We finally made it to the continent of Africa!!
First stop, Agadir, Morocco. It is located north of Marrakech and south of Casablanca (which is tomorrow’s stop). Agadir means “wall, enclosure, fortified building, citadel.” The city is located between Morocco’s two main mountain ranges, the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas mountains. The surrounding mountains do get snow in the winter and provide a source of water.
Today it was up early, eat breakfast, queue for excursion, ride around in the bus for a couple of hours and then return to the ship.
Our excursion today was “Panoramic Agadir City Drive.” Our group left at 9:15. The bus A/C worked, the seatback and window were filthy and a lot of people were coughing today.
Our first stop was to the top of a nearby mountain to a “kasbah” otherwise known as fortress. There was no “rock the kasbah” here! It was windy, the view of the Atlantic was decent, and there were a couple of vendors selling trinkets plus a couple of guys with camels, another with a pony, and another with a snake … that I gave a very wide berth to! We were told not to take pictures or they would ask for money but I snuck a few.
The kasbah was originally built in 1540 by Mohamed ech-Sheik but was reduced to ashes by the earthquake and tidal wave of 1960. In 15 seconds, thousands of people were buried under the debris.
From here we went to a souk. That is what they call their market. On the way to the souk, we passed a fish market and a cemetery where most of the victims of the earthquake in 1960 are buried. Since I’m a 1959 baby, I don’t remember it! There is a tree called Argon, that only grows in Morocco and is famous for the goats climbing up into it.
Now to the market where we were told that you are expected to haggle UNLESS it is finer stuff and the price is marked. We were told that there were 7,000 vendors and I bet we only saw 1,000 at the most. There are 21 entrances and ours was number 10. The place was huge and talk about sensory overload … You name it, I bet it was here. We saw fruits and vegetables and spices next to shoes, sunglasses, t-shirts and toilet paper. There was furniture, rugs, textiles, jewelry, computers, cleaning supplies and refrigerators. It was really hard to find a “Moroccan” souvenir … I eventually found a carved camel … it was probably made in China! I didn’t see that anyone else made a purchase in our group.
This place was like a fruit stand, grocery store, appliance store and mall had an illegitimate baby! We saw vendors washing up and cleaning dishes in the aisles above the drains. You want to know the one thing that we didn’t find in the souk? Dr. Pepper …. lol!!!
The final drive back to the ship was past one of the king’s palaces in town. He has two in Agadir – we drove past the one in town (I was on the wrong side of the bus to take a picture but it didn’t look like you could see it through the lush landscaping), the other one was on the beach. We also saw McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and KFC. The drive back was through the “tourist” area, which had lots of hotels and shops, definitely not the “real” Agadir.
Prior to leaving the captain’s announcement came into our rooms and he also said it was going to crew rooms also. He told us, because of the winds, they had a hard time getting into Agadir this morning. He warned us that there will be significant waves this evening, up to 16 foot, and we would experience pitching, or rolling movements that they ship’s stabilizers won’t help with. We also have an early arrival, 7am, at Casablanca tomorrow morning and will be in at 7am and sunrise is at 7:40.
