Essouria 2

So we’re having a sort of holiday within a holiday, staying at Villa Grenadine. A lovely secluded oasis, with a pool to slobb next to for a few days.
First things first though. Food. Into Essouria and to the fish shacks next to the harbour. They don’t have names, just numbers. You choose your fish from the ice counter and it’s BBQ’ed. Has to be lobster and sea bream. Not sure what it’s called here, doroda maybe. It’s not super cheap, we're in touristville and if you walked around the back of the shacks you’d never eat  fish again, but so what it’s tasty and fun.
Essouria is a very easy place to just wonder around, no hassle, pedestrians only (mostly) and basically a pretty old town.
Our hosts at Villa Grenadine are lovely, a bit of a language barrier. They only speak French and our French is virtually non existent. But Thierry forces us to drink wine at every opportunity, so that helps. He’s French and his Moroccan wife Hakima cooks some wonderful dinners. Thierry is always pointing out that tourists are just fed brockettes and tagine in Morocco, but not for us!
He’s a real character, one of a very select few to have completed a Camel Trophy, a real petrol head who's built and raced  numerous off road racers. With some world wide success, in Europe and America.
He’s got a very sick Nissan Pathfinder, he thinks bad fuel in Dakla. So I offer to try and use my scanner (which I have for the Sprinter) to try and read the fault codes. So off we go to his mechanic.
Umm 8 engine fault codes
13 transmission fault codes
3 airbag fault codes
3 airbag fault codes
Where the hell do you start with all that.
I feel like a bit of a fraudster, I’m of no help at all tbh but he’s very grateful. The battery dies so we have to swap the battery off his Toyota Land Cruiser. His mechanic is apparently the best around but doesn't even have a battery charger, Morocco!! Without a decent battery the scanner won’t communicate with the engine ecu, so that’s it really.
Anyway as a thank you he wants to take me on an off road adventure in his Toyota. It’s his side of the business in villa Grenadine. I can’t say no and on the morning of the trip he’s up and positively buoyant, whistling and skipping around. He obviously loves this stuff. His Toyota is a great advert, it takes some serious abuse. It creaks, squeals, knocks and bangs like and old knacker but just goes!
A few more touristy trips into Essouria, some great food at a beach bar called Ocean Vagabonds. This is by far the best quality food we’ve had on this trip, including Europe. It’s not cheap, or Moroccan. French/international but extremely good, we’re happy.