earth day 2021

In honor of our Mother Earth.

review 2019

2019 review

January - London
February - Rotterdam
March - Vienna
April - Tangier
May - Amsterdam
June - Sardinia
July - The Hague
August - Rhodes
September - Marrakech
October - Essaouira
November - Dordrecht
December - Amsterdam

2019 in a nutshell; many various trips, lots of fun, beautiful memories, grateful for the awesome adventures we had together.

We are lucky bastards.

flip flop fish, seagulls & dromedaries

La mouette et les dromadaires.

Our favourite spot for lunch and lazy afternoon in the dune forest at the ocean, outside Essaouira near Sidi Kaouki.

Flipflopfish on the wall, fresh fish on the menu and amazing views on the ocean and along the coastline.

After lunch we landed at the quiet beach, with only an old man and his donkey. The ocean was pretty wild that day, so we didn't swim and merely ventured up to our waist in the water.

No doubt, next time we will stay a night in one of the new rooms overlooking the ocean...

fantasia

Fantasia is a traditional exhibition of horsemanship performed during cultural festivals and for Maghrebi wedding celebrations.

The performance consists of a group of horse riders, all wearing traditional clothes, who charge along a straight path at the same speed so as to form a line, and then at the end of the charge (about two hundred meters) fire into the sky using old muskets or muzzle-loading rifles. The difficulty of the performance is in synchronizing the movement of the horses during acceleration of the charge, and especially in firing the guns simultaneously so that one single shot is heard. The horses were bred from the Arabian and Barb breeds or a mixture of the two.

The Fantasia is considered a cultural performance and a kind of martial art and it also symbolizes a strong relationship between the man (or woman) and the horse, as well as an attachment to tradition.

In Morocco, Fantasia performances usually take place during local seasonal, cultural or religious festivals.

I was lucky to experience a Fantasia performance in the Agafay desert, during sunset at one of our workshops in May 2017.

A few weeks ago we walked in Essaouira and guess what we found in front of a curio shop in the medina? A Fantasia painting!

In beautiful colors, simple, but authentic, and battered, and old, with horsemen and berber tents in the desert, and signed by a seagull. We both loved it and decided to make a deal with the antique dealer. Everybody happy and so we cycled back from the medina to our hotel just outside Essaouira, Henk with a Fantasia painting under his arm.

New painting in da house, souvenir with a story...

bright royal blue

Throwback to Essaouira.

Old men and giant nets, seagulls everywhere, the salty smell of the ocean and icy fish spread out across old wooden tables. Long before the tourists arrived, people were making a living here off of the sea. It seems times have not changed overhere.

Even if not in the mood to buy fish, this the harbour is an excellent place to visit. The purity, colors and smell are utterly incredible. It's a dream for photographers like us.

The entire harbour is full of the most picturesque little blue boats. Essaouira blue boats!

The bright royal blue that covers the hull of every boat and adorns the shutters of every window speaks of thousands of years of history. This color harvested from the shells found on the Purple Islands that protect Essaouira from the open sea.