Bee and I spent escaped the winter and spent six weeks in Agadir. The plan was to enjoy heat and light, which are in short supply in England at this time of year. Agadir probably doesn’t warrant a six-week stay, unless you were using it as a base to do other adventures in the Atlas and the Sahara. We viewed it as less of a holiday and more of a temporary relocation. Although we did do some touristy things, the majority of the time it was just transplanting our daily life to a different place.
I reflected quite a few times upon my previous trip to Morocco twenty years before. I wrote a blog about it and made a film. Obviously lots has changed in that time frame, and I never visited Agadir earlier to make a direct comparison. In general I noticed better cars, better food, people speaking more English than French, despite a lot of the shops still using French on their signage etc.
Christmas and New Year passed with some fanfare but it was Yennayer that was most interesting. Blessed with stable weather, it meant that celebrations could predictably take place outside and there seemed to be concerts or markets cropping up across town most weekends. We were living in the Talborjt district, which was quite busy and noisy, but always had something going on. It is full of modernist architecture, due to extensive earthquake damage leading it to be mostly rebuilt in the 1960s. This style isn’t to everyone’s taste, but having lived in Birmingham for eight years, I quite enjoyed it. Birmingham could learn a lot from Agadir’s inclusion of parks!
During this period I managed to finish some music, write some more, read lots, edited some documentary footage, watch some films. In general it was a welcome break. We had started the year in Marrakech under very different circumstances. It was nice to come back to Morocco and experience a different vibe. We’re keen to keep exploring, but perhaps different countries in the near future rather than returning here for a while. Hopefully we won’t wait another twenty years though!
