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Datum: 5-02-2017    Agadir Part 1
 The City
Agadir is a port city and also the largest seaside resort of Morocco. It is the most Berber-lingual town of Morocco. The word ‘agadir’ in Berber means ‘masonry wall that encloses a city’, a fortress, in fact a special form of a Kasbah. The 16th century Kasbah stands on top of the hill and when it gets dark, you see the Arabic characters lit attractively. IN 1960 the whole of the old town was destroyed by two earthquakes and the subsequent fires and tidal waves, killing 15.000 people. Only the walls of the Kasbah were largely restored. The city was rebuilt about 1,5 km south of the original location. Agadir is a very modern and very touristic city, with wide avenues, gardens in bloom, hotels, an airport, harbours and a grand boulevard along the pristine beaches. A very attractive city for tourists, because of the mild climate and the many sun hours in winter.
The ‘souk el had d’Agadir’ is one of the largest in the country and spreads over an area of close to 6 hectares. There are several gates (about 13) through which you can enter the souk and at every gate you find different goods. It is more spacious than the ‘old’ medinas or souks, which we have seen up till now. Hundreds of stalls with merchants behind enormous piles of vegetables and fruit, spices and clothing, shoes, coupons or highly stacked pans. It is most of all a mixture of colour and bustle, where everything is being inspected, negotiated and tasted. The men stare impudently at you and try to sell off their goods to you.

There are clear differences between Rabat and Agadir. The city is also modern, but much cleaner, less polluted by exhaust fumes. There are more tourists in Agadir and especially the 50+-group is well represented! Clearly a much better climate and a nice place to pass the time.

The Marina
There are 3 harbours in Agadir, one for tankers, a fishing port and the marina (which lies closest to the beach). The marina lies in a kind of basin with round about it very modern shops, restaurants, hotels and apartments (with the accessory European prices). It all looks neat and tidy. The police station and the customs lie next to the harbour office. The basin in the marina is guarded by 3 armed soldiers, who do nothing all day, but walking up and down. Furthermore, you see a lot of guards in the shops and at the beginning of a road. Well, you have to do something with your life, eh?  The marina-staff is extremely friendly and helpful. Regrettably the state of the piers and the facilities is deplorable. On the piers many planks are loose or missing (holes) and sometimes the lightening doesn’t work. They are “far too busy “with their social contacts (=lying lazily on a couch near the office). This is the “Moroccan way”: I’d rather be lazy, than tired!
The key to the facilities is deposited in a plant trough in front of the office and you are meant to put back the key there. Oh well, why are we not surprised: the quarters of the toilets and the showers consist of a long corridor, where most of the doors are locked with a padlock and only two of the four showers are available. There are no operating washing machines. It looks dramatically bad, woodwork rotten away, paint flaked off, holes in the doors, no working lights and on top of that very, very filthy. There isn’t even a showerhead in sight. When you ask when all this is going to be repaired, the answer is invariably: “tomorrow”! We have a spare (showerhead) on board and take that with us every time we go for a shower. You have to find a way somehow! After about 2,5 weeks there suddenly hangs one single “old” showerhead. We are flabbergasted! This is by far the worst accommodation up till now. The only little advantage is that the water is over all nicely warm! Later on it turns out that this marina is much more expensive compared to the one in Salé, where everything was much better and cleaner.

Practical tips
Cash machines: can be found everywhere, but most of all at through-roads (above and parallel to the boulevard)
Supermarkets: Carrefour and Aswak Salam are next to each other (Rue Yacoub el Mansour). With a taxi this will cost you 15 DH (€ 1,50)
Marjane (avenue Mohammed V, N10 to the south, at the edge of town)
Mini-supermarket (Route Marina in the harbour basin). Here you can also find a baker (boulangerie), called ‘Tafarnout’, where you can buy nice fresh bread.
Taxis: in Agadir they are red for the inner-city and white for outside the city. You will find them at the roundabout and the barrier on your way to the boulevard.
Car rental: many international rental companies along the through-road above the parallel at the boulevard. We didn’t rent a car here (see next blog)
Gas bottles: Moroccan gas bottle (big), which we use to transfer the gas to our smaller bottle, we found in one of the smaller side streets in the somewhat ‘ordinary’ quarters.
Restaurants: here in abundance. Near to the marina with European prices, along the boulevard (everything from European to Moroccan prices) in or around the souk many small eateries (much cheaper and certainly not worse). There is even a discotheque (in the harbour basin) of which we can ‘enjoy’ the music, including flashlights, until the wee small hours of the morning.

Encounters with other sailors
We meet both our neighbours, before we berth the boat elsewhere. It is a blustery day and next to the help of the harbour masters, we get help from the two other boats. We set a date then and there for that same evening on the Swiss boat, at Anton and Sylvia’s, for a drink. They are heading for Rabat in a few weeks. Nick and his mother Anne have been here for a couple of weeks and will sail to Tenerife shortly, where they have a small apartment. They are going to clear this out and then live on the boat as well. In the days that follow, we hop over to and fro and have sociable chats. We exchange useful tips and we will surely meet again with Nick and Anne on the Canary Islands. We have a good connection with them and have a number of in-depth conversations in a mishmash of German and English, which doesn’t seem to be any problem.
Encounters with ‘women of the world’ (Facebookpage Wereldvrouwen)
This is going to be a recurring topic in these blogs. Again I have placed a massage on the Facebookpage. Marjolein reacts and an appointment is made right away. Coincidentally Aicha from Salé also knows these two ‘women of the world’. Marjolein and Laila, another Dutch lady, who lives close to the marina, come to our boat. It is very special for them to be on a boat and we have a nice acquaintance. Marjolein has been living in Agadir for 4 years now and is married to a Moroccan and Laila has been living here for only 1,5 years, with a husband and 3 children. We make a date with Marjolein to meet at the “souk el had d’Agadir” the next day, so she can help us familiarize.
What we have been doing
With the taxi to the “souk el had d’Agadir”, where Marjolein’s husband has a bicycle shop. Again, we are warmly welcomed and dive smack in the middle of the souk. We are currently looking for a mini-washing machine, one like we saw at Nick and Anne’s. Suited for about 4 kg of laundry, not too big and very handy when you have no possibility to do your laundry otherwise. Marjolein is our interpreter and leads the way, because the souk is really really big and after 4 years, she knows her way around. We walk past the many colourful stalls. In a courtyard we see a butcher. The meat is nicely displayed outside amongst the many flies and to indicate from which animal the meat is, the head of the beast hangs above it! Marjolein shows us where we can find the best fruit, vegetables or arganoil. We find a washing machine of the brand “Bronde”, height 50 cm x35 x35 cm. Bright pink and even an energy label marked A on it. All this for under € 45,00!
Marjolein knows a lot of merchants, where she buys her goods. Many of them have a little chat with her or just say hello. At a small stand, of which she knows the owner, I buy arganoil. In this form, it can be used to bake or as skincare. We see a woman, sitting on the ground, busy with the last proceedings of the preparation. Not much later I have a bottle, ‘hot off the press’. We also have a little taste of the arganoil and decide to buy a jar!
What is arganoil?
Is also called Moroccan oil or ‘gold of Morocco’. Producing arganoil is a real ‘women’s labour’.  The oil contains a lot of vitamin E, compared to olive oil even twice as much. It can be used for many purposes, both for consumption or skin care. It starts with the Argan tree (Argania Spinosa), which only grows in the southwest or Morocco. Berber women pick up the fruit that has fallen from the tree, the green skin is peeled off and the nut is crashed on a stone. In this nut there are seeds that are roasted (or not, when used for cosmetic oil), than grinded by hand in a special stone hand mill. A grip is turned around and around and out drizzles a kind of grinded nut butter, (not unlike peanut butter, but more liquid). From this butter they have to extract the oil and they do that by adding water and knead it thoroughly. By this kneading the ‘dough’ gets separated in balls and pure arganoil. The oil is tapped, strained and put into bottles. Arganoil is so called ‘cold pressed’
oil, because no form of heating is used during the process.
At noon we have lunch with Marjolein on a terrace in the sun/shadow; we have chicken tajine.
From 10-01-2017 the production and sale of burqa is banned in Morocco. Wearing it is  - up till now – not prohibited (as in Belgium or France), but that might change in the near future. In our opinion that would not be such a bad idea, because you have to see the other person’s facial expression for a proper communication. When a woman (or a man, for that matter, because you never know who’s under it) is veiled, this gets much more difficult. This also has to do with the way you feel around a person in a burqa. Personally I don’t like it at all when you can’t see anything of the person, not even the eyes! A difficult and sensitive topic, but it has to stay open to discussion!
Why this subject here? We are about to start our lunch, when two policemen send away a group of people, among which are women who wear a burqa. The owner does not want people in burqas in his restaurant. Marjolein tells us that more and more companies don’t allow people in burqas to enter, because of the safety risk.
After lunch we go to Marjolein’s husband; he can help us arranging a rental car. After some telephoning here and there, he has arranged a car for us for a week. It will be delivered on Monday and then we will fill in all the necessary forms. It is really nice to have people wanting to help you out with these things.
 
To the Kasbah
We want to take a taxi to the Kasbah of Agadir; it lies on the top of the hill. The first cab we hail, a white one, asks 100 DH and is already packed with other people. We are not going to do this. The second one, a red taxi, asks 50 DH in advance. We take this one, but we should have told him to let the meter run, then it would probably have been 25 DH. Of course…. It’s still peanuts, what are we really talking about, e few euros. We have adapted nicely to the country! When we arrive at the top of the hill, we see that this is really a tourist attraction. There are a couple of, dromedaries on which you can take a ride. We won’t do that, that’s so pathetic, the poor beasts! There are some merchants with souvenirs, but there is not very much to see, apart from a few walls and the remnants of the Kasbah, restored ‘à la Maroquaine’. We do have a beautiful view of the city, the beach and the marina. We walk back from the hill, by way of a reasonably passable path, well, according to Moroccan standards, that is. Underway we see a lot of garbage, plastic bags everywhere and bottles and no garbage can in sight. In Morocco the y don’t have a clue what all this thrown about garbage does to our planet. It is something they don’t bother to think about. So sad! Halfway down the hill a wild boar suddenly crosses our path! What a sight! After 45 minutes we are back at the marina
Boulevard
We regularly take a stroll along the boulevard and there you see the tourists driving around in “Benidorm Bastards”-cars. Hilarious sight!

The weather
The first week is rather beautiful, but after that the weather turns badly. A storm rages along the coast of Morocco and we can notice that very well…. Strong winds, a lot a rain and high waves.  It is a spectacular sight to see these high waves splashing against the jetty. But the boats in the marina are swinging like mad and the Swiss and the German one are raging about. Nick told us that he nearly got seasick of this one time. Fortunately we lie somewhat further into the marina and we don’t suffer as much. The piers look like corrugated iron plates, the way they move and when you walk over them, you have to walk straddle-legged to keep your balance. The water is dark-brown because the rain washes a lot of mud from the mountains to the sea. You see a lot of waste flushing into the marina, mostly plastic of course. But there is also a praying carpet floating by. Parts of the beach are washed away and the waves took a lot of sand and garbage and left it in the street next to the beach. The storm takes a few days and then the weather gets better, but it takes days before the water is its normal transparent colour again

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27-02-2017, reactie van Karin (White Pearl
Wat fijn dat je zaken zo gedetailleerd noemt. Het duurt nog een poosje maar dan lan ik er vast gebruik van maken. Ik ga ook eens op zoek naar die pagina van wereldvrouwenconferentie en kun je ook een foto sturen van de wasmachine. Ben heel benieuwd hoe groot die is en of wij daar nog plaats voor hebben.
 
5-03-2017, reactie van Paula Burger
Bedankt weer voor jullie nieuwe mail. Altijd interessant weer te lezen wat jullie de afgelopen maanden gedaan hebben en beleefd hebben en dat dat jullie zo genieten en zoveel kennissen op doen waar je weer nieuwe ervaringen mee op kan doen en die je kunnen helpen om e.e.a. te ontdekken en wegwijs te maken om iets te vinden waar jullie naar op zoek zijn. Het is wel een hele belevenis wat jullie zo al mee maken en tegenkomen en het land leren kennen en bezichtigen en wegwijs gemaakt worden door mensen die er al een tijdje verblijven. Verder bedankt voor je kaart gisteren ontvangen. Groetjes en tot de volgende mail van Paula.
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