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| The sunsets here are amazing. |
We had a decent nights rest so now I can get on with the rest of the story on our trip here. I couldn’t continue much longer yesterday. My body and brain were demanding a break.
Our bus stopped about two hours into the trip at a small town. I call them villages because it sure doesn’t look like a town to me. Chuck got off the bus and wandered around and picked up some water and he decided to get him a Nutella crepe. He said it was pretty good. A bottle of water and the crepe cost him 20 Dirham/$2 USD. My paranoid self stayed on the bus with the luggage. I walked around and stretched my legs while they were all out eating and smoking. I have never seen so many people that smoked cigarettes around the world.
Back on the bus and we were on our way. I had seen so much up to that point, my shock was coming back in check so we both took a short nap. We arrived in Essaouira, pronounced essa-we-ra, to a small corner bus station. As soon as we walked off the bus, we were swarmed by men in wooden carts wanting to take our luggage for us. I think Chuck said no thank you at least 20 times.
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| Not our luggage but this was similar to our handler. This cart looks new. His was falling apart. |
We grabbed our luggage and moved over out of the way hoping we would get a few minutes of peace to find out where we were going. Chuck insisted that it’s close by, we can walk.
HomeAway is the website we go to rent the majority of our homes. Their website is very intuitive and we can communicate with the owners by email through the site. They sent Chuck an email with instructions before we left Tenerife on how to find the apartment. Before we left Marrakech, we didn’t add another Sim card to our phone because we wanted to obtain a local version near the apartment. The UK roaming service would be too expensive to use during our full stay in Morocco.
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| More colorful cactus along the roadways |
However, we did add €10 Euros for a little roaming on the UK Sim card so we could contact the representative meeting us. While trying to locate the information, Chuck’s extra roaming didn’t last long and he lost service a few minutes after we started.
We finally found the address and gave in to let the guy take our luggage. By then, I would probably have just given it to him and take the next flight back to the US! We showed him on the map on our phone where the location was. He spoke pretty good English but when we showed him the map on the phone, he couldn’t figure it out. We later realized that many here may speak English but they may not be able to read it or understand the maps. We found more information from the owner and decided he might know where we were going. By the way, did I mention there were taxis sitting at the bus station? We wont open that can of worms!
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| The beach in front of the apartment |
Anyway, around 5 pm we are walking down the street, trying to keep up with the guy taking our luggage, hoping he knows where he is going. We had the street names but no one knew what they were when we tried to pronounce them and of course they couldn’t read the English language on the map. He was so far ahead and Chuck was way behind me still trying to find more information on the phone that I finally had to tell the guy to stop and wait for us.
We stopped at a place that was a white building on a corner. No name on the building and no one to greet us there. There should have been a doorman at the building that the owner still insists there should be. It did have the apartment number we were looking for and we tried to ring the door but no answer. We gave the phone number to someone that we saw in the building and our cart driver asked him to call the number. Bouchra was the person to be meeting us.
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| Moroccan style door to bedroom. The doors and woodwork are heavy |
We were able to communicate with her on Whatsapp but when our data was out, we lost contact. They were finally able to get in touch with her and we were at the right place, YES! She was on her way to meet us. She was at the Bus station looking for us. UUGGHH!! If they had told us that, it would have saved us so much grief!
Now, to settle up with our walking taxi driver. We were told to make sure you bargain and set the price for anything you buy before you leave. This includes items at the Medina that we’ll write about once we attend. We settled on €3 for him to carry our luggage. We asked him, will you take Euros and he said yes. After we arrived and he saw that we had Dirham, he insisted on Dirham so Chuck gave him 20 Dirham and he begged for more so we ended up giving him 30 Dirham. $3 USD. A taxi was 7 Dirham/$0.72 USD.
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| Modern style kitchen. Almost identical to our Spain home. All this stuff is from IKEA. Seriously! |
If I could use emojis in this blog you would see so many expressions by now.
Bouchra, our representative arrived and she walked us up to the apartment. Its on the 3rd floor (elevators, no stairs!) with the view of the ocean. Not oceanfront but we have a really good view from the side. Bouchra spoke good English but her main language is french so she struggled some. She was really nice and accommodating. Showed us everything about the apartment and how things work. We have her on whatsapp now so we can communicate with her if necessary. We asked about the market and asked if there was something close or is Carrefour (a major french chain) the only one. She informed us that if we bought local, we would need to go to several different market places to get all we needed and it wasn’t efficient.
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| Moroccan furniture in living area. Satellite TV, wireless internet cost us $20 USD for the month. |
Carrefour was a better option but it was a taxi ride away. While we were determining what we needed to purchase we heard what we thought at first was some sort of siren or announcement. We listened and determined it had to be the Muslim prayer being said over a loud speaker. The mosque is within walking distance so that made sense. We walked out on the balcony and it was really loud. It was one of those, hmmm moments. It lasted about 2-3 minutes. I’ll talk about this more in my next post.
We decided to walk to the hotel next door to get a Petit blue taxi and made our way to Carrefour. I have a list of items we use as a guide to buy at each new location. We have to buy toilet paper, paper towels, shampoo, body wash and of course our food items. This time we also needed to buy salt and pepper. I have some spices I brought with me but not enough for everyday use. Everything here has been so very inexpensive except the groceries. We usually spend about $50-$60 USD on our first day.
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| Very large balcony with a beautiful view of the sunset (Thats not a picture) The floors are tile throughout. |
This trip, we spent over $150 USD. We’ll need to check to see what the items that were so expensive and determine if we will need them again.
The grocery shopping was interesting. The front area of fresh foods were in open containers like olives, pasta and spices. We would put in a paper bag or container what we wanted and hand to the guy that would weigh and price them. We wandered around by the meat department. I usually buy chicken, ground hamburger and pork loin. Found the chicken, thankfully, in the cut I wanted. They had lots of chicken hearts. No thank you! Could not find any prepackaged hamburger steaks or ground meat so went to the counter and purchased 1 kilogram which is 2 pounds. Not surprising, there was no pork anywhere. We are in a Muslim country for sure!
We were actually able to use our credit card to pay for the groceries.
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| There are very lightweight throws on everything, similar to silk scarves. |
Everywhere else is cash only. We walked outside to locate a cab and after a few minutes one drove up. He and his buddy didn’t speak any English and again, couldn’t understand the map so we said, go to the beach and we were able to finally show him where to drop us off. We put the groceries away and then collapsed on the couch. My head was pounding, the blister on my lip was aggravating (I only get them when highly stressed), our bodies ached and our minds were on overload.
But, we made it through day one. You would think we were in boot camp or something. We will be fine. It’s just another part of our adventure but goodness, this one almost broke me. What am I going to do in Vietnam or China? I hope by then, we have a better hold on how we handle situations such as this. We learn something new each trip and this will be just another learning experience for us. God has brought us this far and I have strong enough faith to know He will be with us the entire journey. I am sure His message to us right now is to appreciate what we have. It could be worse.
May God bless you all!
Chuck & Lea Ann
WorldTravelReynolds 