Tag: beach

Moro-Diaries #2: Essaouira

Although surfing with Adam in Marrakesh was a nice experience, I decided that it was enough for this trip. I guess at my age, I prefer a certain minimum amount of comfort. On the other hand, hostels are great places to meet people. I decided to continue the trip sleeping in private rooms in hostels or hotels. I grew to appreciate good privacy and alone-time at the end of a socially packed day.

***

The bus from Marrakesh to Essaouira took around 3 hours with a short break. Beside me was a French girl with whom I started chatting in the second half of the trip. Upon arriving in Essaouira, I immediately felt pleasant vibes, the complete opposite of the chaotic vibes in Marrakesh. Already from the bus, you could see countless kites of surfers in the famously windy city. I went straight to the hostel where I booked a room and was greeted by a German young man with one arm. He volunteers working there in exchange for surfing lessons and accommodation! I immediately climbed to the roof terrace with my book to have a read while observing the sun setting in the Atlantic Ocean. Around me were groups of young people who seemed to be traveling together, mainly French or German. I thought about putting on my noise-cancellation headphones since young people in general intimidate me👴🏼. In parallel, I checked out “couchsurfing hangouts,” which is a section of the Couchsurfing app to find other solo travelers to meet up. There, I found Wouter, a Dutch gentleman, and we agreed to go for dinner. Soon enough, a young European lady entered the terrace, saw me, and directly came to me, saying “you were on the bus from Marrakesh.” I said yes and invited her to have a seat nearby, and we started chatting and getting to know each other. Mirjam, a Norwegian 27-year-old traveling solo around Morocco. Mirjam, Wouter, and I went for dinner in a tiny family-run restaurant in the old town of Essaouira. The cook was a Moroccan lady, assisted by two others who looked really old, while the son waited on the tables. We ordered Tajines while discussing life, love, and Morocco. After dinner and the homemade cream caramel, we wandered around the “medina,” charmed by all the handcrafted goods, the small alleys, and passing by the fish market where fishermen prepared their fish of the day for the market the next day, I assume. Mirjam is a janitor, and Wouter is an animation artist. The conversation was very engaging and went much deeper than the casual customary fact-based chit-chat, to include childhood traumas and matters of the heart.

***

On the next day, Wednesday, I started the day with breakfast in the hostel. A modest breakfast that included my new favorite Moroccan almond spread “Amlou.” It consists of argan oil, almonds, and honey. The almonds are toasted, then crushed and kneaded with honey and argan oil. I enjoy it with some freshly made pancakes despite the flies hovering over the whole breakfast!
I then went to the medina, met Wouter, where we bought a chess set and went to a local cafe for some games of chess and more conversations. On the second floor of the cafe, we sat separated by the chess set, the early morning sun rays sneaked from the window and shone directly on the chessboard as well as on Wouter’s stressed face 😅. While playing, we discussed differences between Morocco and Europe and mainly topics which one can’t discuss in Europe since they are tabooed. Wouter’s lack of political correctness was refreshing, and I enjoyed the time we spent together a lot. We exchanged contacts and decided to try to meet later in our trips in another city.

***

Mirjam has a talent to know random people on the street; I met her later in the afternoon with her new friend, Hicham, a Moroccan French young man passionate about Salsa and working in tourism around the world. We spent some beach time where we built a sandcastle like a group of kindergarten children. The sea is relatively dangerous for swimming since the waves can be very high. This is why Essaouira is a good place for wind-surfing, kite-surfing, and etc-rfing. In the evening, we went for dinner accompanied by two new travelers that Mirjam recruited from the hostel, David, from the Canary Islands, traveling the world and speaking 5 languages, and Bartly (fake name), a Chinese electric cars engineer. Bartly barely spoke English but had a radioactive enthusiasm and positivity. We all went for dinner and had funny x-rated conversations, where Bartly was the protagonist translating everything we say with some efficient Chinese app. David and I laughed till tears when Bartly referred to oral sex as “sea-food” 😂😂😂. I hope no children are reading these lines. After another great meal, we went for some dancing in a local bar that was also filled with tourists. On the way back to the hostel, in the windy night of cute Essaouira, David said, “First and last time in f***ing Essaouira.” Mirjam and I will head to Casablanca tomorrow, while David will join us halfway and then stay in Marrakesh.

Stress 😉
With Mirjam and Wouter
The view from my modest hostel room, ocean, palm trees and laundry!
With Davi and Mirjam in Marrakesh train station

Kenya 2022 | Days 8 and 9: Burnt in Diani

From “The Forty Rules of Love”

I read the above words on the beach in the morning and decided to go for a beach walk. It was after breakfast around 10 am. Since I didn’t find sun cream, I have bought a hydrating cream from the supermarket. I creamed my skin and thought: there are two possibilities; one is that this cream will protect my skin if it prevents the sun rays. The other possibility, it might contain some oil that will absorb more heat and make my skin worse. My bet was the first theory.
During the walk, I was approached by numerous locals who want to sell me “anything”. Coconuts, souvenirs, safaris, water sports. “aaaahh.. brotherrr from another motherrrr, where are you frrrrom?” I enjoyed the small talk and the jokes. Some of them talked only till they found out that I am not a good client. One guy just rotated around his axis and walked away in the middle of the conversation. Bakari, though, said he would walk with me and just chat anyway. He told me he gets to know tourists and makes friendships with the regular ones. He is told me about his devout friend Rashid, a Moroccan in France who sells drugs and Heroin there and comes twice a year for holidays in Diani. I found that entertaining. He told me how he cares about sending his children to Madrasa, a school for learning religion. At some point, under the mighty African sun, I started to feel the burrrn. He also noticed it and said “brother, you need aloe vera”. He ran in one direction and brought aloe vera leaves and cut them open where a moist gel was inside. I wiped my skin with it. I realized that my theory about the hydrating cream was wrong and that I am starting to cook like a properly marinated and seasoned chicken, well or a lion, hehe. I commissioned Bakari to make me a bottle of aloe vera while I get some money to support him and his family. He got many leaves and sat on the beach extracting the aloe vera into an old miserable-looking bottle. I found it a pleasant coincidence to see the spiky aloe vera leaves, from which we were extracting medicine. Just like the quote above. We agreed, he would take me on a tour of his village and I would like to check the local mosque in the village.

Around 3 pm, we walked to the village for around 15 minutes. I think this has accounted for more of my cooking time, which I realized later in the evening. We walked through some fields until the humble houses started to appear. This reminded me of the Kibera, the slums, except that the houses were dispersed and seemed to be spacey. No electricity or water infrastructure, though. The families there, which were mainly the women and the children, were lying on the ground outside getting their siestas. Some houses were made of metal and some were made of mud. The mosque was built out of concrete and had some water infrastructure, which was not working because the pump needs electricity, and they don’t have electricity in the village! I asked Bakari to take me back to the beach. He wanted to take me to his house, but I have seen enough. Already now, every time I meet someone here, I wonder if they live in slums. I wanted to go back to my luxury and to aloe vera.

A photo of aloe vera (from the internet)

For the evening, I joined Keisha and Hasani for dinner and a bit of music. However, the party was kind of ruined since we got the news that one member of the previous party a few days ago tested COVID-positive. Shit! I went back to the hotel. There, there was a game room with table tennis and billiards. I found a girl who works there, playing against some smart-looking African young guys. I came to know that they were from Rwanda. It was a pleasant time before I retreat to the bed.

The next day I was mostly indoors. I kind of wanted to isolate myself in case of COVID, I wanted to avoid the sun, and I was doing some remote working for my research. I now understand the feeling of home-office, which is not necessarily a bad thing if you can also be doing it on the beach somewhere else in the world.

Diani was some little paradise and I loved my time here. But now I was saturated with the sun, the ocean, and the sand. I decided it is time to leave the coast side and booked a flight for tomorrow to Nairobi.