Morocco, Pg 6

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Agadir

Well, we’re on the road again. It’s 6:30 in the evening and we have a 240 Km ride in this rickety old piece of shit bus. And just like the train, it’s going to make a number of stops out in the middle of nowhere before we get to Agadir.
Some stops to let people on and off, which of course are all random, others were for pee and poop stops as there’s no toilet on the bus.

The bus was pretty full, small groups like us, some individuals, couples, families with kids, all but a hand full were Moroccan.
Hell, there may have even been a few small farm animals along for the ride; but not too sure about that.
In 1975 there were no planes or trains to Agadir, so if you didn’t have a car, moped, bicycle, a rideable livestock, and you didn’t want to walk, this is how you travelled.

On the bus ride we met an Australian guy named Ron. He was travelling around the world, by himself; kinda weird I thought. Not generally the sort of trip a person takes alone.
He had a bit of a weird slant to his personality, but a decent kinda guy so we invited him to hang with us for the time he would be in Agadir;
he excepted.
So for the next few days we would be a party of six.

He had been travelling for several months through southeast Asia, India, Pakistan and a few other countries dominated by mountains, and not much else.
He had lived in mountain caves with holy-men for extended periods smoking ceremonial dope, which he said enabled him to experience the benefits of longer periods of meditation.

But after a few months of living in caves with holy men, and feeding on mostly bugs, bark and leaves, and other types of equally shitty pretend food, he was pretty much maxed out on the the meditation thing and has now made his way to Morocco to smoke some recreational dope, and have some exposure to everyday regular people, [I thought] and get a fill of some good ol’ kickass food.
After Morocco his next destinations are Europe and North America.
Now back to the bus ride…

We’re well out of the city now, all we’re seeing along the way are small groups of adobe brick dwellings way off the road. The terrain was beginning to change.
In the immediate area it was mostly flat hard pack and sandy, lots of patches of low to medium vegetation, just basic scrub land.
Off to the east were the High Atlas Mountains. As the mountains got lower and become foothills, they curved toward the southwest; which is where the road to Agadir is taking us.

By now the bus has already made a few stops. I don’t know how much time has passed since we left Marrakesh. We’re losing light and night was moving in quite fast. Just as it got dark the bus pulled over to make a toilet stop.

There were a few outhouses you could use if you were brave enough. They looked quite old and in a rundown condition, and not the traditional North American idea of what an outhouse looks like.

Theirs were four small cubicles on two platforms standing on the desert floor over a hole for the waste; no doors or roof that can I remember. Attached to the floor of each unit was a platform that had a hole in the center. You plant your feet, squat down and try to line up to the hole and do your business.
It appeared that over time many people had missed the hole.
It was the most unbelievably disgusting mess imaginable, I didn’t even want to get close to these shitters. Just being as close as I was to them made me feel a sense of unclean.
I would never use one of them no matter what I had to do or how bad I had too go.  
They’re probably home to a wide variety of desert vermin, like: snakes, lizards, scorpions, spiders, other people’s ass crabs, and a variety of other creepy crawlers.
No way would I go in there and expose my junk to that.
don’t you just love a good shit story, eh. :}


As with all guys, we can piss anywhere, women however prefer a bit more privacy, so for them it’s behind a bush or one of the outhouses.
I don’t recall anyone using an outhouse, not even any of the locals.
The choice here was clearly a no-brainer….

This was about a 15 minute stop which gave us an opportunity to check out the night sky. With no artificial light sources we were able to see more stars than we had ever seen before.
The sky was so illuminated by them there seemed to be limited black sky. The bands of the milky way were so full of stars that it looked like someone had painted gigantic stripes of light across a large section of the sky.
No industry, no pollution, no smog, just clear sky, billions of stars and clean fresh air, it was so awesome.

Breaktime is over, we’re on the move again.
It’s quite late now, the bus is still travelling the main road through the High Atlas foothills. It’s extremely dark and we can’t see a thing. I’m hoping we’ll soon get to Agadir. We’re all getting very uncomfortable from being on the bus for so long.

It’s midnight, we’ve been on the bus for five and a half hours, and we’re finally pulling into the Agadir station, its about fucking time.
We’re all quite tired, but we still have the chore of finding a place to crash out for the night.
There were several smaller hotels in the immediate area. They were either too expensive or full.
We did find one a little further down the road that had a couple of rooms available. We took them, three to a room.
The old adage being that, the further out of the mainstream you go the price for accommodation gets cheaper, which is true, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be critter free.
Realistically it doesn’t matter where you get lodging in this region, there’s always going to be critters everywhere. The city is being built on desert sand, it’s located right on the edge of the desert region, so you have to expect there’s always going to be critters, and it won’t matter how much you pay for a room.
At this point we didn’t care, we just needed to lay down and get some sleep.

When we pulled the bed covers back there were several little creepy crawlers that went scurrying off the bed in all directions. Sure didn’t like seeing that, but we weren’t the least bit surprised though.

As we were all stiff and sore from the long ride on the “piece of shit bus”, we just wanted a bed to sleep on, and now we don’t have to share it with creepy crawlers, now we can have the beds all to ourselves…but first…
We pulled the sheets and pillows off, flipped the mattress and put our sleeping bags on the bed, at least we knew they were bug free.

Fortunately both rooms had two beds, a double and single, so no three to a bed.
I don’t think we even took the time to go for something to eat, we were just too tired.
And we’re also out of smoke, we’ll have to remedy that real soon.


In the morning we went to a cafe’ for breakfast and talked about what our next move was going to be.
We decided we needed to find a campground first. Although it’s mid February the weather is warm and perfect for camping, and a lot cheaper than hotels.
We finished eating and headed back out to the street.

We walked around for a bit and found a park area that had several trees, not a lot of them around these parts. We took a little break as it was getting quite warm.
I took a walk through the tree line and over a bit of a sandy berm and there was the Atlantic Ocean, clear blue water, soft warm sandy beach, it was absolutely beautiful.

Just a short distance down the road we found a campground, it had everything we needed. There were lots of shade trees, however, the trees were only at one end of the campground; and it wasn’t the end where we camped.
It also had showers, toilets, laundry facilities, swimming pool, a store/ bar/ restaurant.
Oh yeah man, this place is going to be perfect for us.

We checked in and were showed where we could pitch out tents. It was at the west end of the compound where all the hippie tent campers were sent. It was in a mostly open area with very few trees.
The ground surface was mostly sand but had a good amount of dirt beneath it in order to give it a solid base so the tent pegs would stay anchored.
After we got our tents up we took a walk around the compound. This was a pretty big camping park, but it wasn’t just tent camping though.

At the east and south end of the park there was a variety of many shade trees and small lawns. This is the area where the wealthy Europeans, with their Volvo’s, Mercedes, BMW’s and Air Stream trailers would stay.
All of us hippie types got to camp in the scraggly bee infested olive trees where there was little or no grass.
But we didn’t care about that, this was cheap living and that’s what we cared about; plus if there was anything we wanted we could get it at the bar 100 ft. away, for us, this was absolutely perfect.

We all went down to the beach for a while to check things out. This was such a beautiful spot. It was easy to understand why so many people would want to come here. The beach was massive and stretched for what seemed like miles, the sand was soft and warm. The waves would roll in and deposit thousands of tiny shells along the shoreline.
We could see the new port facility, still to a large degree under construction at the base of the mount where the Kasbah once stood.
The mount is high enough that you can see it from anywhere in the immediate area.

Shot of Agadir from the top of the mount, 1975

Agadir from the mount, 2015

Factoid:
Prior to 1960 the original Agadir was at the top of the mount within the walls of the Kasbah.

As the region had rapidly become a popular tourist spot for many Europeans, the Moroccan government and some private enterprise companies began to build an Agadir city extension at sea level, as well as a major rebuild of the port facility.

I think this construction began during the early 1950’s.
Then in Feb. 1960 a major earthquake hit the area. The old city within the Kasbah walls, which was well over a thousand years old was completely destroyed.

There were however a few partial sections of the walls that were still standing, but just barely.

As a result of the earthquake, somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand people died, which was about half of the regional population.
The death and destruction in the newer part of the city and port area was considerably less than on the mount, but still quite extensive; the loss of life included hundreds of tourists.
So now, there is no old city or Medina, and most of the Kazbah walls have been reduced to ruins.

Now there are only groups of small shops and diners, some hotels and private residential, our campground and a local fish market, all at sea level. Absolutely nothing at the time we were in Agadir was more than 15 years old.

At the bottom of this page there are two videos.
The first one is a three and a half minute video of the destruction at the time of the earthquake, the second video is about four minutes of how the city looked in 2015, after 40 years of major reconstruction, and city expansion.

Now a couple more things about the campground.
As well as having everything we would need, it also had a three meter high wall built around the entire compound.
Protruding from the top of the wall were large and small shards of sharp broken glass cemented into it. This was to deter any locals from trying to get in.

As everyone was a tourist living in tents and trailers, there would be lots of valued items that could be easily stolen.
Although there were already very good security elements, the broken glass was an added measure.
The average Moroccans are not allowed into the compound, accept for a few that worked there, and probably well paid to minimize temptation.

I’m including links to two YouTube videos. The first is a video of the resulting destruction from the 1960 earthquake.
https://youtu.be/D8-DgLN-fTw

The second video is how the city looks in 2015.
https://youtu.be/WY2Qu2SXO58

page #6

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