 ESSAOUIRA DAY TRIP
Essaouira first attracted international attention when Orson Welles chose it as a location for his 1952 film Othello. The town hosts several annual music festivals, including the Gnaoua World Music Festival (www.festival-gnaoua.co.ma) in the early summer, a classical music festival called Printemps Musical des Alizés d'Essaouira in spring and a recently inaugurated Latin music festival in the autumn.
The town lies beneath low Mediterranean-type hills, carved up into small stony fields dotted with olive trees and thorny argans. After the wide lemon and pink colored plain west of Marrakech, or the flat Atlantic coastlands to the north, scales suddenly seem small and human. Houses are painted a jaunty white and blue, and there are hanging flower baskets and a thriving fishing harbor.
Yet the Atlantic beats against Essaouira with vigor, and the town's fortified walls, rooted in a ragged outbreak of rocks above a sandy bay, and a crop of rocky islands opposite, endow a sense of romance and drama. It has long been associated with artists, as numerous private galleries testify. In the 1960s the most idealistic of youth cultures congregated here when Essaouira became a haven for hippies.
 COST: Day Trip from Marrakech: $300.00 USD per day (includes: 4x4 rental, fuel, driver, normal entrance fees and lunch). Leave your hotel at 8:00 – 9:00am and return at 6:00 – 7:00pm. (350 km or 218 miles round-trip).
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