It's always weird when you arrive in a place after dark as you never really know what daylight has in store. This place is right on the ocean and there is a constant sound backdrop of roaring waves. The air is also quite damp in that seaside way and smells very different from the hot dust that has been everywhere else. No trains or buses feature in our plans for today either, so we'll just take whatever the day presents.
This is the place where Orson Wells Othello was filmed. There are a couple of streets named after him too and some apparently notable bits of scenery provide backdrops. But as neither of us have seen it, we were none the wiser. And anyway it was in black and white big this place is quite colourful.
So we started the day off with a bit of breakfast in the eating area immediately outside in the square - bread,jam, coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice. Then we sneaked up onto the roof terrace and looked over the square. This town is very small and there are more tourists hanging about here than we've seen in the whole tome we've been here - mostly French.
And the town is developing accordingly, with trinket shops Berber carpet stalls and jewellery places everywhere. But the guide pests have not yet cottoned on so you don't get much hassle. However, the beggars have realised that tourists mean cash and are out in force. I wonder what they did beforehand.
The medina is much the same as medinas we've already seen but much smaller , selling household goods and plastic toys made in China, and a few spice shops with interesting things on offer.
There is a walk area with various canon and ramparts, overlooking the bay. This was one of the bits used on Othello - apparently Iagp was dangled off the ramparts in a cage.
This town is known as the windy town but there is barely a gentle breeze today. However, the local boys have adopted the name for their posse - the wind boys, which probably doesn't translate as well as they assume. But that hasn't stopped tags appearing.
The town is also a working port with a sizeable fishing fleet based here. Wandering through it, there was a whole array of weird and scary looking fish and eel things. There was even a small shark.
According to a man who showed us round the boat building yard, its mostly sardine, calamari, dory and swordfish that they catch off here although I'm not so sure about the latter as I didn't see any. I reckon he got the fish names wrong on that one.
Various fish were being gutted too, much to the delight of the town cats and gulls, all of which were making the best of things and nicking scraps; heads, tails and strips of skin. There were some very healthy looking birds and cats as a result.
Most of the boats are small barque things but there were also a collection every big wooden boats.
According to the same man who told us about the fish, boats come to this yard for repair and refurbishment, and from as far away as Tangier and Casablanca. He gave is a little impromptu tour of the boat menders yard too. Health and safety didn't seem to be an issue anyway do I guess we weren't breaching it as we squeezed between piles of stuff and stepped over rough hewn timber, discarded saw blades, and chatted the men caulking newly repaired hulls. They were using Moroccan cedar for the boat ribs, and teak and mahogany for from Brazil and Ghana for the deck and side planking.
Then there were the local boys, all playing in the water, jumping off the quayside and racing each other across the harbour. Some of them were just lounging about but the older ones were clearly waiting for boats to return as when one did, they swarmed aboard, presumably to help unload the catch. Either that or they were pirates.
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