Agadir

Even though my guidebook has nothing much good to say about Agadir, a touristy seaside resort town on the Atlantic, I decided to bus there from Marrakesh anyway, just to spend a couple of days and see what the town was like. As it turned out I liked the place so much I extended my stay to four days. Agadir is the place where many Moroccans like to come to lounge on the beach, buy touristy junk, eat at seaside restaurants, etc. There are a number of large upscale resort hotels here, but the place also has a kind of Coney Island "seedy around the edges" feel to it. In 1960 Agadir experienced a devastating earthquake that killed some 20 thousand people and, unable to manage with the devastating effects of this calamity, the authorities "sprayed the area with lime and DDT, and consequently left the dead where they had been buried." At that time people would probably have found it hard to believe that Agadir would one day become Morocco's premier beach resort town.