Post #14 Oct 17th. Onto Essaouira
On the agenda today is a long drive to the coastal town of Essaouira. It’s supposed to take about 2 and a half hours, and only because it’s not a major city, so the road system involves secondary highways. On secondary roads where the route takes you through rural areas, not only are the speed limits lower, the number of clean bathrooms also reduces significantly. Bathrooms are either squat or western style and clearly (and I can speak for Judith on this) our preference is for western toilets. The guide and driver know where these toilets are throughout the route. So when they ask if we want a toilet break, we can always ask how long it will be if we don’t take advantage of the one coming up.
The scenery is always interesting. Here the topography changes from the Atlas Mountain range to the south to flatter plains as we move towards the coast. I find going through the various villages and towns to be an interesting snapshot of Moroccan life. But I’m sleeping through most of it today. I have some gastrointestinal thing (traveller’s diarrhea) bothering me and car napping appears to be my body’s way of dealing with it today. If it wasn’t for Judith’s bag of chemical supplements, I’d be in a bad way. I’ve travelled with Judith since 2015 and didn’t quite grasp how meaningful her slogan of “Living Better with Chemicals” was. I now know just how accurate it can be. Tylenol and Immodium were my miracle drugs that made the illness symptoms tolerable.
I did manage to wake up for a few things… bathroom breaks for sure and then something totally unexpected. Chichaoua is a small town about halfway between Marrakech and Essaouira. As we were driving through, we saw a festival being set up. Not just any run of the mill festival. There were many horses, say about 35-50 steeds, that looked very well trained for riding. Some had saddles on them. We immediately asked to check it out so we pulled over and went to explore the festival. That is the beauty of private guiding travel. You have the flexibility to incorporate changes to the itinerary.
Our guide tells us the festival is known as a “Fantasia” (as in the Disney movie name). They are also known as Tbourida festivals. Fantasias/Tbouridas are traditional exhibitions of horsemanship for North Aftrican communities. Some references indicate the event dates back to the Kingdom of Numidia that existed around 202 BC to 25 BC. Other references suggest it only dates back to the 16th century. It is now seen as a cultural performance. The performance consists of an odd number of horse riders (about 15 to 25), all wearing period costumes and carrying old muskets. The horses line up side by side at one end of a field, with the leader of the troupe in the middle of the line. They perform an hadda (salute) where the riders perform an acrobatic arms drill. After the salute, they realign at the start point and perform the taiqa where the rider group takes off at a gallop in a single line at the same breakneck speed. At some point, they all fire their muskets simultaneously so that a single shot is heard.
In Morocco, the Fantasia was inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021. There are a few hundred Fantasia organizations in Morocco and they compete annually for the Hassan II National Tbourida Trophy.
Rider gear hanging in the tent. This is the regalia the riders wear during the fantasia. The official musket guns are here.
After looking at the horses, we walked towards the festival commerce - a long line of souvenir booths hawking all sorts of trinkets and trash — similar items to ones that we’ve seen at the various medina markets we’ve visited — and whole other section offering street food. There was cooking equipment being set up in another section that looked like some community meal(s) is/are going to be made. It’s a large event that will run for the next three days. While we were there, a heavy duty cargo truck carrying 3 more horses and over 6 men drove in to the event grounds indicating there were even more horses to come. We were definitely one day too early for this event. I would have loved to see the event underway.
We parked in the lot in front of this building. The gigantic mural adorning the building depicts a fantasia. Zooming in will give you an idea of what the traditional costumes look like.
After our exploration of the fantasia event, we get underway again.
Another shot of a mobile coffee dispenser that we passed. I couldn’t resist adding this picture. You can clearly see the espresso machine on the upper shelf.
About an hour after we left the horse festival at Chichaoua, we the stopped at an argan oil manufacturing cooperative, Argan Omade, run by women. We’re greeted by a young woman who takes us on a walk to see the oldest argan tree on site. It’s reported to be about 500 years old.
The argan tree is native to Morocco and argan nuts are ground to extract oil, which is used for both consumption and cosmetic purposes. We went into the facility and saw women manually grinding the argan kernels on grinding stones. I have to think that this was just for show and there are now machines producing the argan oil in commercial quantities. Our next stop was into the store to sample and explore the various argan oil varieties. Straight argan oil is often used as a bread dip much like olive oil. Amlu is a thick brown paste, a lot like peanut butter, and is also used as a bread dip. It’s made from mixing ground roasted almonds, aEgan oil and honey. I tried some at the store and it was very tasty. I made a small argan oil purchase (despite the sales clerk pointing out to me that larger quantities were much more economical) and we get back into the van to continue on our way.
After about 15 minutes of driving, we stop at a lookout that gave us a sweeping view of Essaouira. We immediately get hit up by vendors targeting all the tourists stopping here (that would be all of them). Camel rides, jewelry, pottery, clothing — it’s all there — and they follow us even though our guide has told them, we aren’t interested. I was saddened to see all the garbage strewn about at the lookout, particularly on the other side of the short rock wall that sets the boundary of the site, and the one that many of the vendors were using to display their goods. Garbage is a problem in many of the places I’ve seen on my various travels with Judith. It will be a while before waste collection improves in both rural and urban areas in these countries. Hopefully it will be sooner than I predict.
Some of the camels you could ride at the lookout. I think that it would clearly be a pretty lame ride sitting on a camel at a roadside lookout.
We reach Essaouira around 2:30 and check into our hotel. Riad Dar L’Oussia is within the Medina (old city) walls. No cars are permitted so our luggage is loaded into a cart and our hotel porter wheels it to the hotel. I think the way the building is structured, it used to be a fondouk, an old style hotel for caravans. Our room is on the floor under the rooftop deck, so to access it we ascend two flights of stairs and then cross over diagonally to another stairwell and climb up two more floor levels. The stairwells are circular with narrow steps with an old thick twisted jute rope as an handrail. There’s no way they would ever pass Canadian building codes. There is no elevator. I am thankful someone else is managing the luggage.
The bathroom area. The window in the toilet room is a small door that opens up onto the balcony. Most of the guest rooms had similar small doors that opened up into their bathroom areas. That was kind of weird and somewhat disconcerting when walking by and seeing people in their units.
We take about 10 minutes to check out our room, organize ourselves and head back out again for a tour of the Medina, I really like the quiet vibe here in this city’s medina. It’s quiet and clean with lots of room to navigate through the old town section.
We end up on a section of the Medina that opens up and overlooks the water’s edge and I take this video.
Coming into the city, there is a long boardwalk that we drove along on our way to the hotel. The beach scene is like Long Beach in Tofino. At low tide the beach is very wide and appears to go on forever. We leave the Medina area and head over to the beach and take these pictures.
By now it was about 4:30. We head back to the hotel and I have a much needed nap. We head back out around 7:00 to find a bit of dinner and end up picking out a small eatery which looks as if it was run by women. I end up with Moroccan soup and Judith has an eggplant appetizer. We head back to the hotel by about 8:30. I go straight to bed to get as much rest as possible.
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