Immsouane, Morocco

From Fez, to Marrakesh, to Essouiara, and finally to Immsouane, Morocco has just gotten better! What a hospitable people the Moroccans can be, particularly the Berbers. Everyplace you go, people are anxious to offer you tea and show their generosity. We, Ted and Marina and I, have made a number of good friends here that I will always remember fondly. It was the surfing village of Immsouane, however, that captured our hearts.

Immsouane is a fisherman’s village nestled onto a rocky outcrop of the Moroccan coast. The village consists of about twenty to thirty tiny homes, half of which are rugged huts, and the other half being new developments brought in on surfing tourism money. A majority of the new houses and buildings are in some partial state of completion however, as evidence of the trickle down effect of economic crisis on these developing countries.

There are few local women in Immsouane, as they are sequestered away in homes in other villages further up the mountain roads. Only the men venture down to this coastal area for fishing and transacting their business. As a result, the feeling for me as I walk down the street is a bit strange, as I feel that I am an alien on a testosterone driven planet. However, for the Moroccans, the western women are considered men because they make their own decisions and their own business. That being stated, most people are extremely friendly and go out of their way to be helpful. The Berber people are extremely proud and extend their hospitality to us beyond anything we could imagine needing. More tea? More food? Just a snack maybe. Just taste it. How about another bite? You need to go now? No, you can’t leave because I am brewing another pot of tea, just one more small glass.

Ted, Marina and I arrived at the entry road to Immsouane, dumped unceremoniously by a local bus on a dusty crossroads in a barren desert-like plain. We were expecting to arrive in a coastal surfing city, but there was no sign of water in any direction. The landscape was instead dotted with shriveled dry brush and silhouettes of camels along the distant ridges. Groves of low lying Argon trees lay alongside the road, their branches full of small black and white goats. These tree climbing creatures graze on the precious argon nut, eating the shell and dropping the inside meat for the shepherds to gather. These nuts are used to make Argon oil, found only in Morocco, and sold around the world for cooking and skin care. It has a fresh nutty taste, and we have eaten it at most meals.

Seeing a sign for Immsouane: 12 km, we gathered up our baggage and started walking. As it turns out, there are a series of illegal taxis that run this road from the bottom fishing village up to the top of the arid mountain. If we had waited, we would have caught a taxi rather quickly. However, as they do not make the journey until completely full, each time a car passed us along the road it was completely full of people. Finally, as I was starting to feel tired and the sun was setting in an array of foggy colors along the horizon, a car picked us up and delivered us free of charge at a lovely little hotel in Immsouane.

We stayed at the hotel for six nights, surfing during the day, and lounging the evenings away with games of scrabble, chats with travelers, or drawing and painting projects. It was my first time surfing and I was really enjoying the pounding waves. By the third day I could convince my hands to lift off the board and I stood, but only for a second or two before tumbling into the water. I think this is a big accomplishment for me, as I tend to have poor balance and little natural grace.

On the sixth day, we decided to rent an apartment on the beach. It was a little hovel with no electricity. We spent the morning cleaning it with a mixture of clove oil and water that I had in my luggage. When finished, we had a squalid little three-room house painted in bright colors with a kitchen cooking space. Marina prepared us some traditional Moroccan Tagine with lentils and potatoes and zucchini. We ate like locals, with pieces of bread dipped into the communal pot by candlelight. The days were long and simple and lazy. I must have played more than twenty games of scrabble. We practiced our pencil sketching and even painted a mural of fish on the restaurant wall of our friend, Buddhara. I don’t know if I have room for another pot of Moroccan tea, though!

Today we have come to the city of Agadir, hoping to travel to the Canary Islands. We have approximately two weeks left to travel together, and I was hoping to do some diving in the Canaries. However, it seems that there may not be a ferry crossing between Morocco and the islands, which are owned by Spain. Today and tomorrow, we intend to clean up, catch up on internet activities, and do some research about the next steps of our journey. Will it be the Canaries? Back up the coast? South for some more Moroccan beach activities?