I’ve been to Morocco. So what? So I wanna go back there for a trip with a backpack, no child and a list of Moroccan towns. At the beginning of her teenage period, my child suddenly became more interested in the swimming pool and less in traveling all day long from one city to another. As the hotel where we stayed had a huge swimming pool, I hardly convinced her to make trips, and even at some point, she abandoned me altogether. Although located in Africa, Morocco is rather an Oriental country than a typical African one.  The Arab invasion of the middle of the seventh century brought here both the Arabic language and their governing system and the Islam, to which the Berberian (the native population of the area) converted in time. In Morocco, Darija is spoken, a dialect of Arabic, but also French (Morocco was under the protectorate of France between 1912 and 1956). English is spoken enough not to starve and it helped a bit my rusty French, not much used since college, plus the five words I know in Arabic 🙂

We flew to Agadir on an afternoon with a maximum of ten degrees on departure, eager to get to the sunny weather. When landing, we had to fill in the visa forms (you get the forms in the airport at arrival, as well as at departure), and in half an hour we were already walking along the beach. Regarding the visa, write down the name and address of the hotel, you will have to write it on the visa form, and do not forget to check the vaccinations at least two weeks before. For Morocco, you need hepatitis A and B vaccines and a typhoid fever vaccine. Luckily, we had them already made and still valid since the last holiday in the Gambia, beginning of the year.

Agadir surprised me with its modern houses. I learned from locals that the city was largely destroyed in 1960 by an earthquake and rebuilt. In the Berber language, agadir means fortress. It’s not a typical Moroccan town, but a modern city with European stores, with McDonald’s and KFC (they have not McCamel, I checked), with large hotels and a 10-kilometer-long cliff. I compared it with Mamaia (Romanian well-known resort along the Black Sea), only it is much cheaper. I think it helped me a lot a large number of Dacia Logan (Romanian brand of cars) driving on the streets of Morocco, the Romanian music I heard here in there (Inna, Alexandra Stan and Fly Project) and guess what … Laura chocolate with strawberries 🙂

Food is cheap, basically, 70-80 dirhams (7-8 euros) will assure you a good meal. Portions are generally large and include french fries and vegetables. A portion of tajin, typical Moroccan food made of chicken, beef or fish, with vegetables cooked in a clay pot with a conical top, is between 50-70 dirhams (5-7 euros). Most restaurants offer free as aperitif olives and bread. I ate so many olives that I expect soon to get olive leaves through my nose 🙂 In some places, we received free mint tea at the end of the meal. Mint tea is the traditional Moroccan drink. It’s hot and very sweet, very very sweet! In Morocco, a resident consumes nearly 30 pounds of sugar per year. What else typically Moroccan can you eat? Boulfaf (lamb kebab), couscous, b’stilla (pigeon pie), harira (a thick soup based on tomatoes, meat and chickpeas), zaalouk (a paste made of tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and spices). Moroccan cuisine includes lemons, coriander, olives, almonds, figs, dates, saffron and cumin. The food is very tasty, but if you decide to try the street food it would be advisable to have some Immodium, just in case 🙂

What else, except laying in the sun, can you do in Agadir?  Well, a lot of things. Let’s take them one at a time:

• A city tour (the port, the local market or souk, Mohamad V Mosque, the ruins of the ancient fortress Agadir Oufella Kasbah, a shop/house where argan oil is made). You can take a taxi for the tour or pay for a guided tour to a travel agency or even to your hotel. It’s a half-day tour and costs 110/55 dirham for an adult/child (11 / 5.5 euro). If you want to see the port active, then visit it in the morning. You will see the arrival of the sardine boats, with the catch of the day, the auction and the sale of the caught fish, but also the bustle from the yard that builds eucalyptus boats! The local market is looking a lot like the Red Dragon in Bucharest 🙂 You find there everything, from panties and handicrafts to exotic fruits and camel meat, everything is being negotiated. Generally, if you are told that the product costs 100 dirhams, for example, you give 25. He asks a bit less, you give a bit more, and finally, you get somewhere near half the price, which is actually the real price 🙂 I liked that nobody draws you, they invite you to see their merchandise, but they are not pushing. Do not forget that the market is closed every Monday! Further on, we went to visit  Kasbah. Just to the entrance are various Moroccans who are willing to show you the ruins, some kind of ad-hoc wanna be guided, or inviting you to take photos with a camel/snake/beast. It is best to be assertive and to keep it with no, thank you while you walk your way. Eventually, they will leave you alone. But if you make the mistake of becoming too friendly, at the end of the picture you are charged with 50 dirhams, although at first no money was involved, but only “friendship”. The sight from the top of the ruins, however, deserves the effort.

• A visit to a Hammam Two hours of indulgence. An hour you’re head-to-toes washed and peeled and an hour’s divine message. You’ll get rid of the dead skin and get a super baby skin. The best is to go to the hammam at the beginning of the holiday, so you will have longer tanned skin. It costs 330 dirhams (33 euro) per person.

• Fantasia shows dinner 30 minutes driving from Agadir, there is the Fantasia show. The show includes a typical Moroccan dinner in a tent. Do not be scared! The tent has everything it needs, including tables and chairs 🙂 We were greeted by Moroccan warriors traditionally dressed, on horseback.  At the entrance, you are offered milk and dates (kind of our Romanian bread and salt). I very amused by the faces of the male tourists when they were getting milk :)) During the dinner, there are several groups dancing traditional dances from different parts of Morocco. When the sun had gone and the night had descended on the tent, we were invited out, sitting on the red mats around the ring where the show took place. There were horse warriors whose horses stopped at each shot of their rifles, acrobats and oriental dancers. I felt like a millenary Sheherezade sitting on the Persian carpet waiting for the next story to begin:)

• Excursions to Essaouira (175 km) or Marrakech (250 km).
• You can climb on Atlas Mount or surf the ocean (Frank Zappa was surfing in the area).
• You can go fishing in the Atlantic Ocean.
•  Crocoparc – with more than 300 crocodiles. More details you can find here.
• Camel tours  My camel’s name was Toto and actually, it was a dromedary. In Morocco, there are only dromedaries. Toto was annoyed by the flies lying on her eyelids. For the rest, he was a good and quiet dromedary. That’s how I realized I still had the hip movement, although, after two hours riding, I couldn’t wait to touch the ground 🙂 We ride through dunes and fields with a lot of argan trees. The camel tour costs 200 dirhams (20 euros) per person. At the end of the tour, we got mint tea, how else? 🙂

• Sahara desert trip It is a one day trip, but so much I wanted to see those sand dunes! We crossed the Anti-Atlas Mountains, winding among Berber villages with orange trees, bananas and eucalyptus trees. I smiled at the sight of the goats high in the argan trees and I drank tea with Ahmed, a 92-year-old man, renting rooms for poor Moroccans who crossed the barrage of Yousef ben Tajhin. Ahmed had only two wives and twenty-seven children. He made us mint tea, hot as the sun in the sky and sweet as baklava. He brought us some small chairs to sit down and told us stories about Morocco before the tourists. Wise as an old man which gets through life! At the foot of the pre-Sahara desert, I kicked off my slippers and threw myself into the dwarf dunes. I climbed the dunes, I run over them, pushed my impulsive fingers through the hot sand, rejoiced like a child, and I thought again: what a great thing this big world is and how thankful I am that I can see a part of it! On our way back, we passed through Tiznit, a charming little town, and visited a silver jewelry workshop, where I saw how the hand of Fatima is made, one of the most famous amulets protecting the Middle East. The amulet is composed by combining three symbols, the hand, the eye, and the fifth figure, the combination of which has the role of amplifying the power to the evil. Fatima’s hand is a symbol of protection, of defense.

• Agadir Medina In fact, the real Medina of Agadir was destroyed by the 1960 earthquake that I wrote above. It was restored in 1992, in Ben Sergao, 4.5 km from Agadir, by Coco Polizzi, an Italian architect. It was rebuilt according to traditional Berber techniques on an area of five hectares. You will find here small handicraft shops, a museum and a restaurant. You can get there by taxi. You have to take a grand taxi and not one of the local orange taxis. Grand taxi is used for traveling between villages and cities. The taxi from Agadir to Medina costs around 50 dirhams (5 euro). The entrance in Medina costs 40 dirhams for an adult and 20 dirhams for a child. The architecture is beautiful and you can only imagine how people were living hundreds of years ago.

If you want a sunny holiday in April, you can definitely choose Agadir. It will help you know words like sucran (thank you), salem aleikum (peace be with you) and inshallah (with the will of Allah). You will hear these words very often. However, I will plan soon a tour of the cities in Morocco, with accommodation in the heart of Medina 🙂

PS   Before visiting Morocco, read A house in Fez by Suzanna Clarke 😉