It isn’t. The weather. It isn’t glorious, it’s grey, muggy and grey. I catch up on face book and see a friend’s post “Have you ever seen a sky so blue?” I want to throw my Al Jazeera plasma screen out of the window.
I breakfast and ask where I can buy a bus ticket.
A half hour walk, (it should have only been ten minutes but I got a little lost and coffee seemed a good idea) takes me to the Supratours office.
“Un billet pour Tarodant, si’l vous plais?”
Blank look. Perhaps if I précis it?
“Taroudant?”
Perhaps if I hire an interpreter?
‘Non, pas ici’ (my French will have to be phonetic).
I know it’s not bloody here, I want to get there, you imbecile!
Much sign language later, I am in proud possession of a bus ticket to Essouira on the 6th April but I now have to travel across town to the other bus station to buy my ticket to Taroudant. I have also discovered that the taxi across town should cost me 22 whatevers.
Taxi driver is a sweetie, we arrive at the bus station and I am only charged 15 whatevers. I am warming to Moroccan taxi drivers. (I should have known that that was dangerous).
The sun is trying to force its way through the clouds and life is looking up.
Ticket to Taroudant secured, (although I have to be up at some ridiculous hour to catch the bus), I hail another taxi to take me back to le Plage.
Much laughter and joking and a 1 million Euro fare quoted and arguing that 40 whatevers was not a fair price, and attempted overfamiliarity, which courted a hefty slap from my glove clad hand, a kilometre down the road in an area I would not be able to find on any map, I escape at the traffic lights to the strains of ‘Stupid English woman’.
Actually not so stupid, Knob!
Great.
Now what?
Not a tourist in sight.
Even worse, not a taxi in sight.
I figure that Le Plage is somewhere to my right, now if the bloody sun would come out, I could tell you exactly where it was.
Heading off down a fairly busy road, hailing the occasional passing taxi, whether full or not and thankful that I am yet again, almost Abaya clad, I am cautious but relieved when a taxi with only one other passenger already in residence pulls up.
A little detour to the Souk, where we drop off the other passenger and I am safely deposited on Le Plage, and all for 20 whatevers.
My faith in taxi drivers restored, I explore Le Plage and have lunch in a cafe with free wifi. The cafe is filled with young locals, Mummy’s with prams, miserable matrimonials, ancient wrinkled females hunting in pairs, and even more miserable, unattractive and ageing, single European men – it could be anyone’s home town.
Everywhere the staff are delightful, but Agadir? Without sunshine it is not a town that has a lot to offer.
It has a souk, which I may explore tomorrow, although souks, like temples, can be overdosed on.
The beach is long and sandy and I’m sure on sunny days, a delight.
It has the equivalent of chalk horses (Arab writing) carved on the mountain – hardly life changing.