Plans Gone Haywire

I had expected to write tonight from a seemingly great little guesthouse in Agadir, but instead I'm in the lobby of a giant beach resort that resembles the ugly stepchild of Caesar's Palace. Imagine a massive, decrepit, circa 1980 cruise ship beached on the shore after having vomited up about a dozen dirty swimming pools, tennis courts, discos, video arcades, all-you-can-eat buffets, and thousands of overweight, chain-smoking European retirees. That's where I am instead of the pleasant little guesthouse.

I booked PLGH on booking.com about an hour before I started the three hour bus ride to Agadir. Admittedly, that was cutting it close, but I received a confirmation email before I left. I carefully drew a map of the PLGH's location with as many street names as I could find (most streets here aren't actually named, and the PLGH just had a street name and an approximate location, not a number. That's fairly typical and still completely frustrating. It is IMPOSSIBLE to find anything here.). When I got to town, I showed it to the cab driver, we agreed that it looked like an easy thing to track down, and off we went. When we arrived at the place on the map, there was no sign for the riad. We circled the surrounding streets, and my poor driver stopped four different times at a coffeeshop and a store to ask for directions. We asked neighbors a couple of times, and eventually we found out that the hotel was shuttered.

The cabbie doesn't speak English, so I asked him in Arabic to drop me off at one of the big hotels, where I stole lobby wifi to make a new reservation. It's Friday night in a beach community in June. I had few options, so I ended up in Little Caesar's Palace in a room alive with ants. It's so gross I don't even want to BE in it, let alone sleep in it. I'm already itchy just thinking about it.

I sent off a couple of choice emails to the riad and booking.com. The guesthouse has already responded, politely pointing the blame at booking.com, which has been silent thus far. Beside ending up with a crappy hotel room at twice the cost of the guesthouse, the wild goose chase cost me $30 US for the cab ride and the driver's time. I'm very interested to see if they make good, and I will report back to the group one way or the other.

Anyway, even apart from the lodging problems, Agadir just does not knock one out with its beauty. It is a charmless city of new and soulless square cinderblock architecture and scrubby little plants that aren't even trying to be cute. But it does appear to have some good beaches.

I dumped all my stuff off in the hotel room (keeping all of my luggage hermetically closed, of course, to prevent the ants from forming a new colony in my laundry bag) and headed out for a quick bite. Tasteless chicken skewers with french fries served cold. But at least there were two nice Moroccan grad students seated beside me, and we had a really pleasant chat. They both absolutely love Agadir, so there has to be something good about this place.

Tomorrow, I will do my best to figure out what it is. iPad battery is down to 4 percent, so I have to scoot. Good night!