Mighty fishing fleet of Agadir (Day 18)

Before Agadir was turned into a seaside destination for Moroccan rich&famous and a popular resort for many western tourists, it was a simple fishing village.
Minutes before midnight on February 29, 1960, everything changed for the city of Agadir. A major earthquake destroyed the city to the ground, killing 15.000 people. The remains of the old kasbah can still be seen on a hill overlooking the new city today.


Moroccan king decided to rebuild the city and a year after the disaster, rebuilding actually began. An old fishing village was slowly transformed into a high class seaside destination with fancy hotels and hip bars. Let me just point out, that we saw more trash cans in Agadir than in all other Moroccan cities combined. It really is clean - even by European standards.


Despite all that, a stroll through the city docks reveals a mighty fishing fleet. When we reached the sea, there were countless fishing boats lined up left and right from where we were standing. We couldn't see to either end of the long row. Rusty ships were disappearing into the mist both left and right from us.
With fishing fleets of such size, it is a miracle there are still at least some fish in the ocean today.

Another interesting thing was the shipyard. We curiously observed a group of locals working on a wooden hull of a ship. Not a common sight these days.


Nearby there was an improvised stall, where different sea creatures were displayed. One could buy a whale's rib bone, a giant sea shell, a razor-sharp shark tooth, a whole shark jaw or even a scary looking shark head. We weren't really thinking of buying anything, but we talked to the guy, scrubbing a giant sea shell, for some time just the same.
On our way back to the city center we were both laughing at the idea of us walking through airport customs with a meter long whale rib-bone in one arm and a huge shark head in the other, trying to convince a customs officer that it was all just our usual personal carry-on luggage.


We couldn't resist a mint tea on the way back to the hotel. There we made plans for the next day. We decided that in the morning it was time to move on.
Even though Agadir is not a typical Moroccan city, we enjoyed our stay. We took the opportunity to just relax and power up for the few days of travel we got left.