When we woke this morning it looked clear but then it clouded up. By the time we got outside it was clear to the south, cloudy to the west, but ominous to the north and east. The dark sky made an interesting contrast with the white and blue buildings along the harbor.
We spent some time looking at the small fishing boats returning to port with their catches. The port was busy with people pulling up nets and sorting out fish. Most o them did not want us to take pictures, even of the fish. There was a lot of back and forth chatter and about half of the older men were clearly there simply to supervise and give advice. Except for the material of the nets and the fishing lines, the process seems as if it is the same as it was hundreds of years ago. We saw fish from eels to sardines. Men were stuffing sardines into small (the size of your fist) net sacks. We tried asking if those were for bait but the language barrier proved to be too much.
Since it was our last day we wanted to get some pictures of the shopping area—we had been too busy dodging people and transport to do much of that until now. One of us had also been spending time looking in the shops, but that is a different story. Today is Friday and that means the big prayer day in Islam. In turn, that means that by the time we got to the shopping area, it was clear that many of the shops were closing for prayer time. There was mass movement in the direction of the local mosque. After walking around the shopping area for a while we refreshed ourselves with gelato (a “grand pot” this time) while watching a group of young men doing acrobatics for the crowds and then going from person to person asking for money.
We have a very nice terrace at the Villa Maroc and this afternoon Patricia went up to take pictures. One of the things we tried to capture today was the dramatic change in color of the sea since yesterday. Then it was blue, but today, since early morning, it has been a really ugly mud brown. That color seems to go out a mile or two before the sea again turns blue. At first I thought that it might have something to do with the tide (I never said I understood these things) but enough time has gone by that the tide has changed but the color has not.
We will pack up tonight and leave for Casablanca tomorrow morning, so this was our last day to walk around in a city in Morocco. We enjoyed it.
