"Essaouira the wind city" a Essaouira Travel Page by coolscript

ESSAOUIRA is by popular acclaim Morocco's most likeable resort: an eighteenth-century town, enclosed by medieval-looking battlements, facing a cluster of rocky offshore islands, and trailed by a vast expanse of empty sands and dunes. Its whitewashed and blue-shuttered houses and colonnades, its wood workshops and art galleries, its boat-builders and sardine fishermen, its feathery Norfolk Island pines which only thrive in a pollution-free atmosphere: all provide a colourful and very pleasant backdrop to the beach. Many of the foreign tourists making their own way to Essaouira, are drawn by the wind, known locally as the alizee , which in spring and summer can be a bit remorseless for sunbathing but creates much-sought-after waves for surfing and windsurfing . In recent years, the town has gained quite a reputation in this respect, promoting itself as "Wind City, Afrika" and hosting national and international surfing contests.