Lazy day in Essa today, as I luxuriously slept in until nearly ten AM. For the first time, it felt like a real vacation! The sleep-in was especially appreciated, since I stayed up last night to watch the Habs’ game on streaming Internet on the hotel’s WiFi. A couple of the Moroccan staff members were quite interested in what I was watching, and I spent some time explaining the ways in which hockey was similar to football (soccer). When my laptop battery died with five minutes left in the third, one of the staffers let me watch the rest of regulation and overtime on the hotel’s computer. Great goal by Pleks and great win by the Habs. Woohoo!
After that, I was in a pretty good mood, and spent the day just soaking up Essaouira’s vibe. From the art galleries to the kite surfers to the leftover hippies emulating Jimi Hendrix (the legend goes that his song Castles in the Sand was inspired by having spent time here), Essa is a pretty unique place in Morocco and is probably one of my favourite places on this trip so far. I had lunch at a little vegetarian restaurant in a square and people-watched for a while, and browsed in some of the shops.
Mid-afternoon, it was time to head out. Everyone was talking about the volcano and how it would probably affect our travel plans, and there was some last-minute scrambling for updates using the hotel’s Internet, but nobody knows much just yet.
With the private minivan gone, we were meant to take a local bus. Having visions of the trucks that we kept seeing with dozens of locals standing up in the back along with chickens and sheep, we weren’t quite sure what that meant. Well, the “local bus” turned out to be a nice, clean, air-conditioned coach full of French tourists. Not so local after all. There were some entertaining moments as it passed by a festival in one of the towns and tried to face off against cars, trucks, pedestrians and donkeys. But all in all, it was a pretty smooth ride.
Next stop: Marrakech.