Agadir beyond the beach: the kasbah, the marina, birds, crocodiles and an ibis
Agadir is a young city with an old hill. Most visitors see the beach and the souk and go back north. Give it a second day: there is a sixteenth-century fortress with a cable car, a lagoon with the rarest ibis in the world, and three hundred crocodiles in a botanical garden.
- 1540the kasbah, give or take a sultan
- 1960the earthquake that remade the city
- 2022the cable car opens
- 33,800 haSouss-Massa National Park
1. Agadir Oufella, the kasbah on the hill
Above the port, 236 metres up, stand the walls of the kasbah that the Saadian sultans built in the sixteenth century (sources give 1540 and 1572, and two different sultans) to watch the Portuguese and the bay. Inside the walls a whole quarter lived until 29 February 1960, when the earthquake destroyed it along with the rest of old Agadir. The walls were restored in 2002 and again during the 2020 to 2024 city programme, and since 2022 a cable car runs from the Tildi bridge near the marina to the top in about fifteen minutes. Go late in the afternoon: the view takes in the port, the beach curving south to the Souss river and, on a clear day, the Anti-Atlas. Above the gate the inscription in Dutch and Arabic recalls the trading post of 1746. Tickets for the cable car are around 100 MAD return.
2. The marina and the beach promenade
At the foot of the hill, the marina is Agadir’s most polished corner: white buildings, yachts, cafés with terraces, and the start of a promenade that runs several kilometres along the bay. Walk it at sunset when the whole city comes out, buy an ice cream, watch the surf school groups on the sand and the camels waiting for riders. The beach itself is huge, gentle and swimmable most of the year, which is why Agadir became a resort in the first place.
Agadir is a young city with an old hill. Give it a second day.
3. The Vallée des Oiseaux
A narrow garden that runs down the middle of the city from boulevard Hassan II to the beach: aviaries with parrots and cranes, a small enclosure of goats and deer, a playground, shade. Entry is free. It is the easiest hour in Agadir with children, and the one place in the centre that is cool at midday.
4. Crocoparc
At Drarga, on the road out of town toward the airport, a botanical garden built around more than three hundred Nile crocodiles, from hatchlings in the nursery to adults sunning on the banks. The gardens themselves, with cacti, water lilies and a waterfall, are worth the walk even if you do not care for reptiles. Count one to three hours; feeding times are posted at the entrance.
5. The Souss river mouth and the Souss-Massa National Park
South of the city the Souss river reaches the sea in a wide estuary that marks the northern edge of the Souss-Massa National Park, created in 1991 and covering some 33,800 hectares of dunes, cliffs, wetland and steppe down to Aglou. Flamingos, spoonbills and waders feed in the estuary; further south, around the Oued Massa and the village of Tifnit, live three of the four remaining wild colonies of the northern bald ibis, a bird that was down to a few dozen pairs in the 1990s and now numbers several hundred thanks to the park. The visitor centre at Oued Massa can arrange a guide. Bring binoculars and a whole day; it is about an hour and a quarter from the villages.
6. Talborjt and the museum
The rebuilt old quarter has the best cheap restaurants in the city and, nearby, the Musée Municipal du Patrimoine Amazigh, a small, well-kept museum of Amazigh jewellery, carpets and objects from the Souss. An hour, and a good way to understand what you saw in the souk.
7. Souk El Had
The biggest market in Morocco deserves its own guide. If you take our guided day, it comes with the kasbah and the marina.
The practical part
Before you go
- Getting there
- Agadir centre is 30 minutes from Moonlight and 25 from Blue Whale by car, 35 to 45 by bus 32 from Tamraght. Crocoparc is 20 minutes beyond the centre on the airport road; the Souss-Massa visitor centre at Oued Massa about 1 h 15 from the villages. A car for the day from Hilal Luxury Cars makes the south possible; the Kardian or the Sportage for the tracks around Tifnit.
- When
- The kasbah late afternoon for the light; the Vallée des Oiseaux at midday for the shade; the ibis early morning or late afternoon, best from October to April.
- Budget
- Cable car about 100 MAD return, Crocoparc about 80 MAD, Vallée des Oiseaux free, Souss-Massa free with a local guide at a negotiated price.
Further reading
