Is Taking a Day Trip to Essaouira from Marrakech Worth It?

As soon as I stepped off the bus, I was hit by a blast of humid wind that smelled of the ocean. Immediately I knew that Essaouira was going to be different.

I had just spent two weeks traveling around Morocco, bouncing between large cities, the Sahara Desert, and the Atlas Mountains. I’d been struck by how varied Morocco is; you can go from streets lined with palm trees to pink mountains to seas of orange sand dunes all within a couple hundred miles.

But there was one last part of Morocco that I wanted to experience before I bid the country farewell: the coast.

Most people don’t realize that Morocco has a long coastline; it stretches for more than 1100 miles along both the Atlantic and Mediterranean. It’s known for laid-back beach towns, good surfing,…