"Yabba Dabba Dabba Doo..."

...Or something like that, incessantly yells a boy selling some sort of Kool Aid like packet outside our window in Essouaira. We are staying in a pink, dollhouse-esque room in the heart of the old medina, yet another UNESCO World Heritage site we've been able to see thus far in our trip. Thousands of passerbys move along in a seemingly neverending procession two stories beneath us carrying out their daily routines. The same men sell their vegetables, their sweet treats (much to Kaitlyn's delight), and their fresh meat products to their same customers day after day, in what seems to be a neverending cacophony of commerce, literally for 24 hours every day. Life is simple here, with little need for fancy brand names (other than the usual knock offs to appeal to the tourist demand, such as my sweet new "Ron-Beu" sunglasses) or even refrigeration for that matter since everything is fresh enough to eat.

We like it here. For the past three days, we've been able to "chillax" as the kids say, sit along the beach and really get to know the town. Essouaira has been the perfect final stop in our whirlwind tour of Morocco, a relaxing respite amongst an otherwise often chaotic first country on our grand world tour.

We arrived here by bus on Saturday morning, a delightful bus with air conditioning, wonderful seats and even a bathroom on board. It was, of course, with a company called Supratours, a bit more expensive than the local bus would have been, but a world more comfortable of a three hour ride. We decided to bail on Marrakech a bit earlier than expected due to Kaitlyn's own Friday the 13th horror story. The place we were staying at in Marrakech, aside from being equipped with such amenities as wi-fi internet, free breakfast, and our own bathroom with warm water (a first for us!), it seems to have also been furnished with a plethora of bed bugs, who absolutely feasted upon Kaitlyn. Being the master of funk that she is, Kaitlyn for whatever reason, seems to always draw various and random maladies, albeit poison ivy, mosquito bites, other unknown rashes and now bed bugs while I, on the other hand, perhaps turned off by my surly demeanor, seem to consistenly remain blemish free, which of course, only further added to Kaitlyn's dismay.

For those of you new to bed bugs, they are making a resurgence back in America, notably in high end hotels in the New York City area. There are no real ways to get rid of them. They are extremely tiny creatures that live in the crevasses of your mattress or box spring and come out at night to feast upon a host. They can survive for a year without eating. They make you itch incessantly and cause large red circular bumps, in Kaitlyn's case, almost cartoonishly red and huge, like she was starring in a broadway musical called "Mumps!" The good news, however, is that, in most scientific circles anyway, they do not carry disease and other than being a major annoyance, they are harmless.

Kaitlyn tried to go through the day as normal, and did a fine job of it I might add, though hour upon hour, she seemed to sprout new red circles until it got to the point of just being plain ridiculous. We packed up our stuff and headed down to the reception desk where we did our best to get out of paying for the day (as it was already 5:00 p.m.). I wrote out "bed bugs" in French on a piece of paper while Kaitlyn wearily displayed her "Marrakech markings," as we shall now call them, until the lady said it was okay for us to leave. We made our way to the bus station, fully frustrated with Marrakech and wanting to just get away from it all. We had to wait until the next morning to get out of town and into Essouaira, which was literally a breath of fresh ocean air.

We will be taking an overnight bus up to Casablanca tomorrow (Tuesday) and spend the beginning of the day checking out the world's third largest mosque before heading to the airport and onwards to Cairo, where we will meet with my old roommate and best friend, Chris Snyder, for the next two weeks between Egypt and Tanzania. Morocco will soon be behind us, an enchanting country to which we would both like to return to someday. We're done with our first country, never with a map or with a lick of French or Arabic, and came out okay! It was the perfect amount of time here and a great transition into the Arab and Muslim world we will inhabit for the next two months. It's kind of hard to believe that the trip has only just begun and we've already had so many unforgettable moments and experiences. The Pyramids are right around the corner...

Musings...

We ate at a Mexican restaurant cooked and owned by an older British couple in Essouaira. Yes, it was very good.

We sat on the roof of our hotel last night and ate dinner while an Arab woman in the window across from us, not realizing our presence, was deciding on which lingerie she was going to wear for the evening, and yes, we even saw her in her underpants

It's been nice to pee again...we've gotten used to just sweating it all out.

It's funny how aghast we can be over the price of things. A wonderful meal for two can cost around 140 dirhams, about $16.50, yet that is still so far out of our budget! And don't even get Kaitlyn started on the 2 dirhams for two sweets when yesterday the same guy gave her four sweets for that same amount.

Am I supposed to trim portions of my beard? The moustache portion is now extending over my lips and connecting with my chin portion and my mouth is somewhere underneath all this.

Kaitlyn is slowly becoming a sort of artsy, photographing gypsy as of late, complete with head scarf, dangling earrings, and smelly attire. And I like it, a lot.