Oooh the water...

The night before we left Agadir, I had this dream. I was going towards my backpack, getting ready to leave, and a black cat stepped in my way. I woke up and thought, "Shit that might be a bad omen for our trip tomorrow." The next day we got on our bus to Essaouira. It started out fine, but soon we got into the mountains, twisting and turning, bumping up and down. I closed my eyes, sang folk songs to myself, and tried to tune out the puking lady in the next aisle. After three hours, we made it to Essaouira and the ride was totally worth it. This town is amazing. It's so laid back, no hassling or heckling... Just a really nice beach town. Unfortunately, there was a MASSIVE storm that shut down the whole city, so the sea is now the color of the Essequibo River in Guyana. Some chocolate river references were made. But today has been sunny sunny sunny. 

The first night in Essaouira, as a reward for the miserable bus ride, Jeff and I got to visit the hammams. Holy. Crap. 

So this lady came to pick me up from the riad and she could only speak three words in French - and hey, so can I - and she took me to my first ever hammam. I got inside and was instructed to take off all my clothes, except my... um... knickers. I'm not exactly an exhibitionist, so that was a big step for me. I didn't take off my bra at first, but then my lady snapped my brastrap, which I took to mean, "silly white girl." Then we walked into the bath part and I saw all of these practically naked women, laughing, smiling, playing in the water, and I felt instantly comfortable. We went into a corner and she dumped a bucket of boiling hot water all over me and started scrubbing with - I want to call it a loufa, but it was way rougher. It was like a cloth version of a pummel stone - isn't that what the foot scruber thing is called? Holy hell that hurt. She scrubbed LITERALLY every inch of my body with that. At one point, everyone left, including my lady, and I was left in a whole hammam by myself. So obviously I treated it like a giant slip n' slide and imagined I was Tom Cruise in Risky Business dancing to Bob Seger. Then my lady came back in (thankfully I had stopped dancing just in time) and the bathing continued. She scrubbed me from head to toe with Argon oil, which is huge here and smells like a bunch of spices mixed together. For some reason, I never felt uncomfortable. It was such a friendly, feminine environment. And even when she made me lie face down on a bench and I wondered how many women had sat right where my face was, I thought, "who the hell cares?" Probably thousands of women sat there and thousands more will sit there and I got to be one of them, which is pretty amazing I think. How many people get to say they've done something like that? How many people have felt like they have no more skin left to scrub, but then realize they've probably never been so clean? How many people have been asked to dance like a seagull whilst completely naked and have done it? I don't know. What I do know is that I'm loving Morocco.

The last few days, during the worst of the storm, we've been staying in this B&B far away from town that has been so wonderful. It's run by these nice French women and the food is so insane. It's like one giant family with all the people here -- two French families, one German family, an English family, an English couple, and a cranky old English dude. Sadly, we leave tomorrow and the next day we'll make our way to Marrakesh for the last day of our trip. 

This place is crazy.