Morocco page 6

Agadir:

Well, we're on the road again. It's 6:30 in the evening. 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, some for piss stops as there's no toilet on the bus.

The bus was pretty full, a few small groups like us, some individuals, couples, families with kids, all but a half dozen or so were Moroccan.
Hell, there may have even been a few small farm animals as well; and that wouldn't have been unusual in that part of the country, but I just don't remember for sure if there were any or not.

In 1975 there's was no planes or trains to Agadir, so if you didn't have a car, bicycle or a rideable livestock and you didn't want to walk, this is how you traveled.

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

He had been traveling for several months through southeast Asia, India, Pakistan and a few other countries.
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. After a few months of living with Holy men in caves he had pretty much maxed out the meditation thing and now has made his way to Morocco to smoke some recreational dope; after Morocco his next destinations are Europe and America.

..now back to the bus ride...
We're 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 scrub land.
Off to the east were the High Atlas Mountains, to the southeast are the Atlas foothills; 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, but we're now losing light and night was moving in quite fast. Just as it got dark the bus pulled over to make a piss stop.

There were a few outhouses you could use if you were brave enough; personally I would never use one of them no matter how bad I had too go.
They're probably home to a wide variety of desert vermin: snakes, lizards, scorpions, spiders and other kinds of critters.
No way would I go in there and expose my junk to that.

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.
....the choice here was clearly a no-brainer....
I don't recall anyone using an outhouse, not even any of the locals.

This was about a 15 minute stop which gave us an opportunity to check out the night sky. With no artificial external light sources we were able to see more stars than we had ever seen before.

The sky was so illuminated by them that there was limited black sky. The bands of the milky way were so full of stars that they looked like gigantic solid stripes of light across the remaining black sky.
No industry, no pollution, no smog, just clear sky, billions of stars and clean fresh air, it was 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, but 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; but there's no guarantee that they'll be critter free; but then again the city is located right on the edge of the desert region so you have to expect there'll be critters.
At this point we didn't care, we just needed to lay down and sleep.

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

As we were kinda stiff and sore from the long ride on the "piece of shit bus", we sure as hell weren't going to sleep on the floor, especially with so many creepy crawlers now hiding down there.
So rather than sleeping on the sheets, we pulled them off, flipped the mattress and put our sleeping bags on the bed, at least we knew they were bug free.
Fortunately both rooms had a double and single bed, 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 to do now that we're here.
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 streets.

We walked around for a while and found a park area with 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 wee bit of a sandy rise and there was the Atlantic Ocean, clear blue/green 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, lots of trees, but they were only at one end of the campground, but not at our end. It also had showers, toilets, washing 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 was mostly sand but with a good amount of dirt in the mix to give it some solidity so the tent pegs would stay anchored.
After we got our tents set up we took a walk around the compound. This was a pretty big camping park man, but it wasn't just for tent camping though.

At the east and south end of the park there was a variety of many shade type 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 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 all we cared about; plus if there was anything we wanted we could get it at the bar 50 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 partially 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.

Factoid:
Prior to 1960 the original Agadir city 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 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 more than a thousand years old was completely destroyed.

As a result of the earthquake almost 15,000 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.

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 2005, after 45 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 3 meter high concrete wall built around the entire compound.
Protruding from the top of the wall were large and small chunks of 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 security elements, the broken glass was an added measure of security.
The average Moroccans are not allowed into the compound, accept for a few that worked there, and probably well paid to minimize temptation.

Page #6

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1960 earthquake tragady