Essaouira, Morocco. The town that inspired Jimi Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand.” Actually, that’s not true. In fact, just about everything hasslers tell you about Jimi Hendrix in Essaouira is false. Some of their other talking points – Othello was filmed here – are true, but they are just as aggravating because the information is being shared solely to extract cash from you.
Hasslers and seagulls aside, Essaouira is enchanting in an ancient-walled-city-on-the-Atlantic-coast-UNESCO-World-Heritage-site sort of way. Narrow streets crowded with psychedelic pottery and billowing kaleidoscope scarves, gnaoua music bouncing off the echo chamber corridors, too much wind, and a few thousand ewoks jawas:
The Ewok Jawa garment is known as a jalaba. In Morocco, they are everywhere.
On the bus from Agadir to Essaouira.
Seagull view of the medina in Essaouira
Painted plates, bowls, and tajines at a stall in Essaouira.
That’s a nice looking terrace!! In Morocco, I often found myself staying in a riad – a house with an interior courtyard and a terrace. Taking mint tea on the terrace is 2nd to argan oil massages on the “my favorite activities in Morocco” list.
Traditional paints and dyes in a spice shop
Turbo Viagra
This picture is from Yassine’s spice shop. After bullshitting with Yassine for an hour or so, he invited me for tea – mint tea which he supplemented with everything in the spice shop excepting paints and dyes. Cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, rose buds – cool. Tea Royale, he called it. Top it off with a little turbo viagra. What? Yeah.
Accelerating the effects of viagra seems unwise. And dangerous. Yassine insisted I drink it. It turned out to be a case of false advertising, like the monkey heads I ate in Mali. Just kidding. I don’t eat monkey heads.
Moroccans think they’re pretty cool because they can pour their tea from great heights.
I call this picture: Portrait of an Asshole with Man Peeing in the Background
A picture of the medina ruined by a seagull.
Birds have never caused me so much anxiety.
What a jerk
Up Next: Behind the scenes of Ghallywood.
Hope your holidays are going swell. Till next time, Phil
Morocco is in the top few places I want to see. Actually I more want to smell and hear and otherwise experience the place.
Nearby Tunisia is where they filmed several scenes from Star Wars. Specifically those on the planet Tattooine, where Jawas lived and wore garments like that in the first picture. Ewoks mostly just wore hoods but not much covering their furry bodies.
I’m sure you could make a killing selling ebooks on how to draw either of them.
crap you are totally right. It’s the Jawas… Will have to fix that. Yeah, Morocco is a pretty swell place.
Viagara in the headline? I can’t wait to see what kind of spam you get for this post!
first I effed up the Jawa/Ewok thing, now I am going to attract erectile dysfunction spam. Wow, totally blowing it with this post.
If it will make you feel any better, the comment subscription emails are going straight into spam because of the Viagra thing too 🙂
My new comment emails are also going straight to spam!! Viagra really has a bad rap…
LOL — hadn’t even thought of the spam, until Ayngelina mentioned it. I really do want to know what kind of spam you get now!
So far just the same old bs. Will keep you updated.
Hahaha, that pic of the bird and the man “peeing” is just too funny! I’m sad that I missed Essaouira when I was in Morocco, looks lovely!
that dude was really peeing as far as I could tell. There is a ton to see in Morocco. I got to see Essaouira, but I missed a bunch of other things. Will have to go back!
So this is super late, but your captions totally had me cracking up. I think the flying seagull actually enhances the pic of the medina, but agree that one in the last pic is indeed a jerk 😉
Ekua, glad you enjoyed them 🙂
Always happy to look at more Morocco travel pictures. 😀
Hmm, I suppose they are also Jawa gear, but I referred to them more as Jedi garb in my guest post on Marocmama (http://marocmama.com/2011/04/guest-post-djallaba-revolution.html). I mean, I met a few diminutive Moroccans, but no one I’d really think of as a Jawa. ‘course, walking around some of the desert landscapes did make me think of Tatooine a few times…
Hehe, you may be right. I already accidentally called them ewoks!! Gotta get my star wars clothing straight 🙂
This sounds like the kind of place that is great to explore as a traveller. I’d love to get to Morocco and I’m doing research on possible destinations. Thanks for the tip.