Day 15 - Taroudannt to Essaouira

It was raining as we ate breakfast, but had stopped by the time we were ready to leave and was mostly sunny the rest of the day.

We departed our riad and drove about 45 minutes to Taroudannt. We spent about an hour wandering through the streets of the market. Before continuing west to the coast. The terrain was now very flat, with mountains visible to the northeast. Mostly the land was planted in argan trees - mile after mile of aragan trees.

With the exception of a few places like larger stores and restaurants, purchasing almost anything in Morocco requires haggling over the price, or paying way more than you should. Neither Karen or I enjoy that aspect, but one member of our group, Vicki, enjoyed the process. In one shop in Taroudannt Vicki helped Ben negotiate for the purchase of an old dagger. They reached a deal, shook on it, and I took a photo of everyone being happy. Then Ben went to pay and they added another zero to the price so the deal was off. So, I crossed out the new "family" member from the photo.  Generally though Vicki was successful in closing a deal.

We reached the coast at Agadir at about 1 PM. We stopped at the Moroccan equivalent of Costco, Atacadao, to buy groceries for a picnic lunch. Fortunately they had some smaller sized items, but just like Costco people were pushing enormous carts out the store, piled high with food and other items. And, just like Costco they checked your receipt when you left the store.

When we arrived at the coast we turned right and headed north towards our destination for the day, Essaouira. Agadir was bustling with construction, building lots of new apartments or condominiums along the water. Eventually we got past the sprawl of the city and the road closely followed the water for the next hour or so, with limited development. Vegetation was sparse, with mostly low growing shrubs. The shoreline was rocky, with heavy surf. The vegetation reminded me a bit of southern California, but I don;t ever remember seeing camels on the beach in SoCal.

Eventually the road turned inland, and fairly quickly the rolling hills were covered with aragan trees, loaded with this year's crop of nuts. We stopped at a aragan cooperative to learn how they process the nuts, and of course an opportunity to purchase products. The process that they showed us is extremely manual labor intensive, with women cracking the nuts open one by one, and then separating the parts. All parts of the nuts are used, inner part for the production of oil, and other parts are used for animal feed and for fuel to burn.  I wasn't inspired to purchase anything, but they did have nice flowers outside.  😃

 

We finally arrived in Essaouira around 630.  We walked around town for an hour or so, had dinner, and returned to the riad.   Most places we have been wifi is very slow, or just doesn't work at all.  This place had supper fast WiFi so I was able to get caught up on the blog.

Everywhere in Morocco there are lots of cats, but I think the cat density in Essaouira might be the highest.