. We wandered our last two days in Morocco in the streets and Souq in Essaouira, enjoying our last days together as a group, with whom I was lucky enough to share this experience with. Thanks to Meki, we could enjoy fresh fish from the fish market cooked in a local bar that was absolutely busy with local people. A wonderful meal -different kinds of grilled fishes and a fish tagine-, all at the price of two euros per person!

I am pretty sure that I will leave some descriptions of my trip behind, and I would like to at least mention them… Like for instance the Moroccan sfenj, a sort of doughnut, that our cook, Houssein, cooked for us one day we were absolutely destroyed by the trekking and the heat…There’s also the cats, the Moorish tea and the lemon verbena by night, the never ending sand in our boots and our clothes… our guide, Meki, with an ironic sense of humour which was close in a way to our Spanish sense of humour - I don’t think he would have laughed at my jokes if he was not from a Mediterranean country…I’m pretty sure I am leaving a lot of impressions out…but hopefully have transmitted to the reader some of my amazement and excitement for the country…and encouraged them to have their own experience there. 

All pictures were taken by members of the group: Carmen, Octavio, Lluisa, Alicia and me. Most of the pictures were taken by Carmen Rius - IG - criusmon