Azrou Aylal

Having left the goats, trees and Chinese tourists (or were they Japanese, who knows) we continued our journey with a couple of stop-offs on the way.

The first was was at a co-operative making Argan Oil from nuts - nut oil if you will. Here, by placing cash in a small wicker bowl, you are allowed to photograph the women working the nuts and we all duly photographed the women at work. It looked easy to crack the nuts but it wasn't because the nuts are quite hard and how they do that, for hours on end, is anyone's guess.

I caught the eye of one woman who then gave me a couple nice photos, but on the other side of the room the women all looked the other way, which is what happens when I attempt to photograph a horse - it immediately turns to face the other way so all I ever get is a horse's bottom. Fortunately for the nut women they were sitting on theirs so I couldn't tell if they had bottoms any more or less attractive than a horse. I'm afraid I neglected to take a phone picture whilst there but just imagine a bunch of women sitting on the floor working the nuts between their legs by hitting them until they crack open. I realise the picture I just painted may well have brought tears to the eyes of some readers but they were inside the coloured buildings in photo 2, if you're still interested.

The next stop was a viewpoint overlooking the coastal town of Essaouira. There were camel drivers offering camel rides, which we all avoided, with many of the group snapping photos of the view to the coast but taking great care to in no way get even the slightest portion of any camel or driver in the shot in case money was demanded for the privilege.

Finally we arrived in Essaouira where we found our various hotels and chilled out for a while before meeting later for our next photography workshop. My room was amazing, being on two floors as you can see, so it would have been nice to be there for more than one night. Essaouira is much more of a relaxed experience compared to Marrakech and, in my opinion, much better for it.Lue lisää