Day Six - Marrakech to Essaouira

Today we drove from Marrakech to Essaouira. The landscape on the journey was not as impressive as some of our trips on previous days. It now looked a lot more familiar, rather like the Spanish countryside with greener shrub land rather then the yellow, orange and red landscapes we had experienced before. The towns too had changed again. They looked more Mediterranean influenced rather then the traditional berber style mud built buildings we had been seeing before.

There were a couple of interesting finds along the way. Although the landscape was greener there still wasn't grass on the ground it was more in the form of leaves on trees. The local goats had obviously cottoned onto this and had adapted their grazing to climb into the trees and graze there instead!



We saw a number of pictures like this that humoured us! We carried on our drive and the road opened up into flat land and we could see an indigo strip on the horizon! We had reached the coast.

It was midday when we reached Essaouira a lot earlier then we had arrived at most of our destinations! We stopped for lunch at a surf bar where I enjoyed a seafood tangine! It was a mix of Moroccan flavours with a Spanish Tapas influence - a dish I will have to make once I'm back home too.



We checked all our stuff in at our hotel and went for a long walk. We walked south down the beach away from town where the dessert sand dunes reach the sea.





The beach at the town end was full of kite surfers and locals trying to sell you camel and horse rides along the beach.


We headed back to our hotel before we went off to explore the town. We decided to walk into town and explore the famous port and Medina.








The port is famous for its boat construction. They export their traditionally made boats to Europe and beyond. There are also a lot of wooden fishing boats littering the port all painted in the local blue.





Even the police station in the port was painted blue!


We walked further into the medina. It was again a lot more calmer then the bigger cities which was ice. However, you still got the feeling that the towns architecture was heavily influenced by European countries.





We walked around the Medina and I was drawn in my a Moroccan furniture shop! I bought a beautiful blue lamp as well as some gifts and other bits before darkness fell and we decided to get dinner!





We got our first taxi back to the hotel which wasn't as scary as I initially thought!

We are now off up the coast to our 2 night stop at the lagoons of Oualidia!

Location:Avenue Al Aqaba,Mogador,Morocco