6 hrs, 20.0 kms



I'm going to be on a 4 day work week for the next couple of months . It couldn’t be at a more perfect time. I’ve got a whole bunch of half-done Superhikes I need to finish around Morocco, so those 3 days off are going to really come in handy. So just 11 days after my Iberian Saga, I’m off on the road again: heading to Agadir.

Actually, I’m going there mainly for family reasons, but I’m going to try to go out each day, discover something new so I can count it as an Adventure Day to be remembered forever. But I want to choose carefully this time. I don’t want a repeat of my why-the-hell-am-I-doing-this trudge to Oulad Teima.

I don’t get out until after noon, and I need to be back with the family by evening, so my options are limited. I guess there is one half day hike I could still do: follow the coast north to connect to the short Taghazout-Tamaraght hike which I did back in 2009. I could also add the town of Aourir which I explored back in 09 but didn’t add it because I thought it was part of Tamaraght. This hike would involve passing through the kind of dodgy industrial/low income residential neighbourhood of Anza, which I’m a little uneasy about carrying guitar through, but in the end I decide to go for it .

I start in Charaf, down a boulevard which was just an empty highway lined by cliffs back in the 90s… now it’s shops and mid-rise apartments all the way. There still are day housecleaners (and who knows what else) waiting for a potential employer to drive by, just like back then… so I guess some things don’t change.

I continue on through Agadir’s upscale villa neighbourhood, Cite Suisse which is an area rich in memories… and then on past the campground to the edge of the city. This is where the Old Medina of Agadir used to be, which was destroyed by an earthquake back in the 60s. As the story goes, once they decided to stop looking for survivors, they just bulldozed the whole place over, and the land hasn’t been used since. Passing by is a somber reminder of the thousands who never even received a proper burial—and a reminder that Agadir was once upon a time a historical ancient city—not the upscale beach city it is today.

But this also means something else: deep underneath, there are a lot of jewelry shops… untouched…



I continue on up the road, past the hilltop Kasbah where I took my videoclip with some co-workers last year . Down below is the port—actually two ports, which generate some jobs for this area as an alternative to tourism. Unfortunately not many of these jobs pay very well.   

Finally up around a bend is Anza which is between the cliffs and the ocean, overlooks by a big cement factory. Definitely not on the tourist circuit, as the water is quite polluted here. Here I veer off the highway an into the neighborhoods—with homes that are actually kind of nice… I had been expecting them to be more run down. There’s a little main street with your post office and town hall—all the trappings of an independent town—but no… it clearly states that this is "Anza, Agadir".

I start feeling so at ease, that when a group of young fellows outside the high school ask me to join them, I accept. One of them already has a tarbouka drum, so I guess a guitar is all their missing. I try with one of my Berber riffs, but I guess I don’t have the rhythm quite right, and the guy on the drums was having a hard time following along… So then I try bluegrass and voila! He got the rhythm right away! I’ve found it almost a rule of thumb: “when all else fails, play bluegrass” it almost never fails to please a crowd anywhere in the world!