Made to measure

Go Morocco:Lying on a beach, haggling at the souk and grazing at the buffet: sometimes it's nice to be on a package holiday where everything is arranged for you, especially when it means you never have to think about where the next meal is coming from, writes Shane Hegarty

‘WE’RE GOING to Morocco,” we would tell people. “Oh,” they would reply, as if you had told them that you were thinking of buying a Toyota or investing in Anglo Irish Bank shares. “Interesting. And you’re not worried about bringing your son?”

Morocco triggers a strange reaction in some, seemingly motivated by a general idea that Agadir, especially, is a spot that mixes hassle with Islam; or perhaps it brings forth images of older Irish women going there in search of husbands. And, honestly, it wouldn’t have been our first choice for what was a trip in search of Easter sun. Yet it turned out to fit the bill very well indeed.

The hassle was there, all right, and veered between acceptable and exhausting. But it was the Islamic element that helped make it such a beach holiday with a twist. What’s more, we did it as an all-inclusive package, going against our usually more independent streak.

Regarding that particularly unadventurous aspect, I left with a new-found appreciation of what it’s like never to have to think about where the next meal will come from when the answer is always, “From the never-ending buffet.”

To Agadir first. It is a resort city – although its bulk exists away from the patch of hotels and restaurants clustered around a long sheltered beach. It stretches out from an unremarkable marina, under the gaze of a hill on which the Arabic words for God, Country, King are written. At night these produce an eerie luminescence.

The old town as was ceased to exist in 1960, when an earthquake destroyed everything and killed 15,000 people. The resulting city is ugly but functional, modern and un-African, its sky busy with cranes and its ground filled with half-completed buildings. In the main the tourist part falls in with this unappealing aesthetic.

The completion of a promenade along the seafront has brought a more delightful aspect, however. Red-bricked and wide, following a curved path for five kilometres through where dunes used to be, in the evenings it brings out families, joggers, tourists, everyone.

On Sunday morning – our first morning there – students of tae kwon do used it as a training ground, launching kicks and yelps at each other. Police passed on Segways. Power walkers charged by. For people watching, it is hard to beat.

And that is the thing about Agadir: unlike the Canaries, say, where resorts are for tourists and the locals work behind the scenes, Agadir’s beach and promenade are not the preserve of sunburnt northern Europeans. The locals own it as much as we do. Along the sand, in fact, it is common to see women swimming in full-length “burqinis”. And you will often see them palling with women in less modest swimwear.

There are, of course, other things to do bar people watching and finding previously undiscovered parts of the body to burn. The local souk is a busy, noisy place that will test your tolerance for traders touting and shouting for your business. Shake their hand and you may find it dragged towards a shopfront even as the rest of your body is moving in the other direction. Aggressive haggling is, you will be told, a cultural must. It is also exhausting, but it is what traders do and what tourists expect. It means at least a couple of purchases in which you must pretend to walk away and the trader must affect to be more offended by you than by anyone he has ever met. Eventually a deal is struck and you will become best pals for a few minutes.

There are various tours to be take, including unofficial ones that will involve adventures with local taxi drivers. There is a “bird garden” that, with its miserable animals, including two monkeys in a cage, should sadden rather than gladden anyone who sees it. Avoid that, but at its entrance is a street train that will give you a tour of the town, stopping to pick up tourists or the driver’s friends, and which has a rickety charm that will keep kids occupied for 45 minutes.

There are camel treks through local building sites, in which the guide will take your photograph before a strategically placed sand mound, to make it look a bit more Lawrence-esque.

Tourism companies organise trips to local towns or to a tourist-orientated Berber feast. And a couple of hours up the road is the relaxed town of Essaouira (“Jimmy Hendrix lived there,” everyone will tell you), although my planned visit was scuppered by my being the only one interested. I had planned to succumb to the package ethos, so I didn’t go independently.

Instead it was a long, long coach trip to Marrakesh. How long? Up at 6am, back at 2am; picking up at other hotels along the way; five and a half hours coming back, thanks to every truck in Morocco taking to the roads at night. A new motorway will soon speed things up. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

You get only a glimpse of the city, as you form a caravan of pasty tourists through the sensual assault that is its souk, and many traders share many tourist-baiting catchphrases and products, but it is a city that you see with eyes wide open and mouth regularly agape. The square of dJemaa el-fna is extraordinary. Taking the long coach trip is a small sacrifice when it means having your mind so thoroughly blown.

And what else is there to do when not on coach trips? Taking a massage is a good way to get out of the sun for an hour or two, with much of it revolving around argan oil – the byproduct of a tree that dots the surrounding landscape to such an extent that you wonder if anything else gets a look in. They use it in cooking and as soap, skin cream and massage oil. It smells pretty good. Which is a good thing, because it hangs around your clothes for a couple of washes.

An hour and a half of a full body massage can be had for €30 – when your toes will be pulled gently and your head rubbed so thoroughly that you leave with your hair a mess: content on the inside, bewildered on the outside.

As for accommodation, there are decent hotels close to the beach if you can get them. We stayed in the Royal Atlas, a large several-starred spa hotel (the brochure and the hotel disagree) that backs on to the promenade and has its own sectioned-off patch of beach. It’s the sort of hotel that can be full without feeling packed, and the food for those on the all- inclusive deal is varied enough to stave off culinary boredom in all but the fussiest of eaters.

It’s also the sort of hotel that has televisions in the lifts – mainly tuned to news channels that, when we visited, kept reminding us that Ireland was sinking vast sums into Anglo Irish Bank.

It’s also the sort of hotel with bathrooms bigger than most central-Dublin apartments and urinals with the designer’s signature scrawled on them. You’d want to be mightily proud of your toilets to put your name in the line of fire.

Many other hotels are available, of course, and several of them are more suited to families than the Royal Atlas – which, while hosting some children, really has the feel of a place you go to when you want to escape them.

It also has a stunning spa, designed to reveal itself gradually through dim red light and steam. It was here that I discovered something every Irishman already instinctively knows: paper knickers are not something we’re comfortable with.

My experience came through a hammam, the traditional routine of gunk, then a scrub, then water, then a massage and, throughout, a general awkwardness that accelerated into downright horror when handed a pair of paper pants.

I am told that many women are familiar, and indeed comfortable, with this sop to modesty that replaces nudity with something altogether more hilarious.

By the time the massage was over I was just happy that the masseuse had resisted the urge to laugh uproariously and call in the other masseuses for a look. I was grateful for this. I’d like to go back to Morocco. And I’d like to be able to look the population in the face.

Where we stayed

Shane Hegarty was a guest of Sunway Holidays (sunway.ie), staying at the four-star Royal Atlas Hotel.

Seven nights’ B&B in May starts at €659 per person sharing, including flights, transfers, accommodation and all taxes.

Sunway also offers two-centre options, staying in Agadir and Marrakesh, Taroudant or Essaouira from €589 per person.