19 March 2023, Essaouira, 45.41km
Couer de Mogador R418.77 [DH233]

We have put down roots in Essaouira's medina and plan to spend three nights. We need to rest, but also to make a big decision: to stick with our original plan of cycling to Marrakech via Agadir and Taroudant, or to cycle there from here.
Essaouira was known as Mogador, and our narrow hotel on a narrow alley is named Coeur de Mogador (heart of...). We secured a nice bedroom just one flight up, but poor Charl had to lug both bikes and all the panniers up the stairs tiled in navy and terracotta.
The town is more touristed than any we have visited to date, packed with sunburnt Europeans seemingly oblivious to the icy wind, and a popular destination for kite and wind surfers.
We began this long day with three difficult sections of road: the very rough compacted sand from our bungalow, the short but steep climb from the beach to the R301, and the long climb to a cell phone tower on a hill.
We saw a man tilling a field with a wooden plough pulled by two mules, and met an ancient shepherd considerably shorter than me. We were taking a roadside break, sitting on rocks, when he came over merely to shake our hands, grinning past his one remaining tooth and limping back to his flock on a disabled foot.
Another multi-km climb forced us from our bikes to push their increasingly heavy bulk in tiring segments to a crest that came way too late for comfort.
The road dropped us then into the Unesco-recognised Arganeraie Biosphere Reserve. We did not know the complete change in flora signified anything of value, only reading about the scrubby-looking Argan trees this evening. Argan oil is used in cosmetics and cooking.
One of the things that made today particularly difficult is that we were completely unprepared for fewer villages and zero open shops - it is Sunday. We had plenty of water, luckily, but no food and had to get through several exhausting hours on some after-dinner sweets from the restaurants we frequent at home, which I had packed as an after-thought.
Ramadan begins March 22. Today is probably much what it will be like for a full month, reminding us to shop each night for the next day's sustenance.
The seagull photo is Charl's, taken from his smoking refuge on the hotel roof.