Aït Melloul: the Souss at work, and the road to the airport

01

The town the Souss built

Aït Melloul sits on the south bank of the Souss river, between Inezgane and the airport, and it has grown faster than almost any town in Morocco: 171,000 people in 2014, nearly 211,000 at the 2024 census. The reason is the plain behind it. The Souss valley, between the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, is Morocco’s market garden: citrus groves, then from the 1980s greenhouses of tomatoes, peppers and bananas, and the argan forest on the drier slopes. Aït Melloul is where the harvest is packed, cooled, loaded and sent north, and where the people who do it live. The prefecture ships around seventy thousand tonnes of citrus a year.

02

What you see from the road

Coming from Agadir Al Massira airport, the road from the terminal runs through fifteen kilometres of orchards and plastic greenhouses before the town begins: packing stations with their lorries, roundabouts, blocks of apartments, the long main avenue with its cafés and mechanics. Then the bridge over the Souss, often dry in summer, with Inezgane on the far bank and the whole of Agadir laid out ahead. It is twenty minutes from the airport to this bridge and another twenty-five to Tamraght.

Nobody holidays here. That is why it tells you more about the region than anywhere on the beach.

03

If you have an hour

• The river. The Souss estuary downstream of the bridge is the northern edge of the Souss-Massa National Park: in winter, flamingos and spoonbills stand in the shallows a few hundred metres from the traffic.
• The citrus. From November to March the roadside stalls sell clementines and oranges by the crate for a few dirhams a kilo, picked that morning. Buy a bag for the house.
• The market. Aït Melloul has its own daily souk and weekly market days when the villages of the plain come in; it is less known than Inezgane’s and even less visited.
• The argan cooperatives along the roads inland, where women crack and press the nuts by hand; several welcome visitors and sell oil at honest prices.

04

Why we tell you this

Because the airport transfer passes through it, and because the oranges on your breakfast table at Moonlight and Blue Whale, the tomatoes in your tagine and the argan oil on your bread all come from this plain. If you take a car from Hilal Luxury Cars, which delivers in Aït Melloul too, you can stop on the way.