Essaouira, Morocco. February 24,2020

Today is the last day of the trip. Boo hoo. It has been a wonderful trip.

Today we had a choice of three events – a steam bath at the hotel spa, cooking school, or a trip to the photogenic seaside resort of Essaouira with a professional photographer. We chose Essaouira even though it was a three hour drive in each direction, and were very happy with our choice.

On the way to Essaouira we passed by goats on an argon tree, which for me was one of the highlights of the day. This is a very bizarre phenomenon in which goat herders coax their goats to walk up into a tree and stay there all day so that tourists will pay money to take their pictures. Goats do climb trees to get to the nuts on their own in the wild but they do not arrange themselves so artistically. This is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words. Those are real goats.

We then stopped at a women’s coop that makes and sells food and cosmetics made from the argon fruit. The women demonstrated how they start by shelling the nut (this is the part the goats eat), then take off the inner shell and use the nut to produce either argon oil or roast the nut to make argon butter (similar to peanut butter). The entire process is done manually. Argon-based products are very popular in Morocco. Argon oil is used on the skin to keep it moist and young looking. They also make an edible oil that you can use similar to olive oil. We tasted all the edible products and tried some of the cosmetic oil on our skin. We purchased some products to bring home with us.

We then continued on our journey to Essaouira. We first entered the Medina and went immediately to the Mellah, the Jewish quarter. The Mellah is being completely refurbished by the king. One of his ministers is Jewish and was very instrumental in making this happen. Our guide told us that some people are not happy about this since the government is paying for it and other areas of the Medina also are in disrepair. We toured a synagogue and Jim was asked to open the ark so that everyone could see the Torah. See pictures below. The synagogue is not in use and is cared for by a Muslim woman. We saw Jewish symbols throughout the Mellah. It must have been a thriving community.

We continued our walk through the Medina and stopped briefly at the fish market.

We passed all kinds of souks selling spices, foods, clothes, wood products etc.. It was similar to the other Medinas we have been in, but a little nicer and calmer.

We went up to the top of the fort and saw the cannons that were aimed at the sea.

We had 10 minutes before going to lunch to shop and we bought something even though we had said we were done shopping. It’s hard to resist with so many beautiful inexpensive choices. I saw the same wooden cobra that I was proud of myself for bargaining down to $15 in Fez being sold for $4. This will haunt me for a long time.

We left the Medina and walked to the port, which was incredibly picturesque. The color blue is very prevalent throughout Morocco and per our guide is a very popular color on the Mediterranean. The boats were painted blue, seagulls were flying everywhere and it looked like a painting or a scene from a movie – spectacular.

Lunch was at a restaurant on the gorgeous sand beach and appropriately we had sea bass. We could see surfers in the distance. See the video below.

It was the most wonderful day with fabulous weather too.

We got back to the hotel with one hour before our farewell dinner. We did some packing and quickly changed into nicer (and cleaner) clothes. The dinner was on the rooftop of the hotel spa with an open bar, appetizers, and a Moroccan dinner. As in most of the meals we had in Morocco, we had tajine, which we are not crazy about. This time it included monk fish, which was good. It was lovely eating outside as the sun set. We didn’t linger at dinner since our shuttle to the Casablanca airport was leaving at 3:00 AM, so we said our farewells and went to finish packing. We maybe slept three hours at night and then another two hours on the shuttle. We are anticipating major jet lag. We are now on a plane to Paris to catch a plane to Atlanta then on to Chicago. Update: we are now on the plane from Paris to Atlanta. There is a snow storm predicted in Chicago so we don’t know what the future holds for our trip home.