Essaouira and a day of rest

We've made it as far as Essaouira, a little beachfront town popular with the westerners. Imaginge the set from Disney's Alladin and add a patina of third world disrepair, exhaust fumes, and do it yourself construction projects, and you'll have a decent idea of what the place looks like.
The decision has been to spend a day, today, resting and regrouping for the long trip down the coast roads toward Dahkla. This will put us a day off schedule, but the cost is worth the chance to recharge and fill up our tanks with energy and patience. Expect several updates throughout the day from everyone as we take breaks to upload text and images. This may well be the last time for a while where we will be around any sort of connection, however intermittent and minimal, to the internet.
Had our first dirt and rock road travel experience yesterday, traveling across the plains from Marrakech to here. The scenery was straight out of high plains drifter. yikes -- google brings back all the results in arabic script. yawza. and i can't get to the exclamation point. it's the fourth option over the 1 key.
Anyway, we nearly fell apart on that short stretch of the road, and we think that we may have lost something associated with the suspension or the frame, but we're still rolling.
Staying at a gorgeous riad in the medina for 2 nights. We'll leave Amanda here tomorrow morning for 3 hard days of driving. She'll take the bus - local, not ours - back to Marrakech.
stay tuned.