Impressions Of Essaouira

When much of North and West Africa is hot, it's nice to be here. We sleep with a window open and the nights are a perfect sleeping temperature. We sleep well and wake up refreshed. Elena really likes long walks along the Atlantic Ocean. I don't mind going away from the city, but the trip back is against the wind and the wind is strong. Walking in the sand against a headwind is not fun. If you go early enough, the hawkers of the camel rides aren't there yet.

The medina is clean and they aren't too agressive. Of course, if you stop to look at their wares, they come and start to try to sell to you, but not as aggressively as in other medinas. Not that we've been to Marrakech, yet. But I think Marrakech will have fairly aggressive merchants. We are figuring out the medina system. Certain types of booths have certain types of stuff. Cosmetics, spices, leather goods, vegetables, meats, dry goods, etc. I guess the locals shop in the medina. Perhaps they know who gives the best prices. We know we are getting ripped off. We know that we cannot get the same prices as the locals. But we do OK. Last night we got a bunch of carrots and onions for just 3 dirhams (US$0.50). It was our third trip to this guy, so I guess he almost consideres us loyal customers. ;-)

I see a lot of solo men who are, I think, Berber. They wear a robes with hoods that are pointed. It almost looks like they have a stick in their hoods to maintain the shape of the point. They never seem to be in groups--just by themselves.

Hahne Chocolate puffed rice is yummy. It's a German brand sold in the local suprettes. A box is only 26 dh. It's like Cocoa Puffs but shaped more like Rice Crispies. We've been eating these cookies from a store. There is one that is chocolate. It's the funniest favor, though. You know those wafers that come in packages of yellow, pink, and brown? It's the same taste as those chocolate cream wafers. I've never tasted that particular flavor anywhere else.

We are doing well improvising food. We have made stews, varied pastas, steaks. Here is a picture of our meal from Saturday. That's a little steak spiced with salt and our pepper, safron mix. There are potatoes and carrots with Laughing Cow (Vache qui Rit) cream cheese and cumin. And a cucumber and tomato salad with oil and vinegar. Our food improvs are getting so good.



Now I know why Elena tells me to put a shirt on when I eat. ;-)



I was standing is a square waiting for Elena when a young man came up to me. He asked where I was from by guessing I was from England. It took a while to get him to understand where I was from. He asked about my family, who I was waiting for. We chatted about Marrakech. He said his cell phone got stolen last night and we came by bus and slept 2 nights in the bus station. Then he asked for bread. He said he didn't want money because the police were looking--he assured me there were many police in the square. I figured I could buy him a 1 dh bread. But then it turned out "bread" means a 10 dh sandwich from a sandwich shop--not a loaf of bread. So I said no (it would require me to take out my wallet and I refuse to do that in front of unsolicited interloqutors). He tried to ask if 10 dh was a lot of money to me. It isn't but I don't take my wallet out, so I just said I was sorry and was going to go back to waiting for my friend.

The internet cafe we use is slow slow slow. It is by the Dauphin restaurant. But the one by the tourist information center had a demo version of SpyPal installed. Apparently the demo version pops up a dialog box every half hour--not something you want if you're trying to steal passwords by capturing keystrokes. I googled spypal and it seems it is easy to uninstall. You just need to find the directory which is a hidden directory in Program Files. Then just uninstall it. So I did. People have no business installing such programs on computers in internet cafes.

When walking in the medina, you have a choice: walk at the speed of normal medina traffic, or try to weave in and out to go at North American speeds. Both are very frustrating. The speed of the medina is slow. It's like a meander. It gets to where it's going, but not fast. At all. It's slower than anything in America. Slower than Broadway on Capitol Hill which is slower than me, but still not too slow. Slower than Robson which is maybe slightly faster than Broadway. Slower than France which is slower than the United States and Canada. There are lots of obstacles, shops with displays, people congrating around booths,... And when a space opens up, the lolligagging walker fill it in having the same regard for their faster counterparts that some men have when they use the middle urinal when there are 3 free urinals. I can usually get around pretty well. I'm slowed significantly, but the same skills that enable me to make good time on I-5 South into Seattle at 6pm apply to the medina. I just don't want to rear-end anyone. I bumped into Elena the other day when a woman in front of me suddenly stopped and bent over to tend to her child. It was a choice between swerving into Elena and "it's good to be the king".