Бесценный опыт отдыха An invaluable holiday experience

I offer a report on the trip of a young couple to Morocco in September 2006.

Hotel Carribean Village Agador and the beach: for a 3 * hotel is very good. The territory is well-groomed, there are a lot of trees, flowers, everything is beautifully decorated with clay jugs and streams with waterfalls. Many pools for every taste from small to large, each pool has a mini-bar. The rooms are spacious, the balcony is just huge, the size of the room. Cleaned every day with a change of towels; linen was changed once a week, once a washcloth was stolen. There are seven restaurants, of which six represent the cuisine of various peoples of the world - Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Moroccan, a steak restaurant and a fish restaurant. Of these, edible food was only in the Italian restaurant. On Fridays, the main restaurant hosted a dinner of local cuisine, the smell of spices was unbearable and beat off the appetite right at the entrance.

In general, it is worth mentioning the food separately - even if the unfortunate chefs tried to cook something European, “aromatic” seasonings turned any dish into a worthy example of local cuisine. As a result, I had to eat pasta twice a day for three weeks, in which it is not advisable to add spices, and broken pieces of fish, which were very tasty. Culinary experts generally had a whole problem with desserts: they look decent, but the taste is completely inedible. Fruit salad deserves special attention, which was served freshly cut for lunch, and for dinner, a couple of cans of canned fruit were added to the remnants of lunch salad. Unfortunately, we realized this fact only after we ate 2 packs of Smecta and used a couple of unscheduled toilet paper rolls (sorry for the intimate details). After the Turkish "all inclusive" Moroccan barely pulled on half board.
Sports grounds for volleyball, football, mini-golf, tennis are normal. The gym is just a nightmare, with collapsed simulators and a set of homemade dumbbells and barbells. We courageously visited it all three weeks, although even the animators looked at us with ill-concealed pity. For the entire rest, the threshold of this institution has never crossed at least someone else's foot, in addition to ours. The animation was great, they say this is the best team in all of Morocco. The guys speak all popular languages ​ ​ except Russian. Every evening they staged performances in the theater with magnificent costumes. Not far from the ocean, a private beach on the shore is small, there is a mini-bar.
Beach animators at first did not want to make contact in the form of providing us with free boats (kayaks) and surfboards, but by the middle of the second week we got them so much that they considered it best to give in and the remaining days broke only for the first twenty minutes. Although paid scooters were almost forcibly shoved into satisfied foreigners in any weather. I will not describe the ocean - you have to see it, words are powerless here.

Agadir: in order to explore the town, we rented bicycles for half a day and in an hour traveled all the streets of Agadir, taking into account the old city destroyed by the earthquake and the port. For walks, it is best to choose a coastal tourist area, where there are many different cafes, including McDonald's, and a beautiful view of the mountain. Everything you need (shops, Internet club, travel agency, car, scooter and bicycle rental, pharmacy) is located a maximum of 15 minutes walk from the hotel.

We were very unlucky - we ended up in Morocco during Ramadan. Most of the cafes and restaurants are closed, by the evening the local population becomes not just annoyed, but frankly angry, this is especially evident among the waiters. At six in the evening, the mullah begins to sing, and people disappear from the streets like vampires at sunrise. You walk through an extinct city and it seems that you are filming in an unreal film about the end of the world. At this time, Moroccans can start eating! The crunch and champing are not interrupted by anything - neither the appearance of potential buyers at the shop windows, nor the arrival of new tourists with a bunch of suitcases, nor the lack of free tables in the restaurant. Ramadan also affected the quality of our evening life - we went around all the disco clubs in Agadir, but even by one in the morning the maximum number of visitors was two, and I think it's easy to guess that it was us.
The disco in my own hotel was closed for repairs, as well as the Hammam bath, the main restaurant, and part of the main hotel building. The repair was quiet, AT NIGHT, when normal people, in general, sleep. Fortunately, after a reconnaissance operation, we chose the quietest room on the edge of the sports fields, and moved there on the second day of our stay in the country.

Guide and excursions: but here the cons begin. You can write a separate review about the guide. To be honest, I did not imagine that such "specialists" could work with tourists at all, causing irreparable damage to the reputation of the tour operator. Even if we take into account my inherent indifference and calm attitude to the possible negative aspects of my many trips around the world, I could not remain indifferent to the unlimited stupidity and narcissism of this example of the Ukrainian nationality. Her name is Karina.
In the process of reading negative reviews on the Internet, I repeatedly met this name, but I could not imagine that we would fall into her greedy indifferent hands. We arrived in the country prepared, having a list of desired excursions in our hands. For all questions about the trip to - Fes, Essaouira, Casablanca, Anti-Atlas, Rabat, just shopping - we received a surprisingly clear answer: “Other Russian tourists do not want to go on these excursions. If you want to go alone, you'll have to pay double or triple the price. " So we could not understand what “other tourists” have to do with us, and why we have to pay 180 euros per person instead of 60. We must admit that there were no more Russian people on the territory of the hotel in 11 hectares. But they were in other hotels - we saw them . In the end, we bought a trip to Marrakesh from K. During the whole day (! ) excursions we heard one (!

) a phrase referring to Morocco - "All the houses in Marrakesh are built of pink stone. " On this, according to the guide, our educational program around the country was completed. Based on the behavior of the guide, we assumed that she organized this tour illegally, "for herself. " When the police loomed on the horizon, she quickly whispered, “If you are asked, you are my relatives. And then I don’t have some documents. ” Well, well, nine people relatives with the eyes of inexperienced tourists on untanned faces. We spent the main part of the day getting to know the local market: the guide made bulk purchases of food products, and we accompanied her. After this magnificent excursion, we scored on the services of our guide, and apparently mutually. Ms. K. did not attend the meetings, leaving notes at the reception with the following content: “I can’t come today, let’s call. ”
She did not answer the calls, citing the fact that “I was just in the shower / toilet / hung upside down on the chandelier, etc. ", but did not call back either. In short, we could freely drown in the ocean, and she would have discovered our absence only on the day of departure. Instead, we went to a "wild" travel agency and bought all the excursions we were interested in for half the price of the base price. Thanks to the knowledge of English, the impression of the country turned out to be excellent. The most interesting thing is that on some, very remote excursions, we met a Russian-speaking Arab guide (unfortunately, I don’t remember his name), who accompanied two or three tourists for the same money, without overpayment. By the way, an Arab woman from the “wild” travel agency called us after each excursion and was interested in our impressions and recommendations.

The most extreme began before departure.
Back in Moscow, we were given Moscow-Agadir-Moscow tickets without a return date and, after a little resistance, they provided a letter of guarantee with promises to transfer the Agadir-Moscow tickets through Ms. K. We flew from Morocco on October 15, and they promised to transfer the tickets to us with tourists arriving on vacation October 5th. To be honest, I was not even surprised when we didn’t have tickets on the 5th. The DHL service apparently had not yet extended its powerful influence to a country as remote as Morocco, in connection with which tickets could only be transferred with arriving tourists. Well, charter flights are infrequent, so now tickets were expected only before departure. We roughly figured out how many things to pack - the guide stubbornly hid information about possible changes in the departure date and did not appear on the horizon - and on the night of October 14-15 we sat on our suitcases. TO.

called us to the room at one in the morning and asked why we were not at the reception yet, because she sent us SMS!! ! throughout the week. Both of our phones have been silent for a week due to the banal reason for the lack of money in the account, so we did not even comment on this statement. Although hysterical laughter struck me briefly. On the bus, she asked if my parents knew that we had no tickets home. Either this is just a callous person, or something else, but if our mothers had thought of at least ASSUME the occurrence of this situation, then a couple of heart attacks would have been provided. At the airport, we modestly sat down with our things at a table and began to wait for the arrival of the charter in the company of Russian-speaking guides.

Ukraine was presented in all its glory, as if it suddenly became crowded there, and a huge mass of crests chose Morocco as their country of residence.
To be honest, even my modest knowledge of French, which they spoke for the purpose of conspiracy, gave me the idea to travel as savages in the future. Slowly, the registration ended, the customs officers drowsily dispersed into secluded corners. Departure time was approaching - 4 am. For three hours now I have been reading the same page of the book, thinking with horror about our future fate. It should be noted that after I was injured in a small storm on the ocean by a boat on both ankles, I was denied the pleasure of nervously walking around the airport. So I was nervous sitting. The departure time approached, but the plane still could not arrive. The realization that we would fly to Moscow on the same plane warmed the soul a little, but on the whole, the mood was clouded by the memory of the 2-hour passage through the customs control of arriving fellow citizens.
My young man stood guard at the check-in counter at the opposite end of the airport, and his lone figure with a whole cart of things finally aroused the genuine interest of the airport workers. In an indescribable mixture of unknown to him English-French and Russian obscene language, indispensable in such situations, he explained that he planned to fly to Moscow in the company of his girlfriend, and at the moment we are simply waiting for tickets. I can’t describe the expression on the Moroccan’s face, but judging by the number of fingers he showed, we didn’t have long to wait for departure. Our brake named K. at that time was describing relations with the tourists of our arrival, who were accommodated in the wrong hotel.

The poor fellows were trying to get some justice; at worst, at least equalize the number of hotel stars, but each time they came across the reinforced concrete confidence of the guide that “the tourist is always wrong, and I don’t need to wave the contract here, it wasn’t me who made it up. ” After this story, I realized how lucky I was that my contacts with the guide were limited to quite friendly gatherings at the airport. The plane was late for 40 minutes, although one of the guides nervously kept repeating "let's not let him fly at all, " and I cast a wild look at her. A pair of ancient turtles carrying precious tickets crawled out among the last tourists. In search of tickets, they rummaged through their endless bags and at the same time convinced me that we ourselves wanted to postpone the departure date and were talking nonsense.
Having snatched out the documents, I sent a last look at our lovely charming guide and rushed to the registration, forgetting that for the last three days I could not walk and I was literally carried in my arms along the numerous steps of the hotel. The check-in procedure, suitcase checking and loading on the plane took place in record time, since boarding on our flight, in principle, had already ended. I must say that for the first time in my life I sincerely applauded after the successful landing of the plane on Russian soil. And while ITS, the company that organized the trip, confidently claims that this practice of transferring tickets is commonplace, I can assure you that one night at the airport completely erased many of the positive aspects of a three-week vacation.

My recommendations: if you want to understand what the real Morocco is, rent a car for a week and go on a self-guided tour of the country.
Morocco is worth a visit once, if only to admire the slender goats climbing argan trees in search of food. As for money, for 24 days we took $ 2.000 for two, of which we spent only 900 on excursions, souvenirs and cafes. From souvenirs, it is better to take wood products and paintings in Essaouira. Everything else looks so cheap and of poor quality that the hand does not rise to give money for it. It is better to go at the end of August-September, from October it becomes cool and cloudy.