Driving to Agadir

December 25^th, 2025

I awoke to a lovely sunny Christmas morning on the seashore of Morocco.  My plan today was to drive to the city of Agadir, where tomorrow I had a ticket for a football match (soccer game for you North Americans) between Egypt and South Africa in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) that Morocco is hosting. 

My route took me back through Essaouira and then headed inland.  It was a nice drive on some very quiet country roads with varying terrain.  At first it was relatively green with small, spread-out trees and then it became quite barren, at times looking like Mars-like.

The beach in Essaouira.

Driving through the lovely countryside.

Entering a town with a busy market area.  Seems like the locals didn't care much about vehicle traffic.

Unfortunately, I missed the busiest part of this market as I moved along at a walking pace behind a wall of locals.

That's quite the truckload of hay!

There were hundreds of holes dug in row after row on this hillside...not sure what it was about.

Hard to see in this photo unless you zoom in, but there were cool, curvy striations on each of those hills.

There's a man on a donkey spreading some seeds in the field.

Look at that landscape.

Now we're on Mars...

On some of these quiet roads, I passed locals who were hitchhiking.  I was reluctant at first to pick anyone up, but after I passed this elderly couple and didn’t stop, I decided that I would likely pick up the next person looking for a lift.  Surprisingly, the next opportunity was another couple, probably in their mid-60s but definitely younger than the previous couple.  These were the only couples I had seen hitchhiking during my time in Morocco; all the others had been single men.

 

I pulled over and then I had to quickly tidy up the van, so they had somewhere to sit as I had stuff strewn about.  They were very happy that I had stopped for them and since I hadn’t seen another car for about half an hour, that wasn’t a shocker.  I felt like I was spreading a little Christmas cheer…not that they observe Christmas in any way.

 

They both sat behind me on the bench seat even though I had cleared off the front passenger seat.  I tried to speak in French to the man, who I assumed was a shepherd (he definitely smelled like one!), but he didn’t seem to know French.  That surprised me as all the Moroccans I had interacted with so far spoke some French since it used to be a French colony.  Therefore, our communication was quite limited for the twenty or so minutes that they were in Octi.

As I mentioned in my previous post that I had seen 2 of the 3 wisemen yesterday on Christmas Eve...now I was with the shepherd on Christmas Day!

The man indicated that their stop was coming up but we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.  I pulled over, they got out and then just disappeared into some bushes.  It looked like they were going to cross a dry riverbed and up a small rocky hill where there were a couple of buildings.  I was happy to have helped them out although I had to roll down my windows to air out Octi for a bit.

The shepherd disappearing into the bushes.

Less than an hour later, I hopped on a divided toll highway and sped towards some bigger, snowcapped mountains before coming down a pass into a large flat plain that extended to the ocean to the right and towards some other, smaller mountains on the left. 

Those are the Atlas Mountains on the left of the highway.

Heading down to the flatlands. 

As I was leaving the toll booth to exit the highway, I passed a dark brown, unique looking motorhome which I recognized from my second or third night in Morocco as it was at the same campground.  I had noticed it then as it shockingly had South Korean licence plates…now that’s a journey!

I've never seen cows on the top of a truck trailer before!  They get quite the view plus fresh air...but who knows if they're enjoying it.  I guess it depends on what their destination is...

I arrived at Agadir and even though I planned to stay at a campsite half an hour to the north of the city, I wanted to do some recon on the parking for the football match tomorrow.  The stadium is located on the edge of the city, so it was near the highway. 

 

The Adrar Stadium of Agadir (that bit of brown above the highway).

After speaking to some policemen at a roundabout near one of the entrances, I stopped at a big grocery store called Hyper U.  Who would I see in that parking lot?  Yup, that same big brown motorhome.  The Korean couple exited their vehicle and I said hi.  They recognized Octi too!  We had a short chat, and they have finished year three of a five-year trip!  Wow. They even plan on shipping the motorhome to North America so I gave them my contact information, should they end up near the flight park.

 

I bought my groceries and drove out to the campground that was nestled between a couple of barren hills.  I thought I would stay for two or three nights, but that turned into five as I had a lot of yearend bookkeeping to do for my paragliding business.  The day after the football match it was rainy for a few days, so it didn’t make sense to move on anyways.

 

My campspot at Camping Aourir.

It was an interesting and nice drive today.  Definitely a different kind of Christmas than my family and friends must be celebrating back in the Western world.