Essaouira

The day started out by me waking up at 4am, to a very drunk student on one of the other trips, banging on his room next door to get in. At 7, I got out of bed, did the whole morning routine, and packed all the stuff I bought at the souks yesterday, and had a wholesome breakfast consisting of three bowls of cereal (I love cereal, if you didn't know already). Our bus headed out from the hotel around 8:30 for Essaouira. On the bus, our leader Jeff talked to us about responsibility for a bit, because apparently last night a bunch of students got really drunk, one of whom actually somehow broke the hotel's elevator, and three others who were swimming "inappropriately" in the hotel's pool. Jeff reminded us that as SAS students, we would be representing not only SAS but America as a whole (which I thought was absolutely true). We had a long drive ahead of us to get to Essaouira, about 4 hours. Along the way we stopped at a facility where women looking for jobs were working to extract oils from the Aragan tree's fruit, which only gives fruit in Morocco (it also grows in Mexico but does not grow fruit there). It was great to see how they extract the nut form the fruit, and how they put nothing to waste (the outside pit is used to feed goats, the inside shells used for fire fuel, the the nut used to make the oils). After sampling some perfumes, honey, and lotions made from this oils, we continued our drive. Upon reaching Essaouira, we first made our way to the restaurant for lunch. All the buildings in Essaouira had a special blue paint on them around the windows, because this paint apparently wards off bugs and keeps the building cool. The restaurant had an amazing view of the ocean from there over the the old medina's castle wall. Lunch was great, I got an enormous bowl of spaghetti and more mint tea, both of which were amazing. The others were jealous, because they got fish, but they wanted to the pasta too. After lunch, we had free time to wander the markets and streets, but not that long. Its funny that our trip is called Marrakech-Essaouira, but we only spent like 3 hours in Essaouira. We then had a 2.5 hour bus trip to El Safi, a town known for its pottery and handicrafts. There we were to spend the night, and spend tomorrow morning visiting, followed by El Jadida and back to Casablanca. When we got to our hotel (the Golden Tulip), we experienced one of the most beautiful sunsets over the ocean I have ever seen. We checked in, and then had dinner, and had a very deep conversation with Aaron, Kaipo, and Sally (a lifelong learner). And it felt good to have a such a conversation, because I really do enjoy having such talks. This lasted a good 2 hours, followed by another hour of talking with Aaron, Rudy, Kelsey, Kevin, Nat and Kori. This was a day that started out not so great, and ended amazingly. It was good times, but kind of looking forward to being back on the ship tomorrow. I honestly think I only want to do independent travel from know on (except for the cultural trip through SAS and Angkor Wat), but we will see.
-Nimish
September 12, 2010