“As you wake up to sort of Morocco coming to life, and you drive a two-hour journey through the desert as the sun is rising over the sand dunes… I saw landscapes and visual stuff that I’ll never forget. It was special.”

Anthony Bourdain 

My husband Walter and I came that time to Morocco to visit friends in the Peace Corps. An EasyJet flight from Madrid, Spain, brought us to Marrakech airport on a Wednesday. Our friends met us and negotiated for a taxi in Arabic, which took us to a ryad in that city, where we stayed for two nights.

On Friday afternoon, we began the first leg of our trip to their temporary home away from home in the hills to the west. Since the town was so small and remote, with no direct public transportation from Marrakech, we first had to head for a larger city on the western coast. We took two taxis to the bus station and boarded one bound for the lovely beachfront port of Essaouira. It was a three-hour drive. We stayed at a hotel there for two nights, enjoyed dinner at the home of our friends’ Peace Corps host family, and explored the town’s offerings, including the delights of a hammam. On Sunday morning, we visited the souk to buy fruits and vegetables and loaded the food and our luggage into a carweela (a wooden vehicle pushed by one guy).  We followed him to a small square filled with old Mercedes diesel taxis, loaded up, and headed for the hills.

After a forty-five-minute drive, the taxi dropped us at the roadside near a scattering of buildings. Walter and I watched the luggage while our friends went across the street to buy bottled water, soda, and a chicken.  The building had a hanout (small grocery) and a butcher. They came back with the drinks but no chicken. The butcher wasn’t there, only a guy minding the store with some unrefrigerated cleaned chickens sitting out for an undetermined amount of time.  (The butcher normally slaughters a fresh chicken on request.). Shortly after that, their Moroccan neighbor arrived with a donkey-driven carweela which had been arranged for with a phone call. We loaded the luggage, and the driver insisted we two women ride along. The men said they would walk up to Ait Diba, the hilltop town our friends lived in.  They took a goat path, and we went up a washed-out, rocky dirt road that jarred one’s spine with every rut.  It was tough going either way in the dry heat, but we all made it up after half an hour.

We were welcomed by their many new friends in the small community, including an invitation from the local school teacher to visit the nearby preschool and join him for mint tea. We later enjoyed an evening with our friends, having a home-cooked meal in their neat, whitewashed stone home built around a courtyard.

The following day, we explored more of the area on foot and hiked to the slightly larger town of Oulad Said, which had three hanouts. Our wanderings passed a donkey, orchards of argan trees, a couple of camels, a few mules, sheep, goats, and chickens.

On Tuesday, we all got up at six and enjoyed our friend’s hand-made bread for our last breakfast in Ait Diba.  By 8 am, we were hoisting on our packs. (Walter and I had one in front and one in back.) We set off down the goat path for the half-hour trek to the main road.  Our goal was to flag down a bus heading to Agadir, a resort town further south on the coast, or a taxi heading to Essaouira, whichever came first.  An old Mercedes taxi came along within minutes of our arrival.  However, it already had five people in it.  We motioned for it to go on without us, but the driver wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.  He put our packs in the trunk and told everyone inside to scrunch over.  My female friend joined the baseball hat-wearing driver and two men wearing skullcaps and djellabas in the front seat. The driver pushed Walter, our male friend, and me into the back with a woman in a caftan and head scarf and another guy in a baseball hat.  We were nine in all!  The poor guy next to me heard his cell phone ring, but it took him a while to extricate it from his pocket.  We were relieved when one of the front-seat guys and the woman in the back got out at Had Dra, about 15 or 20 minutes down the road.  That left seven of us to continue to Essaouira - the legal amount that can get through the usual gendarme road check.

After dropping off one guy near some houses and another at the health clinic, we arrived at the Essaouira taxi stand, where we negotiated for another Mercedes taxi to take us down the coast to Agadir.  We lucked out this time.  It was just the four of us, and this ride was in meticulous condition. The black leather seats were polished, and the floor had small Oriental carpets.  The driver was friendly and even stopped to buy bananas and share them with us.  We passed many Argan tree orchards and saw what they call “the flying goats.” (They don’t actually fly but climb high into the Argan trees to eat the nuts.) We also passed banana plantations. The coastal scenery was spectacular, with mountainous switchbacks skirting the Atlantic Ocean.  Some parts of the coast are rocky and rugged, but there are also stretches with sandy beaches.  After three hours, we took the first turnoff for the resort city of Agadir, but we encountered a roadblock.  (Some students were conducting a protest.). The driver turned around, entered the city at the next exit, and dropped us at our hotel.  

In the evening, another taxi ride took us to the fishing port. Simple open-air restaurants served the catches of the day - nothing fancy, but very fresh grilled fish.  

After dinner, it had cooled off a bit, so we taxied back to the hotel, grabbed some jackets, and headed out to find a place for wine and beer. (None had been available with dinner.)

Over the next few days, we enjoyed the beach and some museums, but on Friday, our alarm went off at 3:45 am, and we left the hotel at about 4:10 to catch a petit taxi for the bus station. The bus left promptly at 5 am.  It was still dark, and I slept a good deal of the time. The toll highway between Agadir and Marrakech was new and we made good time.  Including one rest area stop, the trip took a little over three hours. We got espressos and pain chocolat for breakfast at a cafe in the Marrakech bus station. And Walter did a good job bargaining for a petit taxi to the airport.  The Marrakech terminal was modern and airy, and the ceiling resembled a white honeycomb. Our Easyjet flight left right on time.