Grinding the distance to Essasouira, Casablanca and our Moroccan departure
The drive to from Marrakech to Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast clocks in at under 200 km (120-ish miles). We didn’t get rolling until the mid-afternoon with plans to eat dinner that evening in our riad thanks to a pushier than usual prompt from its owner. The compounding overload of a few one-day stops pushed us enough to notice some fraying, so we all attempted to recharge during the 3+ hours in the car. Maya began solo listening to audiobooks on this trip and couldn’t wait to zone out looking out the window while doing so. Sarah’s usual prolific reading habit had been replaced by listening to podcasts. While my job continued to be finding something to make sense of as the world whirled by. My one great epiphany on this hunk of road dealt with Morocco’s prolific argan output and goats. And, no, someone did not slip something into my mint tea in Marrakech.
To step back a bit, we’d been hit with the promotion of argan nuts as a miracle food/cure/furniture-polish/dessert-topping almost as soon as we landed in Morocco. Hicham and his family are all in with the argan. We’d already bought far too much oil and butter and hand lotion and lubes and pastes and…please make it stop. What I hadn’t realized until the drive to Essaouira was that these magical nuts came from the trees we saw along the road. Hicham at one point went to his signature move and just pulled the car over unannounced and stopped right in front of one of those trees. He pointed and said, “Argan.” I excused the relative “I am Groot” nature of the phrase and put it all together when I actually looked up to see matte olive-green nuts that looked like a cross between almonds and acorns hanging from the branches. With the lightbulb duly lit, we pulled back onto the highway. I began thinking of the postcards we’d seen of goats up in trees. They were up there for the nuts, I realized. No sooner did the thought take hold than we passed by an actual goat herder leading the first of his goats up into an argan tree. It was my “Lookie - bigfoot is real!” shot missed on this trip, although a pic of one of those argan trees is included below.
We rolled into Essaouira at sunset as the surf crashed hard against the coast. The popularity of this part of Morocco’s coast comes not only from surfers. We’d also heard that the laid back vibe was infectious. I’d read some largely embellished stories about Jimi Hendrix visiting in 1968 and the ongoing embrace of all things Jimi because of that time spent in Essaouira. Other artists including Cat Stevens and Frank Zappa were seduced by the whitewashed medina walls and powerful Atlantic winds. There’s an active debate about whether Bob Marley also visited. I wish I had done some reporting on those links, aside from noticing a widely featured niche record store named “Bob’s Records” when were we meandering through the medina the following day.
The truth being that we arrived too spent to do much more than check out the sunset from the roof of our riad, followed by an underwhelming dinner therein. I won’t put lipstick on that pig and give them anything other than an adequate-at-best “we didn’t get murdered there” review. If you throw darts and stay at random places wherever often enough, you’re bound to veer somewhat astray or be duped occasionally. So goes travel, especially if you’re trying to save a few dirham (the Moroccan currency) to spend elsewhere.
The following morning, Sarah and I went for a sunrise run along the beach. Plans were discussed and shifted slightly. This would be our last day with Hicham. We sincerely enjoyed touring around the medina with him later that day (he has family roots there). I took way too many pictures of us mingling with the cannons along the old medina wall of ramparts (another “Game of Thrones” location). Sarah haggled successfully with a shop owner to get some awesome silver earrings, prompting him to say to me “she is part Berber” as a matter of complimenting her. The vibe in Essaouira’s smaller medina felt more laid back and we were seduced as so many before to stay longer than expected.
We found the crumbling remains of the Jewish ghetto (or Mellah). At our next stop in Casablanca, I would connect the dots to make a bit more sense of the history for Morocco’s Jewish population. In a nutshell, after Spain and Portugal forced the expulsion of the Jewish people in the late 15th century, some found their way to relative safety in what would become Morocco. That population had swelled to a few hundred thousand by the 1940s. It was during that period of worldwide upheaval that they were effectively forced to leave Morocco. Today there remains a tiny number of Jews (our Fes tour guide said 120 total…not thousand…120 people). All that remains are a few deteriorating mellahs in cities like Essaouira and Fes, the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca (the only such museum in the Arab world), and a sense that the sadly fascinating story lies just beneath the surface.
Before leaving Essaouira, we asked Hicham to pick a good place for lunch. This would be our last meal with him, and it was everything I’d hoped for from a fishing port. Droves of fishmongers jockeyed for our business. Good humor drew us to a place with gorgeous fresh fish on display and a perfectly arranged outdoor seating area. We pointed at an array of species that were then placed on a turquoise cafeteria tray for them to take to the grill. Sea bass, branzino, shrimp, calamari, more calamari. Our mountain of sea-borne delights began arriving soon after perfected salted chips (fries) and a tomatoes-onion-light greens salad. The fish was blackened in just the right places, and salted by the ocean. The obscene amount of fish chosen didn’t overwhelm. It was all right off the boat and grilled perfectly. We’d be fueled through the day’s journey to Casablanca. I will aim to replicate that menu for years to come.
We left Essaouria full of fish in the mid-afternoon, facing the 380 km (235 mile) drive with dread. Based on the prior roads traveled, I thought we were screwed. Miraculously, the route featured a major highway with minimal traffic and our lead-footed driver. We reached Casablanca in not much over three hours. However, that’s where our good luck ended. The apartment we’d booked was close to Hassan II Mosque - the world’s third largest and a recently built iconic presence on the coast. The mosque is gorgeous. The apartment was a dump. We had a minor family setback as we considered where else to stay. We stuck it out since it was mainly just a place to store our stuff until leaving on a red-eye flight to Cairo the following night. We wandered the surrounding neighborhood comparing awful with not great options for food. After settling on a stylish but dysfunctional crepe and churros place across the street from our building, we crashed hard in our filthy apartment. The next day would be “a test” as I’d kept trying to tell Maya. What kind of travelers are we? I didn’t entirely buy my own brand of shinola, in retrospect. I fell asleep with dancing visions of bed bugs and black mold distracting me from forming a plan for our final 24-hours in Morocco.
A solid night’s sleep does wonders for any species. I woke well before dawn and put together a plan for the day with unhurried Googling, as if it were there all the time. Sarah and I ran our last Moroccan sunrise loop along the coast (see more pics below). We swung back by Rick’s Cafe - opened well AFTER the release of the 1942 Bogart/Bergman classic “Casablanca” - saving us from actually going there when it was open. I greeted the mangy front-door cat (thereafter dubbed “Door Cat”) before waking Maya with our plan. We would veer toward an utterly untypical comfort travel tour. A luxury breakfast at a fancy tea house (Wright Tea Flagship Store). Shopping at the high end mall (Morocco Mall). We did plan to watch the new “Star Wars” at the IMAX theatre next to the Mall, but learned at the last minute that it was in French with Arabic sub-titles (the pic below shows how excited we were before needing to shelve that part of the plan). The delightfully-named rideshare service, Careem, got us to and fro since Hicham was back home with his family in Rabat. We walked to dinner along the waterfront at an over-priced French restaurant with priceless views. Our final Careem driver got us to the airport and we ran on fumes to the gate.
Before departing we all looked back and discussed what we’d experienced. A return trip to Casablanca won’t be necessary, aside from possibly using the country’s main airport there. I certainly regret not visiting the Museum of Moroccan Judaism. We spent more than a full day in the car crossing Morocco, which will not happen again. It was Maya’s longest road trip ever. Every stop along the way in Morocco filled our karma tanks with insights. We were wheels up around 1:30am. What remained of this trip aside from time in the air was a 20-hour layover in Cairo. There would be much more there to see there. A few hours’ sleep on the plane and we might be ready. More to come. Ciao.
