Day 10 On the road to Essouria

We rolled our wet tents up this morning and hit the road for bush camping near Essouria (pronounced Ess-ow-we-ra). We had a stop at an argan oil factory on the way and discovered that argan oil mixed with a lot of other stuff like honey and almonds tastes delicious, but is still not worth £20 and the nut allergist going into anaphylaxis for a tiny jar.

We were shown very briefly how argan oil is made, in the place we visited specifically by women who were divorcees or widowers, before the hard sell. Once again, photos cost money, but at least this was for a good cause.

Mid afternoon we reached our bush campsite….

…and put up our tent, decoration courtesy of Mark. Maybe it’s a reflection of our cemetery lodge, many theories went round the campsite.

We walked to the local historical landmark / derelict house while Mark gayly recited the names of the 26 types of snakes you can find in Morocco.

I think he’d moved onto spiders by the time we were guided back to the main path by the glove.

From the derelict house we could see how remote our campsite is.

Then we watched the sunset, ate shakshuka and realised that we weren’t quite as remote as previously believed. We can see the lights of cars going down a nearby road and the lights of Essouria meant that the whole milky way wasn’t quite visible when all the stars came out. We talked about how we can’t wait to be in Western Sahara in just 3 days when there really will be nothing for miles around. We did see a Starlink satellite go overhead though, which was best described as a galactic caterpillar crawling across the sky.

Cooking groups have also been rejigged tonight, so I have had the slowest person who can cook swapped out for a person who is willing to learn, but currently rates his skill as 0/10, given that he has never cooked. We’ll see how chickpea soup goes tomorrow. For now, even though there are no showers, the en suite toilets here are vast.