Our Apartment/Our Lives In Essaouira

We are living in an apartment. It is owned by a German, apparently, as all the books and magazines in German indicate. It is on the top 2 floors of a building near the wall overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It is a bit old and musty and falling apart. The kitchen is not so well stocked--there is not even a frying pan with a handle--just one without one. The fridge is missing a part between the fridge and the freezer, so our first watermelon got frozen on the top shelf. At least the beer is ice cold.

It has hot water for the shower, but the heater is a butane heater and it's inside. We noticed that when the doors are closed, a smell accumulates in the place. We figured out it was the butane heater so Elena rigged the window by it to open a little more than a crack. That helped a lot. I can't believe that we were essentially living in butane exhaust.

We went to get some incense and found the incense guy. He tried to sell us some other stuff for making stuff smell nice, and for some reason Elena wanted to buy it. So she bought a block of orange flower oil or something for 100 dh (US$15). Right after we left, she wondered why she bought it. The people were so happy we bought it that they gave us some other free stuff. But we've been burning incense ever since and that's nice. It makes the place a bit nicer.

We found a couple of "grocery stores". They are called suprettes here. Both are in the new town. One is a bit closer, but a bit smaller. It has prices on the shelves for about half the goods. The other is a bit further, but a bit bigger and doesn't have prices for any but a small handful of items. Both have horrible produce. The good produce is in the medina. But both offer bar code scanner controlled prices so you know you are getting a somewhat fair price--at least you are paying what everyone else pays. They aren't cheap, though. Elena paid 730 dh (like US$11) for a box of cereal.

We got a couple of scarves. We were able to negotitate because we were willing to walk away. So we got these 2 really nice scarves for 40 dh (US$6) each. I wanted to wear mine this morning when we went out, but we already looked like twins and Elena had hers on first.

We found this little store that sells little Moroccan treats. We've spent about US$12 so far. The treats are so yummy. Right around the corner is the Driss Patisserie which is famous and we need to try. They have bigger treats and one of these days I'll go there and try a bunch of their sweets.

We've been taking walks along the Atlantic in the morning. We go out past a sort of rocky thing south of the city. It seems to be the ruins of a small tower or something. A guy there asked me if I wanted to buy marijuana. I told him no. They have camels south of the beach that you can ride and as you walk toward them, even far away, people come up and say "bonjour! ça va?" Then they ask if you want a camel ride. No we don't. People do the rides and they don't look especially fun.