Essaouira - Guided Walks

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Parent Category: Travel Over There

Category: 2014 - Gap Year

Created: Sunday, 16 February 2014 14:58

We organised a couple of walks with Ecotourisme et Randonees through their restaurant La Découverte (See Essouira) We had met two Danish women in Marrakech whom we encountered again in the Medina. Over dinner we organised to do the half day Sidi M’Bark with them, as well as a full day visit to a local Market and walk through the surrounding countryside for the day after. 

The Sidi M’Bark (220MAD per person) walk is located a 30 minute drive south from Essaouira. The weather is a beautiful 20 degrees and the wind is low presenting perfect conditions to enjoy the outdoors. It is gentle walk through Argan trees before heading down to the beach. The beach is lined with dunes, and the Atlantic is constantly rolling onto the patterned shore. At the end of the beach is a tranquil limestone cove with a small waterfall. The rocky walls of the cove contain small fossils of bivalves and other small aquatic creatures. A short distance uphill from the cove is a village where we had morning tea – Mint Tea and cake – with a Berber family before crossing the hills back to the car with an exquisite elevated view of the beach and terraced farmland. All up we were out for 3 hours, 2 of which were spent wandering the area. Our guide Ottmane provided excellent commentary on the area and a great person to spend time with (so much so, we took him out for coffee to spend more time talking with him).

Essaouira Sidi M;Bark Walk

The Market day walk (450 MAD) is available every Wednesday and starts 30 minutes from Essaouira at Ida Ougourd. Ottmane was our guide again, although Edouard (the owner) also accompanied the group providing commentary in French. The market serves the needs of the local community, travelling up to 10 kilometres to get their supplies. Most of the villagers do not own a car so they utilise a donkey, which are “parked” nearby. You can get most things you need here including fruits and vegetables, animal feed, homewares, clothing and electronics. We walked for 1 ½ kilometres through and around the market. After a glass of mint tea and an interesting conversation with a volunteer with a Moroccan NGO (highatlasfoundation.org/), we drove to a nearby Argan plantation.

The Argan forest is rocky and sparsely forested but expansive and also includes fields of wheat and barley as well as the occasional Olive and Fig tree. Some of these areas are government owned and operated under licence, while other areas are owned privately. Othmane explained to us that the fruit is collected from the Argan tree only when it has fallen to the ground and that each tree produces 15-60 kilograms of fruit. To produce a litre of oil for food, around 35kg of fruit must be collected. For cosmetic use, it is significantly more.

 The walk takes us past a saint’s tomb (called a marabon), and to an area that was once used as a reservoir filled by a 25 kilometre aqueduct built in 1678 for a sugar refinery that only operated for 25 years.  The ruins of the aqueduct and refinery are still present and are excellent to walk through. Othmane kept us well informed as he guided us through the area to the homestead where we took lunch of Tagine, Mandarins, Cake. Othmane also provided us with a demonstration of how to make Mint Tea.

Argon Forest Walk

After the 5 ½ kilometre walk, we drove to Cooperative Maryama D’Huile D’Argan where we were shown the manufacture process of Argan Oil. It is a labour intensive process and today there around 20 women involved in various stages of manufacture.

See Also:

Essouira

Essouira - Cooking Class