Day 173 - Quad Bikes, Sand Dunes and Sunset Walls in Essaouira

Day two of my week of 40th birthday celebrations.

I woke up, made some coffee and checked my work emails. I had a few follow up emails to send to try and push a couple of jobs along and I’m still waiting on a response about something important, so we’ll see how that all plays out.

Not long after, the kids were ready to sit me down for day two of the birthday surprises. This time Emmett had made the card, and inside was the plan for the day: two hours of quad biking through the sand dunes.

That was enough to get everyone moving pretty quickly.

We got ourselves ready and headed out, grabbing some msemens along the way for breakfast before making the walk up the beach to the quad bike place. It was past the surf shop we’ve been going to and around the corner further up the coastline. We had to be there by 9:45am for a 10am start.

Once we arrived, Kia checked us in and we got fitted out with helmets and goggles. Kia, Maddie and I got full face dirt bike helmets while Emmett ended up with this tiny little open face helmet that looked hilarious on him. Across the road, all the quad bikes were lined up ready to go.

The guides helped strap our backpack onto the front of one of the bikes so nobody had to wear it, which was nice. Maddie jumped on with me, Emmett jumped on with Kia, and then we took off following our guide.

Straight away it was so much fun.

We zig zagged through bushy scrubland before climbing up into the dunes, carving across the sand and then dropping down onto the beach. We cruised along the shoreline with the Atlantic Ocean beside us before cutting back up into the dunes again and weaving through more sandy tracks and bushland.

You can cover a huge amount of ground in two hours on those things and we travelled a long way.

Eventually we dropped back down onto the beach and pulled up beside this strange little strip of tiny shacks sitting right on the sand. Our guide led us inside one of them and showed us into a little sitting room with a table in the middle. The whole place looked like it had been built from driftwood and rubbish washed in from the ocean. Every wall, beam and decoration looked like it had once floated in at sea.

It was honestly really cool.

We met the owner, a local fisherman who lived there with his family. He showed us inside his little house next door and it was built in the same way, pieced together from whatever the ocean had delivered.

He fishes locally and walks two hours each way into town to sell his catch.

He made us sweet mint tea and brought out these local biscuits that had a strong ginger flavour to them and were surprisingly good. We sat there for a while chatting with him and our guide. The guide mostly spoke Berber, Arabic and French, but enough English for us all to understand each other.

The fisherman also showed us some skulls that had washed up on the beach over the years, including a dolphin skull and an enormous turtle skull. The turtle must have been absolutely massive when it was alive. It was easily the biggest turtle skull I’ve ever seen.

After hanging out there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, we jumped back on the bikes. This time Emmett rode with me and Maddie jumped on with Kia.

We headed back into the dunes and eventually out into the really big sand hills. I think the guide had spent the first part of the ride testing our ability before taking us into the bigger dunes because some of the climbs and descents were steep and you definitely needed to know what you were doing.

Lucky for Kia and me, we’ve both ridden before, so we had no issues at all.

We were absolutely flying around out there. Dropping down steep sand dunes like roller coasters, climbing back up them, carving around corners and turning back down again. We spent a good 15 or 20 minutes just playing around in the dunes laughing and yelling like kids.

It was epic.

Eventually we started making our way back through the bush tracks and dunes before dropping back onto the beach one last time. The kids swapped around again and Emmett rode with me while Maddie jumped on with the guide. We cruised along the beach for ages, probably a good 10 or 15 minutes, with the ocean beside us and the sand stretching forever ahead.

Then it was back through the dunes, through another little village and eventually along the road toward where we’d started.

Honestly, it was one of the best things we’ve done in Morocco so far.

We had talked about quad biking in the Sahara Desert while we were there, but those rides were only short little half hour sessions. This was two full hours of riding through massive dunes and along the coastline and it was way more fun than I expected.

Afterwards we headed back to our favourite pasta place for lunch. This time we all got pasta and then made our way back to the accommodation for a quieter afternoon.

Everyone was pretty tired after the ride.

I jumped onto the computer to work on a few website things and some other bits and pieces while Kia relaxed for a while and the kids made up games and entertained themselves. Later on they did some schoolwork, learning about oceans and koalas, and we played some maths games together as well.

By late afternoon we were all getting hungry again, so we headed into the Medina to look for dinner.

We wandered around for quite a while before stumbling across this huge old fortified wall area overlooking the ocean. Massive stone walls, cannons pointing out toward the sea and this giant raised platform with ramps leading up onto it.

It honestly felt like we’d stepped into a medieval fortress.

The walls surrounding Skala de la Ville were originally built in the 18th century when Essaouira was redesigned by Sultan Mohammed III as a fortified port city. European military engineers helped design the sea walls and cannons to defend the harbour from attacks and piracy, while also protecting one of Morocco’s most important trading ports. Standing up there watching the sun start to go down over the Atlantic, you could really imagine what the place must have felt like hundreds of years ago.

Eventually we made our way back down into the Medina and found a tiny little burger and taco stand. We grabbed tacos for dinner and sat in a small room across from the shop to eat while constantly fending off the local cats that seem to be absolutely everywhere in Morocco.

After dinner we started the walk back toward the accommodation and caught the sunset from outside the Medina walls. The sky lit up in soft orange and pink colours over the ocean and it was one of those moments where everyone just naturally went quiet for a minute.

We stopped for a few photos before finally heading home for showers and bed.

Day two of the 40th birthday week was pretty epic and now we’re all excited to see what tomorrow brings.