Remember that in Morocco, taking one wrong turn might result in a number of wrong turns (in which cases you won’t even be able to decide on the last turn, confusing, eh?). And by taking the bus by a wrong company which cost more, took more time and was more uncomfortable than the “right” bus, we didn’t really reach Agadir but its transportation center (Inezgane) about 12km away from Agadir. The station for the better buses is also about 12 km from the center of the town, but these stations are still very different.
Fortunately you can take a Grand Taxi from Inezgane to Agadir which cost you 5 Dirhams per face. The downside of it – the Grand Taxi won’t start its trip before it has 6 passengers – 4 in a back seat and 2 on one front seat. Not the most comfortable ride but for 10km not a problem.
As we had been traveling for couple of days already, we started to remember that we never should go in the direction we would like to go. So eventually, with some minor delays, we actually managed to get to the hotel we saw on our map and I think this was pretty much my favorite hotel during the whole trip. I think the name was Hotel La Tour du Sud. It was clean, with a nice bathroom, TV and it was just about 15-minute walk to the beach. Well, unless you get lost. The first night, when coming back from the beach, we did manage to get lost somehow and wandered around for an hour and a half and then decided to take a dirt-cheap small taxi ( you don’t need 6 people for that ) which costs about 1.5 Dirhams a kilometer.
Ah yes – just to finish what I was talking about the hotel, it cost 230 Dirhams for a room for two and I couldn’t really have wanted something more for that money. Location, great room, condition and price – all good. And not just for the money. In other places, countries or even in the same city you could pay three times as much for such a hotel, well, if you really wanted to.
There are two things you’ll notice immediately in Agadir when compared to Marrakech. First of all, there’s less „salesmen” and people wanting to clean your shoes, sell you Rolex watches and sunglasses. And even when you do see them, they are a lot more non-selling, so very often you just see them passing by without even daring to offer you anything – or maybe our faces were too evil by then already. God knows, or be it Allah.
The second thing – the other type of salesman you don’t see that much in Marrakech – on pretty much every corner (I’m sure you know I’m exaggerating a bit now, but bare with me) there are guys who come to you asking where you’re from and so on. English? American? Swedish? German? French? Australian? Well, after saying no every time they asked about it, it was fun knowing that they would actually never guess – would you ever ask someone abroad if he’s an Estonian? Especially considering there’s just about a million of us in our own country.
But the moral, or let it be the point of the story – these guys usually wanted to sell you pot...and if you didn’t want that they offered you ecstasy...and if you didn’t want that they offered you cocaine. And if needed – anything else you really would want. Even the taxi driver (or salesman for his brother who was a taxi driver) who we first met in Inezgane (the transportation centre) said he can get us to his brother’s taxi...but if we wanted to, he also sells all kinds of drugs. And ladies? No problem!
Being an Estonian is pretty much being an incognito abroad, in many places people wouldn’t think that (at least not with their first 10-50 guesses). But the second day, while sitting in some cafeteria again (that’s pretty much what most of the local men seem to be doing anyway in Morocco) a local guy came to speak with us and as soon as he heard we’re Estonian, he started speaking Finnish with us. Finland is just 80km from Estonian capital Tallinn and people from Tallinn can understand and speak Finnish quite well. Who would have guess – a random Arab guy in Agadir speaking perfect Finnish.
Locals in
Morocco think they are stupid. Or maybe not stupid, but they know and feel they are not educated enough. Which is often true. In my eyes, as long as a person has a good character, is positive and can think logically, education is not always a necessity, at least as far as social life goes (work might be another issue of course). But they often don’t seem to think that what they do have, is or at least could be very beneficial as well. Languages. It isn’t very uncommon for a Moroccan to speak four or five different languages. Of course, it might be difficult to work on from there. But in other countries, if you can speak five languages, you really do have opened yourself a lot more doors. If you agree, feel free to say so, but from where I sit, I think it’s difficult to disagree.
Few days back in Germany we thought we’d enjoy beer for the last time before coming back from Morocco. After all,
Morocco is a Muslim country and alcohol theoretically isn’t really allowed. However, remember I mentioned we found the bar in Marrakech without searching for it. And the same goes for Agadir, except that in Agadir beer is even more available. In the shops price for a small beer (0.2 l) starts from something like 6 Dirhams and in bars from 10 Dirhams and depending on size and whether you’re sitting in random a bar or a bar in the beach, the price for half a litre might go up to something like 50 Dirhams which is quite expensive already. But then again, considering it’s a country without a beer culture, does the price really matter? There are two local beer brands in
Morocco – one is Flag beer, possibly the most popular one. And the other ones is Stork. And quite surprisingly, the beer is great, comparable with most German and even Estonian beers.
After the second night in Agadir we decided to move on. Our idea was to go to the land far-oh-far-away deep down in the Sahara desert. More specifically we decided to go to Laayoune which is the capital of an unrecognised country called Western Sahara and we had really no idea what to expect...except for a lot of Moroccan soldiers, lots of UN people and 600km of desert each side (and Atlantic Ocean in the West, of course).
Continued in next post...
