Essaouira

Weather

The weather is generally mild compared to the rest of the country. In fact, the town is known for having the smallest difference between both summer and winter temperatures as well as day and night temperatures. Days range from 18 °C in January and February to 22 °C from August to October. Nights are between 12 °C and 17 °C. It is generally nice all year round but sometimes windy. It's usually not very humid though and conditions are fairly fine year round. The average annual amount of precipitation is about 340 mm with most of that falling from November till April.

Getting There

By Plane

The nearest airports are Essaouira, Marrakech and Agadir:

• Essaouira-Mogador Airport is served by Royal Air Maroc to/form Paris , Easy Jet to/from London Luton and Transavia to/from Paris. Ryanair has seasonal flights to/from Marseille.
• Marrakech Menara International Airport (IATA: RAK, ICAO: GMMX) has a growing number of flights from southern and western Europe, for example with budget airline Ryanair to Alicante, Bristol, Brussels South-Charleroi, East Midlands, Girona, Frankfurt-Hahn, London-Luton, Marseille, Pisa, Reus (Barcelona), Seville and Weeze (Düsseldorf). Atlas Blue, a Moroccan budget airline fliest to Barcelona, Bordeaux, Brussels, Geneva, Lille, London-Gatwick, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Milan-Malpensa, Nantes, Nice, Paris-Orly and Toulouse.

Some domestic services exist as well, for example to and from Casablanca. Regional Air Lines has many domestic services.

• Agadir - Al Massira Airport offers a wide range of flights, mainly to Europe and other Moroccan cities. Also low-cost airlines have found there way here, and Ryanair has flights to and from Brussels, Liverpool, London, Marseille and Weeze (near Düsseldorf). Condor flies to/from Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart. Other destinations with a range of airlines include Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Nuremberg, Warsaw, Berlin, Leipzig, Luxembourg), [[Saint Petersburg, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and East Midlands. Domestic destinations served by Royal Air Maroc are Casablanca, Rabat and both Dakhla and El Aaiun in the Western Sahara. It also flies to Paris. Casablanca is also served by Regional Airlines.

By Car

Essaouira is a 2.5 hour drive from Marrakech or a 3.5 hour drive from Agadir on good tarred roads.

By Bus

Supratours and CTM buses run regularly Marrakech - Essaouira (leaving approximately 8:30am, 10:45am, 2:45pm and 6:30pm). Buses also run between Agadir and some other cities.

Getting Around

By Car

Taxi's leave from the bus station or the area just outside the walls of Place Moulay Hassan. These can be handy for a trip to Diabat if you'd prefer to go by road rather than along the beach.

By Public Transport

You can walk around the town in about half an hour. The bus station is an easy stroll about 15 minutes inland, towards the back of the town.

By Foot

The medina is just a 15-minute walk from the main bus station so there is no need to take a taxi, even though you may be persuaded by eager locals that you need to. You can however take advantage of the helpful men with huge wheelbarrows who will happily wheel your luggage to your riad or guesthouse for a few dirhams and this can be a welcome relief in the heat.

Sleep

There are lots of budget guesthouses or mid-range traditional riads as well as 4-5 star ones like Sofitel on the seafront. Finding accommodation should not be a problem outside of the festival period. There is a campsite about 25 kilometres down the coast, handy if you have a car.

Upscale

You can use the form below to search for availability (Travellerspoint receives a commission for bookings made through the form)

Keep Connected

Internet

There are plenty of Cybercafes in cities and small towns and accessing the Internet won't be a problem. The price is around 4 to 10DH/ hour. If you have a laptop while traveling then you can buy a USB key for wireless connection from one of the 3 main telecommunication companies (Maroc Telecom, Meditel, and Inwi). Credits are available starting from 10DH/24 hours (starting from the time you use it, if you start at 2:00am then next day at 2:00am you will have to recharge it again). Wifi is getting more and more common in places like hotels, shopping malls and in restaurants and coffee places in larger cities. The wireless connection in some areas might be slow, that depends on the signal as not the whole of Morocco has 3G coverage.

Phone

See also: International Telephone Calls

Morocco's country code is +212, International Call Prefix is 00. The telephone numbering scheme is changed starting March 2009. All fixed telephone numbers have a 5 inserted after the 0, and all mobile telephone numbers have a 6 or a 7 inserted after the 0. All numbers are now ten-digit long, counting the initial 0. Useful numbers are Police: 19; Fire Service: 15; Highway Emergency Service: 177; Information: 160.

Public telephones can be found in city centres, but private telephone offices (also known as teleboutiques or telekiosques) are also commonly used.
The GSM mobile telephone network in Morocco can be accessed via one of two major operators: Meditel or Maroc Telecom. Prepaid cards are available. It is very easy and cheap to buy a local GSM prepaid card in one of the numberous phone shops showing a Maroc Telecom sign.

Post

Post Maroc is the national postal service of Morocco and has details on their website (French) regarding the sending of letters, postcards and parcels, both domestically and internationally. The postal service in Morocco is very efficient and the post offices are generally open Monday through Friday, from 8:30am to 12 noon and 2:30pm to 6:30pm. On Saturdays it is open from 8:30am to 2:00pm. Some might keep longer hours though, especially in larger tourist cities and central areas. You can post your mail at one of the post offices or otherwise in the yellow post boxes you'll find throughout the country. For packages, you can also use international courier companies like TNT, DHL or UPS. They offer quick, reliable services and competitive rates.

External Links

• Tourism Website