Day 178 - Saying Goodbye to Essaouira and the KSE Crew

40 years old plus one day now. It was back to the usual wake-up routine. Coffee, breakfast, a few messages and emails to respond to, and the goal for the morning was to get out early for a surf. But it turned into a bit of a slow start to the day.

Kia had organised a FaceTime with her parents around nine o’clock, and I’d lined up a call with one of my mates back home. Kia caught up with her parents first, talking through everything that’s been happening since we last spoke and hearing stories about Lulu back on the farm. Apparently she’s been causing all sorts of mischief, which was pretty funny to hear about.

Not long after, I jumped on the phone with my mate. Every year we do a Tasmania mountain biking trip with a group of mates, and this year’s trip is happening this week. I’ll be missing it for obvious reasons, but I’m still in the group chat, so everyone’s getting excited and talking rubbish already. It was good to catch up properly, hear how he’s doing, how business is going, and hear about how the new federal budget has been affecting his clients. He works in financial advising, so it’s been keeping him flat out. We also chatted about everything happening on our end, the travel, Morocco, the experiences, and just life in general. Really good conversations.

By the time all that wrapped up, it was around lunchtime before we were actually ready to leave the accommodation. We had a quick bite to eat before heading back to KSE Surf Shop to grab boards and wetsuits for one last surf in Essaouira before moving on to Sidi Kaouki tomorrow for horse riding and more surfing in a different spot.

It was nice getting to properly say goodbye to everyone at KSE. Hamza, my kite surf coach, is an absolute legend, and Ayub, who took our first surf lesson, was the same. The whole crew there made us feel genuinely welcome from day one. They were excited to see us every time we walked in, and the kids absolutely loved them. Lots of laughs, heaps of conversations, high fives, encouragement, and just really good people. It’s funny how quickly places start to feel familiar when you find the right people.

We headed out for our final surf session and stayed out there for about two hours. The waves were perfect for us. Nice rolling waves, not too big, just heaps of fun. We spent plenty of time helping the kids onto waves and then Kia and I jumped onto the smaller boards ourselves. They were definitely undersized for us, but we still managed to stand up and catch a few really fun waves.

Afterwards, we took everything back, settled up our bill, and honestly, it was such a good experience dealing with KSE. They’d basically let us spend two weeks borrowing boards, wetsuits, lessons, kite surfing gear and just keep adding it all onto the tab to settle at the end. A huge level of trust, and everything ended up being pretty much exactly what we expected with the amount we’d surfed and the lessons we’d done.

One really cool thing was that I actually found a piece of the kite surf cord that snapped the day I got dragged into the bigger waves. I turned it into a little bracelet, which is a pretty cool keepsake from our time in Essaouira and something I’ll probably hold onto for a long time.

By the time we’d said goodbye to everyone and headed off, it was already mid-afternoon, around five o’clock. We decided to head to our favourite pizza and pasta place, Il Forno, for an early dinner. Every time we walked in, the lady behind the counter would light up and smile at us. By this stage she basically knew our orders before we even sat down. We’d made a few little changes here and there over the weeks, but mostly we found our meals early and just kept ordering them over and over again.

We’d also built up a bit of a connection with the guy cooking msemen and bread outside another restaurant nearby, so we got to wave goodbye to him as well. Little things like that really make a place feel special when you stay somewhere longer instead of rushing through.

After dinner, it was back to the accommodation to start packing up and getting organised before moving locations tomorrow. But overall, day 178 really felt like a farewell day. Saying goodbye to KSE, goodbye to the routines we’d built here, and goodbye to a few people who genuinely made our time in Essaouira memorable.

Once our stomachs settled down and we found our rhythm here, Essaouira became a place we really enjoyed. I’d highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn to surf or kite surf, especially through KSE and their crew.

Now we’ll see what tomorrow brings at the horse riding ranch in Sidi Kaouki.