What The Hell Did They Do To Essaouira?

Roland and I were in shock yesterday when we walked into Essaouira. It has turned into a badly developed tourist hellhole almost on a level with Antalya in southern Turkey. Both of us tend to not buy into the constant carping by westerners that everything was better before and that all the favored places around the word have been changed for the worse. We've been scoffing at that widely held notion about Marrakech, which is still wonderful-- even if more overrun with tourists than ever before. But Marrakech is a big city with the capacity to gracefully absorb the kind of change massive tourism brings. Essaouira is a small town with less than 100,000 people. We looked around and said goodbye-- a once favorite place we won't be visiting again.

I was there for the first time late in the summer of 1969-- at the same time as Jimi Hendrix's short but legendary visit. It was sleepy and charming and I fell in love with the town. Since then no trip to Morocco was ever complete without a stop in Essaouira and I've recommended it to everyone going to Marrakech. It's a 3 hour drive and now they even have an airport.

Our last visit was in 2005 and we noticed that the tourist sector had expanded uncomfortably. More and more streets were dedicated to selling cheap tourist souvenirs and more and more of the city's energy was directed towards tourism. But it didn't really seem like much of a problem and Essaouira was as charming as ever. The ensuing 5 years, however, have taken a toll... a really big one.

It seems like once the only place to stay was the legendary Hôtel des Iles just outside the city walls. Now there's a hotel or riad in every vista and restaurants everywhere. Day trippers are omnipresent and Essaouira, at least on first glance, seems lost in the mess.

We stayed all day and into the evening. Our driver was shocked we stayed so long. He said no one does-- not ever. But by the end of the day our harsh judgments had softened. Lunch at Chez Sam's was as spectacular as ever, regardless of what the clueless travelers say about it deteriorating. We've been eating there for decades. NOTHING has changed. The unbeatable fish soup is exactly as delicious as it ever was. And so is the view over the harbor.

Our friends had never been there before and had no expectations and nothing to compare it to from its glorious heyday. They LOVED it-- as much as I had in 1969, and through the '70s, '80s and '90s. Walking along with walls in the back of the town were the same little shops and studios built into those walls we always loved-- and off the horrible main streets ceded to tourism. We came across a music store fronting on a little courtyard and the young proprietor, Hamid, gave us an astounding gambri recital in the shop and then invited us back for a great drum circle in the courtyard later in the day.

Even the argan oil business and the goats in the trees phenomena have become incredibly commercialized... but to a first-timer, as wonderful as ever. And, sure, I bought some delicious argan oil to bring home for some friends, even if it's three times as expensive as it used to be.

Planning A Trip To Morocco

Yesterday I booked my flights from L.A. to Marrakesh. Roland said it'll be his 5th trip there. It'll be my 14th! The first time I went I drove. Not from L.A.-- from Germany, where, in 1969, I had purchased a VW camper van, which became my home for several years, and drove around Europe, wound up in Spain, and then took a ferry, with the van, from Algeciras to Ceuta. (Algeciras is at the bottom of Spain and you can get a ferry to Ceuta, a lonely Spanish colony they haven't given back yet, or directly to Tangier, which is what I've always done since that first trip. Except when I take a plane-- which is what I'm doing this time. No carefree two-three months to drive around Iberia and Morocco this time-- just 3 week conventional holiday in Morocco. And in the old days, you had to more or less fly to Casablanca and then get to Marrakesh or Essaouira from there.

Now it's almost convenient to just fly directly to Marrakesh. I say "almost" because it's still a small regional airport and not many international flights-- other than charters-- go in and out. I found one on a subsidiary of Royal Air Moroc, Atlas Blue, which I had never heard of. But it flies from Heathrow to Marrakesh. The only thing I'll miss about Casablanca is Le Port de Pêche, one of my favorite seafood restaurants anywhere, a consolation for anyone who is forced to travel to an otherwise must-to-avoid (more or less) Casablanca.

Anyway, today's New York Times Travel Section is all about Morocco. The raison d'etre for all that space is a music oriented piece on Essaouira, the wonderful seaport on the Atlantic Ocean I discovered after Marrakech back when I first started coming to Morocco. I knew Jimi Hendrix a little from New York and he was there too, taking a rest before going to play at the Isle of Wight Festival (where I was headed as well). Essaouira was a lot sleeper then than it is now. And now-- every June-- a guy I met years and years ago hosts a big (5 day long) music festival. It highlights gnaoua music which is a mixture of African and Arab musical traditions.

Unlike festivals staged, à la Woodstock, in muddy, middle-of-nowhere pastures, or worse, in vast, overheated football stadiums, the Gnawa’s setting, in a small, friendly and almost impossibly picturesque, wind-cooled seaside city, is as magical and mesmerizing as the music.

Roland's pissed off because the article on Eassouira doesn't mention any of the really great seafood restaurants that make the city one of the culinary capitals of the country. I'm delighted; the fewer tourists who have those places on their agendas, the more room for us when we're back the in a couple months. I'll do a more comprehensive guide to Essouira restaurants when we're there, meanwhile, suffice it to remember that it's the home of nutty, delicious argan oil.

NEVER BE AFRAID TO TRAVEL ALONE (UNLESS THERE'S SOMETHING TO BE AFRAID ABOUT)

I've probably thought about this more than most. Starting back when I was 13-- and attempting to hitchhike down to Miami Beach to visit my grandparents for Easter (they called it Pessach)-- I've been taking to the road alone. A few years after that, I hitched from New York to California to stow away on a boat so I could go live on Tonga. (I never made it past L.A.'s San Pedro harbor.) And then a few years later I drove to India by myself, spending around 2 years traveling through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

First off, you're never really alone that much. I mean when you're hitching, there's a driver and he's picking you up because he wants to talk to someone. And when I was driving through Europe and Asia I always had a crew of people to help me pay for gas and all. And, best of all, traveling alone more or less forces you to meet people, one of the greatest joys of travel.

More recently I've done a lot of more conventional traveling with friends like Roland or Craig. In 2005 I rented a villa on Bali and invited 3 of my friends, Rebecca, Brad and Craig to join me. And last month Roland and I went to Spain and Morocco. Roland is a great travel buddy and travel is probably the bondingest thing between us. We've been all over the world together: London, Paris, Rome, of course, as well as more off the beaten tracks kind of destinations like Calcutta, Kandy, Chiang Mai, Abu Simbel, Cappadocia, Corleone (on Sicily), the Mekong Delta... and, all over Morocco, not just Tangier and Marrakech, but to places like Sidi Ifni, Tiznit, Taroudant, Zagora and on into the Sahara (by camel). The traveling alone thing came up when I saw him off after almost 3 weeks at the Essaouira bus station. He was headed for Casablanca, London and his job back in L.A. and I had a few days on my own.

The first time I was in Morocco was 1969 and I went with my girlfriend Martha. We had been in college together and each of us was very much a full-fledged individual. Each could say or do whatever we wanted without the other feeling that he or she was being defined. Suddenly when we were on the road I was not an individual but one half of an entity called "Howie + Martha." Oh, did I not like that! I had graduated and she had another year left. I drove her up to England; we went to the Isle of Wight Festival, heard Dylan sing "I Threw It All Away" (which I was very conscious-- in a fatalistic and melancholy way-- I was doing) and then she flew home and I drove to India, no longer a fraction of anything.

Back to Roland. I'm sure I'll never find a better travel companion. He loves adventure, is practically fearless, likes poking around off any beaten path, eats foods not many red-blooded Americans would ever consider (sober)... all that kind of stuff. After his bus took off in Essaouira-- a city I've loved since I was there at the same time as Jimi Hendrix in '69-- I started walking back to my hotel and thought, "well, now I'm alone. Is that good?" It sure was!

Even when you travel with the greatest traveling companion (like Roland), you always have to make all these little compromises. He hates the sun, for example. I love the sun. But if a mediocre restaurant is closer (less sun) and an awesome restaurant is further, meaning walking in the sun, he always wants to eat in the mediocre one. Laugh... but that happened in Essaouira. We both love Chez Sam's, certainly long the best restaurant in town, way at the end of the docks, as picturesque as you'll get and delicious food. But just a little bit closer is a restaurant that is not mediocre in fact but excruciating-- Le Coquillage. It exists only to service the one-day bus trippers who come to poke around Essaouira from Marrakech or, worse, Agadir. The service is abysmal and the food is... well, like food anywhere if no one is worried about repeat customers. But it meant less walking in the sun. (The third seafood restaurant on the beach, the Chalet de la Plage, also a fave of both of us, was already closed but that one is almost as good as Chez Sam-- and highly recommended, although not for lunch when the bus tours are around.) Anyway, pardon the tangent. The point was that sometimes you just don't feel like compromising all the time, or even taking someone else into consideration. And since Roland dislikes people almost as much as he dislikes the sun... and yours truly LOVES meeting people on the road...

So, anyway, he's gone and the first thing I do is go right to the hotel I always used to stay at, Hotel des Iles. (We had decided to stay someplace else this time and I found what looked like a charming place on the internet, a "riad" called Lalla Mira, which claims to be a kind of health-food hotel. It tuned out to be a pretty gross tenement kind of joint and I moved out the next morning, to the sterile luxurious Sofitel Thalassa Mogador, the kind of character-deficient place I usually avoid. But, after a night at the Lalla Mira I wanted something clean and comfy and a little upscale and Mohammed behind the desk made me a GREAT deal-- really great-- whereas the even fancier hotel in town, the Heure Bleue Palais, was inordinately expensive and unwilling to offer a discount.) The reason I walked over to the Hotel des Iles was because Roland and I hadn't been able to find an old friend of mine who had a shop. The problem was that there had been only one street with shops in that part of town 10 years ago and now there were a dozen. Street after street had been turned into pretty identical shopping streets. Roland usually remembers how to find things but he had noreal interest in helping me find my friend anyway. But once he was gone, I just decided to retrace my steps-- from 10 years previous-- starting at the door of the Hotel des Iles. I turned off my brain and let my feet take me there. It worked. He has two kids now and lots of ideas as usual-- from an olive and argun oil museum to a line of handmade Berber handbags for women. Fun to see him again and catch up a little. And once I found his shop I was able to orient myself and find all the places I always liked most in Essaouira. More about that anon.