Agadir's reputation as a package-holiday town with a long beach and not much else is fair enough, and in January it works for you. Most visitors spend the week shuttling between sunbed and buffet, which leaves the fishing port and the old kasbah hill to residents and to anyone who bothers to leave the hotel strip. The weather makes leaving easy. January here is dependable winter sun without a long-haul flight, dry most days and warm enough for lunch outside in a T-shirt. After dark you'll want a proper jumper.
Ignore the seafront menus. The better lunch is at the fishing port, where dozens of grill stalls cook fish straight off the boats. Point at what you want and it goes on the grill with salt, cumin and lemon. Plastic chairs, paper plates. Order the sardines.
Souk El Had means Sunday market, which is exactly why you shouldn't go on a Sunday. That's when the crowds come. Tuesday to Thursday is calmer, and stallholders have more time to haggle. Don't try Monday, when it's shut for cleaning, and expect gaps on Friday afternoon, when many stalls close for prayers.
The surf isn't in Agadir at all. It's up the coast in Taghazout and Tamraght, and winter is when the big Atlantic swells arrive. Anchor Point, the long right-hander everyone photographs, is for experienced surfers. Do not learn there. Book a school, let them take you to a gentler beach break, and ask for a thick wetsuit. The January sun is warm. The ocean is not.
Few visitors notice 14 January, but the Souss is Amazigh heartland, and Morocco marks Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year, as a public holiday. The dish to look for is ourkimen, a thick pot of soaked beans, lentils and grains cooked for hours, and there are usually concerts and cultural evenings around the region. Ask at your hotel what's on locally, because programmes change from year to year.
Then take the cable car from the waterfront up to Kasbah Agadir Oufella, where the whole bay is laid out below. Inside the walls, wooden walkways trace the streets and squares of the old town that the 1960 earthquake flattened. They are raised off the ground because many of its victims are still buried underneath.