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Monday, April 14, 2014

Essaouira, Morocco (part 1 of 3)

From Agadir to Essaouira (pronounced A-swear-a) we traveled by grand taxi. This is a pretty popular way to travel around Morocco - basically in any city you go to the grand taxi stand, say where you want to go, and say how many seats you want. There are up to 6 seats in an old late 90s Mercedes sedan, so it gets pretty snug - 2 in the front and 4 in the back (plus driver). That's the collective way. You can also hire the entire taxi, but that gets pretty expensive. It costs about 10 dollars per seat, so 20 dollars for the 2 of us. You can also pay for more people; for example, if there are 2 couples, each couple can pay for 3 seats and have a little extra room (we figured out the benefits of this later). You can also pay for more seats if you are getting impatient and don't want to wait for more people to show up, since sometimes it can take a while.

The ride to Essaouira took about 3 hours. We had booked a room in advance; we found an offer online to rent out a room in a two bedroom apartment which came with a shared kitchen and bathroom (look for Great Apartment in Essauoira on www.booking.com). The accommodations were nice, but the best part was the host - Simo, a 25 year old Moroccan. He was wonderful! We shared meals together (though I suspect he was not a fan of our split pea soup), he showed us around town, and in the evening we hung out with his friends on one of the fishing boats (post 2 of 3). Highlight of our trip so far! It helps that Essaouira is such a beautiful port town with its iconic blue fishing boats and sandy Portuguese ramparts.













































Inside the city walls:









Meat market:



Playful Moroccans:

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