It’s been a strange 3, or 4 days. Morocco doesn’t get a lot of rain, but we’ve been here for a few of those days and it’s been very welcome to the farming community. Watching the rain coming down through the centre of our Riad has made for some interesting viewing, it’s also turned it into a bit of a sanctuary for some of the small local birds to shelter and they’ve entertained us with their enchanting little melodies. We haven’t done too many trips since arriving in Essaouira, so we decided to take a trip about 30km along the coastline to Sidi Mbark where we’d be making our way to a Berber village set back in the hills, by foot. Berbers are the indigenous people of North Africa, while Arabs are native to the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East, Arabic is most widely spoken in Morocco. Berbers tend to live in rural communities and have their own dialect. We arrived after a 40 minute journey, where we met Hassan and his donkey (Moroccans don’t typically name their animals, so it’s just donkey). We spent the next 3 hours rambling across different terrains, coming across goat herders and farmers, while understanding a little bit more about the area, through Hassan’s French interpreter. Before taking tea and enjoying some of the local delicacies, it was a really enjoyable day. We started kitesurfing with Abdo, which perhaps unsurprisingly isn’t as easy as it looks, our first 2 hour lesson was spent with a smaller kite learning how to handle it on the beach and getting used to the harness. The second lesson was much the same as first, but with a bigger kite and more wind and by the end of the lesson I was feeling pretty confident, Rach less so. By the third lesson I was thinking that I had this sussed, Rachel too, was feeling much more confident. However just as we were heading into the water I got overly confident and was completely taken out by the kite, launching myself head first into the sand, smashing my glasses, cutting my lip and damaging my left knee, fortunately I was wearing a helmet, but it took me some time to find my feet before I reluctantly made it into the water to be dragged around again and feeling a whole lot less enthusiastic…..Rach did famously though.
Dream Chasers 