Morocco

In December, I travelled to Morocco with my family to take a break before the mad rush of Christmas and new year. We travelled up to London the night before catching the flight, the van fully loaded with surfboards, luggage - including half of my sisters wardrobe - and seven of us. After the long drive and restless sleep in the hotel from excitement, it was finally Saturday morning and time to fly to Morocco. Once arriving in Agadir, we faced the challenge of finding the man who was renting a car to us for the week. Whilst doing this, we were hoping that he had not lied on the phone about the car having roof racks, considering we were carrying around six surfboards. Once finding this man, we ventured to the car being approached suddenly by local men, whose jobs consisted of grabbing your luggage to help you to the car - obviously not initially mentioning that this would cost you - but this is a lesson to be learned for future reference if you want to save ten euros. Once seeing that the car did have roof racks, we all relaxed a little more and packed the car up ready to travel to the hotel. The hotel was beautiful and all-inclusive, which was great for our food loving family - and not to mention the open bar. The trip involved surfing at the popular surf spots, which Morocco has to offer such as Anchor Point, Panarama, Devils Rock and Boilers, all names which relate to their appearance. We also explored towns such as Taghazout, as well as visiting souks where we haggled with the stall holders for the best price we could get. The trip went smoothly and here are three highlights and memories of the trip:

• Being caught speeding. Although this may not sound like a highlight, it was a very amusing situation as it involved confusing the police officer as to who was the authorised driver for the rented car. We were told that mum was not allowed to drive as dad's name was on the car papers - this meant that we had to deal with slow and hesitant driving the rest of the holiday - and were sent away with a 300 Dirham (£23) charge. 
• The donuts, which are sold on the beach were a must-have! Some tried to sell them for more than others, but the general price, which we got them down to was ten dirham (76p) and they were the best donuts I ever tasted. 
• Everywhere we went to in Morocco always had animals roaming around. When eating our lunch in a café on the beach one day, there were lots of cats as well as their kittens following them. These kittens were adorable and enjoyed the occasional tip bits from the table. At Anchor Point, when the boys were surfing, three puppies and their mother approached us. These puppies enjoyed a play and a scratch, and their mother seemed to take a liking to us so much that she guarded us for the rest of the morning whilst we were sitting on the rocks. Some may say that these animals shouldn't be touched or trusted, however every one that I came across was friendlier than any animal in the UK.