Chapter 17- Asilah

Another week, another place. At the train station we were escorted by a man, who said he was from the tourist office, to a taxi. The whole thing was very strange and I had a horrible feeling about it. He sat in the front seat with the taxi driver for the ride, telling us about things we could book to do in Asilah. Then once we got out of the taxi at the other end he walked away very quickly when he saw the man we were meeting to let us into our apartment, which all seemed very suspicious and odd.

Our apartment was quite good. It was clean, which was already a huge step up from the last one, and the guy seemed like he knew what he was doing. Everything was nicely made up, extra blankets folded for the beds, kitchen utensils and no beer kegs in the living room. Success! We were however next to a mosque again (same as Marrakech) which meant we would be woken up at 6am by the morning call to prayer (there is a loud speaker that sounds about 5 times a day with someone singing, to signal for people to pray).

Asilah is not a huge place, and we had seen all the main attractions in the first afternoon. There is really only two attractions, the beach and the medina, which is very beloved by the mayor. He has devoted his efforts over the years to cleaning up the city and turning it into a tourist destination. He described life in Asilah in the 1970’s thus, “There was nothing: no telephones, electricity was very poor, there was drinking water for just one hour a day. Living conditions were terrible: sewage ran in the streets, garbage was everywhere.” Thankfully it is no longer like this. He started an annual art festival where people paint huge murals onto the walls: “Look at what it has done. With art you cannot end poverty, but you can bring about the end of misery.” I find this quite beautiful, and it really gave me an appreciation for what he has done with the town.

While the medina is not huge, it is spotless and very well maintained. The walls are painted blue and white, with little stalls and shops set up around the place. It is a maze, and on our first visit we were walking around in a circle for about an hour. Thankfully later into the week we got our bearings and were able to navigate without the aid of Google Maps. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find many of the murals we had heard so much about, but we figured they must have painted over them in preparation for the next festival.

Although we were hugely impressed by the efforts he has made to improve the medina, we soon found there is still a ways to go. We decided to go for a walk along a path overlooking the sea, which we expected to be quite beautiful after some research. However we found that north of the town was the metaphorical carpet, and much had been swept under it. What should be prime real estate is a dump. Literally. The place is littered with rubbish as far as the eye can see. We walked half an hour before we decided to give up. We just felt sad looking at it; such wasted potential, and all that rubbish is going to make its way into the sea no doubt. We guessed most tourists don’t venture out that way, so it’s been deemed less of a priority.

For the rest of the week we relaxed in our apartment, walked along the pretty part of the beach or wandered the streets. This is how we found our favourite restaurant, where we dined at twice. It had everything, good decor, a friendly waiter and excellent food. We also got given some freebies; mint tea (no surprise), some dates and traditional Moroccan sweets (which are indeed very sweet).

To leave Asilah we had to take what’s called a grande taxi, which is basically a taxi that goes from city to city where you pay per seat, kinda like a bus. This means you can end up sharing with strangers, although since we had so much luggage we thought it best to pay for the full car. This was our first experience on a Moroccan highway, and my golly gosh darn it was scary. No exaggeration, we almost died. People were doing crazy things left right and centre; speeding, talking on the phone while driving, not indicating to change lanes… At one point our driver tried to overtake several vehicles at once. He went onto the other side of the road and sped up a lot, then he wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice there was a car coming and we were about to have a high speed head on collision. He quickly swerved back onto the right side of the road and apologised. It was a wonder that we made it to Tangier in one piece, but that is a story for another blog post…