It all started with a message from a longtime family friend:
“I’m going riding in Morocco. Care to come along?”
I said yes before I checked the dates.
What followed was a week+ of barefoot gallops, desert air, and salt on my skin—led by Morocco’s first female riding guide, through landscapes that felt more dream than real.
Cheval Agadir didn’t just invite me in.
It rearranged me.
It began at a riad by the sea.
Noura, her family and horses called this place home—a wild, sun-bleached stretch just outside Essaouira. It had taken us over 24 hours to get there. We left Vancouver in a snowstorm, white-knuckled through a layover in Montreal, and landed in Casablanca in darkness at 7 a.m.—exhausted but determined.
Instead of sleep, we wandered. We traced the marble courtyards of the Hassan II Mosque, blinked in the sunrise, and caught a final flight south to Agadir. There, we were scooped up, still half-asleep, and driven along the coast to where the ride would begin.
Salt in the air. Hooves in the sand. Morocco, finally underfoot.
