INTERESTING PLACES
Holiday in Essaouira

The word Essaouira means image. Observed from any angle, Essaouira is a perfect photograph. Behind its purple ramparts and inside its whitewashed medina with blue doors lies a city that has been influenced by various cultures (Berber, Carthaginian, Portuguese, English, Bambara and others). It was the Jewish traders that once formed the majority of the population and it was they who transformed Essaouira into what became Morocco's most prosperous city in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Today, the creative nature of Essaouira is unveiled in the ateliers of its artisan workers located in recesses under the Skala fortress where Orson Wells filmed most of Othello in 1949. This setting transforms the city's craftsmen into artists, its street orators into poets and its musicians into soul healers. The most celebrated of its craftsmen create marquetry and sculptured wood from the roots of the Thuya tree

Essaouira stands on a vast bay sweeping south with miles of superb sandy beach and wooded hills dominating the skyline to the east. The medina with its honeycomb of souks lends a potent mystique to the town.

Probably the best known coastal tourist town of Morocco, Essaouira is nevertheless called the windy city and is more of a town on the coast than a beach resort. The fortified harbour is a hive of activity with fishing nets laid out on the quayside, boats unloading their catches, fish auctions and stalls serving seafood sizzling on grills
 
 

 

Holiday in Mirleft
 

Mirleft is a small village to the south of Tiznit near the Atlantic coast.

There is an oasis and a ruined fort nearby. A small market is held in town; other activities include riding, trekking, para-gliding, fishing and surfing.

Near Mirleft, you can visit the spanish Art-deco Sidi Ifni, the Saturday morning camel market at Goulimine and the Oasis of Tata on the Sahara plain

 

Villa Pushpapuri
 

The Souss Massa National Park opened in 1991 and is probably the most important birdwatching site in Morocco. It extends along the banks of the River Massa which spills into the Atlantic just south of the Village of Sidi Rbat. The original purpose of the nature reserve was to preserve the endangered Bald Ibis (Morocco is home to half of the world population of this fascinating bird which has a pink bald head). The best time of year for bird enthusiasts is February, March, April and September to November.

A sand-bank blocks the mouth of the Massa forming a lake which is connected to the Atlantic only during high tides. Enormous sand dunes run along the southern edge of the lake while the northern shore is fringed with mud banks and flat areas covered with glassworts.