Morocco

The medina in Safi has been one of the biggest surprises on our journey. We were just taking a shortcut to town, but entering the portals was like an instant travel back in time. The walls were so massive it felt like walking inside a mountain, in a labyrint of narrow pathways. We walked on huge slabs of stone, weared down by countless generations.

It turned out that we were popular, being (maybe) the only western tourists in Safi at the time. The teachings of the Quran, and the culture of Muslims, is to welcome strangers, but we didn’t manage to talk much to the two lovely women in the medina, since we didn’t understand neither Arabic nor French.

In Safi harbour, at dusk, Nina noticed a kid that seemed to be checking us out. I came out to the cockpit. He was clearly keeping an eye on us, but he wasn’t more than 10-12 years old and we didn’t take the threat too seriously. The next morning he was still there, swept up in a grey blanket, and we thought he was a homeless.

In Essouira we saw a similar kid. I managed to take this picture before we left for the Canary Islands; the boy had been sitting under a blanket the whole night, it was a very cold night, and he walked in his dirty clothes under the morning sun, trying to get the warmth back.

We later learned that he was the guardsman. Old enough to ring the bell, but not old enough for a decent salary. But still, his body language was that of an old man. He seemed to have a lot on his mind.