Agadir, in the Souss valley, is a beach resort over run with European package groups. We should have avoided it, but being our first time in Morocco, it made a convenient base to explore down to Sidi Ifni and area. Agadir was wiped out by an earthquake in 1960 while about 18,000 killed. The hillside by the beach is the site of the buried town. It's a memorial now, as most of the victims were never recovered. Being Christmas time, it was also high season for the package tour lots. Most just plunked down on the beach or took tour buses for a day trip to Marrakech. But, since we had a car, we managed to avoid the biggest mass of this lot. The beach is pleasant, but not spectacular. The beaches south of here are ... read more

We hadn't planned on stopping in Rabbat, the capital of Morocco, but it was convenient to break our drive from the North to the South. We didn't realize it was Christmast day until the hotel put on a special Christmas breakfast. It didn't rain on the drive down from the Rif mountains, but the clouds were ominously menacing. Made for a nice drive, because it didn't get too hot.... read more

We planned on staying 3 days in Chefchaouen, which is a small blue artists community in the Rif mountains. But, it was too cold for us. We short circuited our plans by a day. It's hard to photograph the pretty streets because their narrowness means that for most of the day they are in deep shadows. But, we did our best in the little time we had. It was cold, but sunny.... read more

At Fez, we rented a car to drive north to the Meditarranean coast and then hug the Atlantic coast all the way down to Sidi Ifni and finally to return the car at Fez's competing highlight to south of Marrakech. The car rental itself was pretty uneventful and relatively hassle free. Meknes is another old imperial city, though not as famous as Fez. We just stopped on the way to the nearby Roman ruins at Volubilis.... read more

Fez, the Imperial City, has the original old part called the Medina and a modern new town. We stayed in a beautifully restored Riyad in the Medina and walked throughout the medina. We tried to get lost, but only got really lost on our last day there. Fez claims to have the oldest University in the world, predating the Oxford religious instruction period. The Kairaouine Mosque and University in the centre of the Fez Medina is still considered the second most important place of Muslim learning in the world, after only Cairo. The medina is basically one huge souq ... everything from fruits and vegetables to your inevitable carpets and leather goods. You can smell the tannery long before you get there. As mentioned, getting lost here is a right of passage, but we kept finding ... read more