Finding the bus schedule on some obscure website, my bus to the nearby village of Ouassane left around 745 and then not again until 10 o'clock.

This means I was up early and headed over to the waiting area outside the medina's Bab Doukkla gate. There wasn't any type of bus station there, rather just a street where the buses line up.

Even though I had the foresight to figure out the bus schedule, I didn't think of buying any food for my adventure today and now there was nothing open at this hour in the medina. Thankfully I noticed a shopkeeper milling about just a few stores up from the bus area. Stepping into his tiny bakery that also sold refreshments, I managed to buy a giant piece of round bread that would tide me over.

There was also a tiny coffee stand on the corner and boy did that sound good.

Inside of the coffee shop there wasn't much standing room and there seemed to be an effecient system where men were walking in and barely stopping their footwork before exiting with fresh coffee. Standing there confused and wide-eyed, an older man noticed me and asked for 3 dirhams. Thinking he was a tout or a beggar I brushed him off, but I was barely able to finish saying I wasn't interested before he again insisted on 3 dirhams.

Eventually giving up on the equivalent of $0.40 Canadian, I just gave him the 3 dirhams. He then turned around, indicated something with his hand to the owner, said something in Arabic, acquired my coffee, gave the 3 dirhams to the shop owner, handed me my coffee, and then disappeared as I barely managed to sputter out a shukran in time. (Arabic for thanks.)

Going back outside with my piping hot coffee, I recalled reading somewhere that local city buses in Morocco were dangerous, poorly maintained and prone to breakdown.

Expecting a hoopty of a bus, I was happy when I boarded the City of Essaouira bus and found it could have used a coat of paint or maybe some chair maintenance, but that was about it. The bus was worn and well-used, but I wasn't fearful for my life in the slightest.

Settling into the backseat, the back door's missing row meant I could stretch out while watching the pine trees go by on this fine morning. I liked that I was the only obvious tourist, especially as I figured other visitors read about the poor city buses and chose other means of transport.

There were two city workers on the bus - the driver and a man who collected the fares. The fare collector took my fare without any other conversation, then took his seat beside me in the back. Most of the people were headed to Sidi Kaouki, the much bigger town in comparison to the only other stop in the small village of Ouassane.

Out on the shrub-lined roads, we turned down an even quieter road and approached a village. I figured it was the village of Ouassane that I wanted, but I couldn't be quite sure.

"Ouassane? Cap Sim Lighthouse?" I asked the fare collector, who looked puzzled and responded that he only spoke French and Arabic. With a perplexed look he asked, "you Canada? No French?" I felt a bit ashamed at his surprise, but I was also struggling to remember the French word for lighthouse here. Somehow I pulled "faro" out of my backside with that Mexican cabbie a month ago, but I couldn't remember the French equivalent of faro even though I've been to lighthouses both in Quebec and St. Pierre et Miquelon.

Eventually we reached an impasse, a French word I can remember, where the fare collector gave up and leaned back. I continued riding the bus to its end in Sidi Kaouki, now accepting that I'd simply ride it back to Ouassane on the way back to Essaouira.

Everyone else got off in Sidi Kaouki while the fare collector looked confused with me. He still didn't understand what I wanted with the words 'faro' and 'lighthouse', but he waved me off when I tried to pay for a return fare. Heading back, this time I knew which one was Ouassane and where to get off.

And then we sped right by the road to Ouassane.

It was obvious that the bus doesn't follow the exact same y-shaped route, but rather just returns to Essaouira. I jumped up, indicated that I'd like to get off and the fare collector hollered something to the bus driver. The bus came to a halt. Stepping out, I now found myself on a deserted road in the early morning. The bus was gone in a flash and all was invigoratingly quiet.

It's funny because I was making an effort to catch the early morning bus to avoid the midday sun and to ensure I get to the Cap Sim Lighthouse, but then I went and added an extra 3km (1.9mi) to today's hike.

Oh well, as someone who loves obscure places simply for being obscure, walking the Moroccan P-2201 highway to the unnamed Ouassane road made me happy.

It was a pleasant 3km walk. No wind, only one car passed, I could wander off the road, there were pretty flowers and birds...the only problem were the Nike dad shoes that were too small for my feet, yet I still brought on this lengthy, distant African excursion for some reason.

The ocean and the tiny Berber settlement appeared in no time. There were a few storage or farmer shacks at the beginning, with a school off to my right, then once through the start of the village, two or three streets stretched to the north, while a restaurant, a hostel, a closed hostel and an eco lodge all lined the closest thing Ouassane had to a main street.

Hoping to find myself alone on a pleasant hike to the lighthouse, I hurried through the village, also managing to avoid the angry surfers I read about on my favourite lighthouse research website. Their wetsuits and towels hung at the eco lodge, but they were sleeping on the job of protecting their fat waves, brah.

A Berber man in traditional garb walked in front of me near the start of the path to Cap Sim, but he was unrelenting in getting wherever he wanted to go, losing me in no time.

The wide, rocky trail followed the ocean west, until making a curve into a small stretch of woods emptying out into sandy hollows. Thinking that I had left all the surfers sleeping back at the eco lodge, I was surprised by two separate parties of Land Rovers/Jeeps out here with camps set up and surfing going on in the bay down below. I was insanely jealous of being able to pack up the friends or the girlfriend and head down here to camp in this peaceful, empty landscape.

I pictured them being startled with my pedestrian presence lacking a surfboard, but the only one who spotted me was a dude trying to go back in the woods to take a leak. He seemed more concern with finding privacy than whatever I was up to.

The land undulated as I went down into small valleys of rock and sand, then up hills into forests of small trees. This would happen three separate times in just over 2km and as I went back down into yet another rocky open expanse, I knew I had to be getting close to turning north. And then there it was, the Cap Sim Lighthouse off in the distance.

Coming down the hill with my flock of 60 sheep, the herd kept its distance while also trying to eat. I considered making a beeline for the lighthouse, but I liked my rutted ATV track, it seemed much better for keeping an eye out for snakes and/or spiders.

Walking the soft track up and around bushes, the sand was a different colour than Lake St. Clair and the bushes were certainly foreign, but this winding, sandy track pleasantly reminded me of Tremblay Beach back home.

As for the creepy crawlies, I was happy to move along without spotting any arachnids, until suddenly something flew up and I almost hit the deck. Instantly following it with my eyes, it was some random beetle that waited until the last minute to fly away. I didn't know if there were poisonous or biting beetles in Morocco, but beetles are generally pretty chill and non-threatening as far as I know, so I didn't worry about it too much once my heart rate went back down.

Then all of 50 feet later, another of these beetles decided to fly up from the sand and zoom past my head at the last second. Eventually my terror would turn to irritation as I grew annoyed with being startled every 50 feet by some flying beetle shooting up from the ground.

Where was this damn lighthouse anyway?

A-ha! The tall bushes and sand eventually petered out as the ground sloped upwards and only rocks and grass stood between me and the Cap Sim Lighthouse.

My first African lighthouse and now a lighthouse in six different countries. And only 1 month after I got different country #5.

The Cap Sim Lighthouse, or Phare du Cap Sim if you're ever on a bus to Ouassane, was built between 1917 and 1922. The tower itself is 66 feet high, with a focal height of 354 feet above the water, making it visible from a maximum distance of 21 nautical miles away (38 nautical kilometers).

As you can see, the lighthouse is surrounded by a five-turret fort that I couldn't penetrate. I think I still count it as a seen lighthouse.

Reading my favourite lighthouse resource The Lighthouse Directory, I see that Moroccan lighthouses are blend of French and Spanish influences, on account of the country's history with the French Protectorate and Spain's control in parts of northern and southern Morocco. The French zone of influence is said to extend from Mehdia (about 200km south of Gibraltar) down to Agadir (3 hours south of Essaouira). This would put Cap Sim under the French influence, while all lighthouses in this country also maintain some Moroccan flavour.

Since the only thing I know about French lighthouses is limited to Saint Pierre et Miquelon, I looked at a few random France lighthouse pages, but all I can gather is that both France and Morocco build far more unique lighthouses than the Canadian model of only creating a new cookie-cutter design every decade.

Another thing I thought I remembered was that Cap Sim is also a military installation and there were questions as to whether you're even allowed on the property to photograph the buildings.

I went about my business, but also didn't dawdle as I curved around the property. In front of the lighthouse there was then a strange newer building that I suspected might've been military, so my "not dawdling" then morphed into "keeping it moving".

If only I stumbled on this random French guy's blog where the lightkeeper invited him up into the tower, or this other random website with interiors, I would've probably checked if anyone was around or at least taken my time some more.

Passing the military-looking building, suddenly a dog ran up and my mind feared a guard dog, then some type of rabid stray dog, then eventually I calmed down with the look of this silly dog.

I still feared rabies, so I didn't pet the likely dangerous beast, managing to keep my distance and head back towards the way I came.

It's only then that I heard a rustling in the brush off to my right; loud branch crashing indicative of something a little bigger than this dog's brother or sister...

Camels!

Moving like a herd of moose, slow and deliberate right through the middle of the bush, the camels paid me no mind except for moving down towards the beach whenever I got a little too close. It was hard to tell if they were moving because I was moving towards them though, or if they were just headed that way anyway.

Unsure of how camels act in the wild, I didn't push it here.

There wasn't much left of my round piece of bread by now and the unrelenting midday sun was doing a number of my giant bottle of water. Regardless, I was back in Ouassane in no time, especially now that I knew the route and how easy it was to hike out to Cap Sim.

Sitting down on a rock beside the school where I saw the bus stop earlier, I had about 30 minutes to wait until the fare collector and the driver would come back for me.

Do you see that square cement building in the middle of the above picture?

Well here's what it looks like inside. Urbexing on a new continent...check!

After all of 5 minutes, I grew tired of the two vacant buildings and went back to sitting on my rock. About 45 minutes passed with no bus, but they say city buses are often off schedule so I was only slightly worried.

Eventually a shy child would turn the corner, confused with my presence. I think I may have been sitting in his rock spot, because he went down the wall just far enough, then posted up and stood around. I continued to wait.

This 7 or 8-year-old was soon joined by another child, then another, and then another. One of the later children was a bit more outgoing and gave me the "wassup", to which I replied "wassup", wondering why he knew this word amongst all of the French and Arabic. The rest of the kids continued to mull about and pretty much ignore me.

I wanted my bus to come along at this point.

Finally a slightly bigger girl came along, maybe a 9 or 10-year-old, who wasn't scared of me at all and inquired with a "bonjour". Explaining "je ne pas parle le francais", the kids knew enough English and I sort of knew enough French, to work out that while the bus comes here in the morning, it only comes in the morning. Every other route of the day only goes to nearby Sidi Kaouki and I was going to have to walk out to the road.

I was pretty happy with these kids. They saved me from sitting here for God knows how long.

I decided to go back to the one restaurant in Ouassane to see if it was open. The door was open so I walked inside as you would, but found no one, no music, no nothing. Standing around confused on the main restaurant floor, finally a young man came out and asked if I would like anything. The restaurant wasn't open, but if I wanted some fish, he would whip up some fish if that was agreeable.

He then showed me outside to the beautiful, shaded balcony overlooking the Atlantic.

This was definitely agreeable.

It took a while for my fish to come out, but I was enjoying my coffee and the nearby birds like this House Bunting.

House Buntings have grown accustomed to humans and are found around, and sometimes inside restaurants, mosques and other human structures. The HBW has its distribution listed as "NW Africa from Morocco and Mauritania patchily E to NW Chad" - which makes me happy in my love for seeing random birds that are only found in the hard to reach region where I find myself.

As for lunch, it was one of those whole fishes where you simply eat the meat off of the middle while leaving the head and the tail. It was decent.

I now had a long hike over to Sidi Kaouki in my undersized Nikes. Not only were my feet hurting, but the sun was beating down and I was upset with spending all this time out here when I was ready to get back to Essaouira and check out other planned stops.

The walk continued on for an hour, plodding and trudging to get down to Sidi Kaouki. If there was one positive though, it's that I hadn't seen the bus go by during the whole time. I figured I couldn't be left waiting in Sidi Kaouki for long.

In Sidi Kaouki, there was a bunch of accommodations behind the buildings, with a fancy plaza near the ocean and a quiet coffee shop up by the road. It looked about 4x the size of Ouassane and was much closer to a town than the village that was Ouassane.

I headed into the coffee shop for information about when the bus would come and was told to sit down and asked if I would like coffee or tea. It was going to be a bit before the bus would arrive, but I was free to relax here and get out of the sun. The proprietor was a nice fellow from Europe who spoke good English and he understood my being hot after walking from Ouassane.

The proprietor even left for a bit, leaving me to sit by myself in this random room.

Sidi Kaouki was clearly a surfer town and not really my cup of tea, although I liked how stark it was with so much rocky sand and the ocean. I also liked all of the dogs and cats lazing about by the butcher in hopes of getting any scraps, haha.

I was getting pretty tired by now though and my own dogs were really barking. Leaving the coffee shop to take a quick look around, I was now stuck outside so I simply plopped down on a bench or something, I can't quite remember.

After about 10 minutes, a rickety sort of conversion van/short bus pulled up and a few people got inside, including some backpacker looking types. I figured this was the shuttle for some nearby resort though, since I came on a real city bus this morning and this looked like a conversion van, not a city bus.

It's only because the vehicle sat there for 5 minutes gathering and sorting out passengers, that I thought to ask my buddy back at the coffee shop what the deal was...and he let me know, that yes, that's the city bus back to Essaouira and that I need to get moving unless I want to stay in Sidi Kaouki for another 3 hours.

I don't know why the afternoon bus wasn't really a bus, but it was the same cost, so I grabbed a seat and we bumped along back to Essaouira in a cool 20 minutes.

We didn't stop in Ouassane.

Continue to Part 4...