under african skies

Thanks to my religious friends I easily caught the bus, and, after a terrifying few kilometres during which I was convinced that I had been tricked and was on the wrong bus, I arrived in Essaouira with this very nice Russian couple I had made friends with on the bus.

Apparently this place has been settled since the 7th century BC when Phonecian people built a lighthouse and a town just off the coast, and later it became a Roman settlement because there is some sort of purple dye you can get if you squeeze the right fish or something. It used to be full of hippies and Jimi Hendrix (my guide book tells me that people here claim the ruins on the islands inspired him to write Castles Made of Sand, but it also says that he released that song a year before he came here, so if I meet any locals who try to tell me that story I will humilate them by exposing them as liars), but now it is mostly package tourists wearing the same shirts and pretending to be interested while a guide lectures them in some sort of European nazi talk.



The city is pretty crazy: the central part where I'm staying is surrounded by an enormous wall and is apparently an excellent example of 18th century european military architecture in north africa. The medina inside is made up of all these long, narrow, and winding passage ways, some of which dead-end into groups of bored and angry looking young moroccan dudes. The main streets are cleaned daily and the city is very tidy and kind of relaxed, especially because they don't allow cars in here. Outside of the walls there is a grimy and poor section of town which is what some asshole hippies would probably refer to as "the real morocco" which is a bunch of bullshit. There is also a very big beach and, about half an hour's walk south, a fantastically ruined fortress, either portuguese from the 16th century or Moroccan from the end of the 18th, but it doesn't really matter because it isn't guarded and you can climb all over it and play soliders or whatever. The only thing that has stopped Essaouira from becoming a tourist trap is the intense wind. It's incredible how powerful and consistant it is, but you need to wear a sweater or, at least, a heavy shirt if you're going to be out in it for long. Also the city is full of cats, like, if you put a basket or your hat down somewhere and walk away, it will probably have a cat in it when you come back. The fishermen feed them in the evening so they're all in pretty good shape and they probably keep the rats down.

I explored the town with my Russian friends and we walked all the way to the end of the beach. It was pretty great and this place is nice, even if there aren't any actual sights. At the end of the night we were sitting in a room high up in a building, watching the angry waves crash against the city before retreating back to the atlantic, and the whole thing was lit up by the brightest stars i've ever seen. pretty amazing.