Morocco Moments #4: Lights, camera, music... and sickness

Subject: #4: Lights, camera, music... and sickness

Date: Tuesday, 24 June 2025 12:11 PM

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It's going to be late. 

As you will know because you are only reading it once I have written it, but alas, it is now Sunday night, 11pm, and I’m just now opening my laptop after a busy day. I missed my opportunity to write my blog yesterday in my 7 hours of transit from Essaouira because I slept on and off basically the whole way. Yawn. I clearly needed it. 

I say Tacos, you say Hell No 

I mentioned these at the end of my prior email. Foreshadowing, I guess. DON’T TOUCH THESE THINGS. I blame the famous Tacos for my food poisoning, others say it was the appetisers at the Philippines function, either way, I think of that saucy/mayonnaisey meat and fries wrapped in a wrap and I feel nauseous. Really the description itself sounds rather nauseating and I wouldn’t normally try something like that but just the day before my colleagues had been raving about this specific Tacos place - Tacos de Paris - and then the people I went out for lunch with happened to be heading there and I thought this is fate, this is awesome, yay I get to try some cool food. NO. Just no. No evidence needed, and I rest my case.

So, I had to recover quickly in time for my trip… 

Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira

This weekend in Essaouira there was the Gnaoua World Music Festival. The music itself is a mix between traditional Moroccan, sub-Saharan African and Berber music with jazz, hip-hop and reggae creating a fusion of sound and colours and vibes. Good vibes only.

Essaouira is known to be beautiful and I always wanted to visit it, but ruled it out as too far away, too hard to get to, and just too late to plan. On Monday I heard some of my colleagues were going for work and I just booked my accommodation on the premise of going to this festival.

I'm glad I got to visit Essaouira. It was as beautiful as promised. I wasn’t staying in Essaouira however, but a nearby surf village called Sidi Kaouki. 

Sidi Kaouki 

Sidi Kaouki was a 30-minute drive from Essaouira. A small sea-side town populated by traditional Moroccan surfer bums and also tourist surfer bums. It has a beautiful beach where you can surf, swim, lay around and ride camels and horses. 

Another of the Princeton interns came with me and we were staying at a place called Eco Ranch Salomé run by a cool frenchwomen named Salomé. It was both a paradise and hell. The good parts being it was ecofriendly, beautifully aesthetic, there was a horse, and the weather was cooler, around 22 degrees. The bad parts being there were no fly wires, nor air-conditioning, so it was a toss-up between getting eaten alive by mosquitoes or cooked. Again.  

My friend told me a great story about her first night there while I was out at the festival. Something about a man, a donkey and a camel and I’m in the process of writing it out. I’ll send it through when it’s done. 

(editors note - now published under writing)

 Consequentially, the next day we went down to the beach and went for a camel ride. That night I also went for a sunset horse ride which ended up being just as magical and romantic as it sounds. I galloped with the horse on the beach with the wind streaming through my hair and I thought, I wish I had a helmet and also, I don't care if I fall off and die because I feel SO free. 

We stopped at another beach where there was this little cafe on the sand-dunes and nothing else and had tea watching the sunset. Horse riding, beaches, surfing and sunsets. Sidi Kaouki. 

Travel Realities

I will say, all of this travel was done on a post-food poisoning stomach and my energy levels and appetite were both lacking the whole time. This made the travel days especially brutal, waking at 4:30am to catch a 5:10am train to Marrakesh. Marrakesh was a hot hell scape. From Marrakesh it was a 3 hours grand-taxi drive to Essaouira but really just picture a tin box baking in the sun because I swear I got partially cooked. Brutal, all of it. When we arrived in Essaouira I was feeling so poorly that I simply curled up like a kitten on the end of one the girls' beds and fell asleep while they unpacked. Meow.

Surfing

This is already so long, so all I will say is I made some good surf mates, and they took me surfing at a new beach and we ended up hanging out all day yesterday.

*I made a video about it – Existential Surfing, go check that out!

Bye.

Emma