Hauling the Boat Up

We stood on the harbour wall and watched as they hoisted the fishing boats out of the water. They were actually pulled onto small rollers once the water wasn't taking the weight. 

They pulled together to a perfect unspoken rhythm. I was quite disappointed they did not seem to us the equivalent of a sea shanty to time themselves.

Essaouira Harbour Defences

Essaouira  port was built by the Portugese in the 17th century. It was part of a chain of ports down the Atlantic coast of Morocco, Asilah, El Jadida, Agadir, and as this was the time of the Sale pirates they had to be well defended. All these ports are characterised by their walls and "pepper  pot" turrets. Eventually these ports allowed Portugal to trade directly with sub-Saharan Africa circumventing the trans-Sahara caravan route and ending the Ghanaian gold trade. It also led to the "3 corner trade" shipping slaves directly to the Americas without first passing through the Mahgreb.

Essaouira is perhaps the best example. The harbour is defended by a row of islands and some of these had gun emplacements too. 

The actual harbour is ringed by an elevated rampart with gun emplacements 

and we paid our 70p and joined the large number of moroccan tourists enjoying a look round during the school holidays. 

It was easy to see approaching ships would be caught in the crossfire. 

Beloved climbed the tower from where you could see that the emplacements controlled all sea approaches.

The port walls are particularly attractive and one circular "window" had been enhanced for the benefit of tourists with two short sets of wooden steps allowing them to take the perfect picture.

Prayers Answered

The Blue Sky Blues ended this week after another round of national prayers. We were sitting in the Dentist's in Agadir on Monday (not for me this time, for Beloved) and saw pictures of supplies being airlifted to people in snow. We thought it was Syria at first but it turned out to be the Rif. The screen changed to flooding near Tangiers. In Agadir  and Taroudant it was fearsomely windy but we had no precipitation. By Thursday there was snow on the Atlas 

but rain came only Friday night. More is forecast for today so the terrace furniture remains inside. Meanwhile there are pictures of Ifrane looking like a ski resort again so that should please the Court.

Calendar Days

Well I know we've just had Chinese New Year but we're in February and Islamic New Year isn't until October so that doesn't explain why people started to give us calendars last week. The one from the pharmacy was of the traditional type that all pharmacists get printed for customers and maybe we just got it then because we had not been to the pharmacy before this year, but the one from the coffee shop was a much more flamboyant affair with lots of attractive views of Morocco. 

What I couldn't understand was why a shop selling only coffee beans and the odd packet of spice to flavour it  would give us a calender promoting olive oil!

A Brownie-points Millionaire

Beloved has excelled himself today.  Whilst I did not even manage a proper birthday card for him, he produced a Valentine card! Purchased in Wales and brought and concealed from me till this morning. He had to buy before Valentines were in the shops but found a messageless card with a heart. His brownie points are infinite. I'm just a little bothered about what he'll cash them in for because as a former colleague used to say  "you can spend ages building up the brownie point account but when you cash it in you have to remove the whole balance at once" and, of course, if you leave it too long you find you've been paying negative interest.

Essaouira fishing port

We took the Quaker and the Geek to Essaouira which is a good place to take guests as it is quite compact and they don't need babysitting. We now always stay at the Palazzo Desdemona which is convenient for the car park but also just by the entrance to the souk close to the port and the beach, so you can't really get lost.
The Quaker still being bonkers for cold swims meant that they went to the beach. She was delighted to find that, it being school holidays here, there were camel rides at the far end of the beach. Sadly they did not have a camera with them to record this for posterity. The beach is not my sort of beach because it is entirely tidal and there are no fixed loungers to read in. It is much more like the Atlantic beaches of my childhood when sand got into your sandals,sandwiches, socks, towels and clothes but strangely has no deck chairs to rent for you to carry out onto the wet sand.
We left them to it and went to the fishing port where they were bringing in the sardine catch.

The fish were already in crates on ice and were handed up. 

People were coming up and buying boxes or sometimes just a bag  on the quay. The seagulls were happy. So were some of the feral cats. I have never understood the Westerners attitude to cats in Essaouira. Yes they are very good at begging if you are eating but will disdain the scraps which are not to their taste. There are charities set up by sentimental westerners to feed the cats. Some bring tinned food from Marrakesh! This is a fishing port. The scavaging is good!

We stayed a while and watched the boats. Most of the activity was in the inner harbour with the small boats but a few of the larger boats were moving in the outer harbour. 

Then we wandered round looking at the nets on the dock.

The larger boats seem to fish with nets but some of the smaller boats seem to fish with lines with muliple branches. Surely this can't be for sardines though!?

What They Bought

I've known the Quaker 40 years and never thought of her as being into stuff and buying things but it turns out I was completely wrong because the Geek and she bought more  to take home than any of our other guests and had brought an empty suitcase to carry it in. She said she preferred buying this than "tourist tat" so I leave you to judge.

The Geek bought a made to measure leather jacket and a hat. 

The Quaker bought 5 pairs of slippers and sandals.

A purse and pencil case.

A tremendous amount of well wrapped potions and oils from the Argan co-op.

A child size Burnoose for her grandson to pretend to be a Jedi Knight in.

A child-size silver bangle.

A Thuya wood tray.

A small wooden jigsaw.

A cactus silk scarf

Amalou, both with and without honey, dates, apricots, figs, and a variety of spices, fennel, coriander, cumin, saffron, lemon ginger, orange flower water.

In showing us these it became clear that the Quaker had told the Geek not to buy the things she didn't like but that he liked and would use different things so he went back to the Souk to buy Chillied Olive, Harissa paste and Preserved Lemons.
They did all seem to fit in the suitcase assuming he wore the coat and hat but that left them with 3 hand luggage bags between the two of them so I hope they got home alright.

A Mexican stand-off on the Tizi n' Test

The only upside of last week's collision is that the replacement Swift is not as underpowered as the original Celerio. The Quaker had wanted to go up the Tizi n' Test and Beloved had refused to drive it in the other car but with the bigger engine we went off to Tin Mal yesterday.

We had not been up for 2 years since we took the juggler and were very pleased to find that as the ascent started the road had been repaired. Instead of being 1 1/2 carriage ways wide with potholes and washed out bends it was all newly metalled with 2 carriage widths and a white line down the centre!! This continued for 17 km and the 7km from the col and just when the precipitous drop transferred to our side of the road it stopped and we were on the old surface. 11/2 vehicles wide, potholed, washed out and no planned passing places.

We went to Tin Mal. The guy recognised me again and we had a chat about what Ibn Toumert actually believed. One strand of research suggests that he may have come back a Shi'ite after visiting Iran but others refute this. 

We'd booked lunch at the Belle Vue and as that 30kms over the col to Tin Mal always takes much longer than you expect were expecting it to be a late one. Imagine our dismay when we turned a bend and found a mexican stand-off where a bus had met head on with a lorry on a hairpin.

 As the lorry was stuck between a crash barrier and the wall of rock behind it was clearly up to the bus driver to reverse as the road wad wider behind him. He was refusing to do so. All the passengers got out of the bus and it became a bystander event. The drivers of other vehicles blocked on each side joined in on the lorry driver's side. The bus driver was refusing to give way. 

The drop at this point was quite precipitous and on the lorry driver's side. 

After half an hour common sense prevailed and the bus backed up with much assistance from the passengers. The lorry crawled through and we were on our way to a very late lunch.