Well we are back with another post on the Morocco’s trip. If you are new around here, we are documenting our previous trips while we are locked in and can not travel and also working on our new project, building our overland car for the next trip. If you are interested to follow our car build series, you can start here.
And if you like to read the Moroccan series from the start, please start here. In the last post, we stayed longer than we expected in Fes and our effort to get a rental SUV to drive around Morocco didn’t get anywhere. We’ve been in Morocco over the Easter holiday and it made the last minute planning harder and sometimes impossible. After lots of researches, we decided to book a private Fes to Marrakesh tour which goes through the certain itinerary in 3 or 4 days and surprisingly we managed to find one while we were in Fes. It covered the cost of accommodation for 3 nights, SUV car and a driver for two people and it wasn’t cheap, but it was the best we could get in the timeframe that we had.
Day 1: Fes to Merzouga:
The plan was to meet our driver outside of the Fes medina blue gate early in the morning. The car arrived and a young man called Hasan jumped out of the car and opened the back door for us and took our backpacks! We soon realized that we have a driver and a guide which we didn’t ask for!! We tried to explain to him that we are not interested in typical stops and prefer to see some locals and perhaps nomads along the way and that’s the whole point of having a car and a driver.
First stop was a city in the middle Atlas mountains called Ifrane with a lion status and some European style houses. It was stablished in 1928 by French administration mainly because of its Alpine climate to remind them of home. From there we carried on to Azrou Cedar forest with lots of monkeys which is different from a local scenery everyone has in mind for Morocco. This is the biggest Cedar tree Forest in Africa. As we were driving through the middle Atlas mountains, we saw lots of European 4WD cars who were driving south, a reminder to the close proximity of Morocco to Europe and how easy it is to drive to Morocco from Europe just for Easter holidays.
Soon after we left Azrou forest we saw few nomads tents in the distance and asked Hasan if we can go for a visit. We got there and immediately invited inside for a cup of tea. After having a chat with the help of Hasan and exchanging few smiles, I bought one of the handmade pillow covers that she had ready for sale and got n the road again.
It was interesting to see that in the remote area of Atlas mountain, nomads are so used to see tourists around that even the price of their handmade items were all mentioned in euros! A gentle reminder that we are on a touristic route 😉
We stopped somewhere along the way for lunch that Hasan suggested. I guess there are all restaurants that are dealing with tourists like us, since there were quite a few other tourists around and no locals even though we were in quite a remote small township. it had a fixed tourist menu for the day with entrees, mains and simple deserts and your driver and tour guide will eat for free since they brought customers for the restaurants. It started to annoy us, feeling that we are not in control, we don’t have the local experience that we were looking for and we cannot change it. But we soon realized that we are in the middle of it already and it is too late to change anything so it’s better to enjoy the moment and experience a different style of travelling for the next two or three days ahead of us and see what Hasan planned 🙂
Before we know it, while we were enjoying the traditional Bedouin music that Mohammad, our driver was playing in the car, Golden sand dunes were appearing in the horizon and sun was setting. We were getting close to our first destination, Merzouga.
We got our hotel room on the outskirt of Merzouga which is basically a tiny tiny place on the edge of the sand dunes and went out to see the village life right before sunset.
Places like Merzouga bring mixed emotions to the surface. A small town on the edge of a desert with no infrastructure which probably no one would know about if there were no tourists. Tourists definitely brought money and work for locals to some extent but is it enough? How much tourism takes away from the locals. Is it a real desert experience to stay in a hotel or even desert camp in Erg Chebbi?
I don’t know the answers but I’m pretty sure tourism can do better that this. For example, we were staying in mid range hotel and definitely not on the higher end of the spectrum in the Merzougha and look at the size of the pool of the hotel below!!! And right on the other end of the Hotel wall, women were coming from remote areas with huge water containers to fill up them with water from few water storage facilities in the village and carry those heavy full containers back home. How on earth, cooling off in this Hotel pool can be soothing. How it can be called the real Moroccan experience?
We definitely didn’t cool off in the hotel pool but we did enjoy the great meatbll tagine that they prepared at Hotel for dinner and went to bed early.
Day 2: Erg Chebbi
The plan for the second day was staying in Erg Chebbi and take it slow. We also asked for someone local to take us to more remote areas in the desert in the hope for finding some real Bedouin nomads. Hasan arranged for a local driver to take us for a ride. It was a great peaceful day. We went for a ride on sand dunes, stopped at few remote settlements and had an amazing lunch and got back to the hotel in the afternoon to pack for the second part of the day.
One of the main activities in Erg Chebbi is night stay in the sand dunes. It created a huge business opportunities hopefully for locals and also created lots of jobs for local young men and encouraged them to stay local which is amazing. I really wished that the same thing was happening in our amazing desert towns in Iran so younger generation wouldn’t move to big cities.
It was few hours before the sunset that we met our guides and other fellow travelers at camels parking/ Hang out station. The boys were really young maybe 18-19 years old and after gathering all of us around, we started over an hour journey to our desert camp on camel back. Ad just a quick tip if you are going to do it, it definitely hurts. an hour on camel back hurts for real 😐
We got to our camp just before sunset, and after giving us our tent, they ask the group to go over the dunes to watch sunsets while they started to cook some dinner for us. These kids basically walked us all the way to the camp, look after the camels and feed them when we got there, gave us some toys to play in dunes and cooked dinner for us, served it late at night and then entertain us with some Bedouin music. amazing how fast these kids grow in these environments. Imagine how much responsibility you can give to an 18 years old in our modern society!
Day 3: Rissani, Todra gorge and Dades Valley
After waking up in the sand dunes and another hour ride on a camel back we got back to the same riad in Merzouga for breakfast and shower and got back in the car. The first stop for the day was a place called Rissani, the ancient capital of Tafilalet and still a major trading hub for the region. Its souk was lively and original and after talking to Hasan our guide, he agreed that we spend more time there and skip some of the stops for the day that weren’t much interesting.
From there, we carried on through some interesting palm groves and got to an interesting canyon called Todra gorge. Amazing canyon with Todra river still flowing and lots of cafes and restaurant within the canyon. A heaven for rock climbers. We saw few local climbers on the vertical faces of the canyon. It was also popular with locals for picnics due to its cool climate and nice scenery. From there we headed to Dades valley. An amazing lush green valley with fruit orchards and lots of small villages. What is interesting in Morocco is the number of camp sites available for foreigners travelling with campervans in prime locations with all the amenities. Of course it all makes sense after seeing numerous number of European cars on the road in the last few days that we were on one of the busiest routes in Morocco. Before checking in our hotel for the night, Hasan took us through an stunning windy road to to the top of the mountain, overlooking the Dades Valley. From there we got to an interesting hotel in the valley which was probably the best we stayed in and be prepared for our last day of the trip heading to Marrakesh the next morning.
Day 4: Road of 1000 Kasbahs, High Atlas mountains and Finally Marrakesh
Our trip from to Marrakesh was coming to an end and on the last day the plan was going through the road of 1000 kasbahs and stop on some of the famous kasbahs on our way to high Atlas mountains. The road was absolutely gorgeous with lots of places that we could stop and take a dusty narrow road and get to see the villages off the main road but we couldn’t. Apart from that even watching the old buildings, ruins of the old villages and remains of the forts that once were the main route of caravans was amazing from the main road. We stopped on one of the most famous ones called Ait Ben Haddou Kasbah which is the famous site for movies like Gladiator and TV series like Games of Thrones. It’s a world UNESCO site and has been maintained pretty well. Even being a major tourist attraction in the area, it is something that can not be missed in Morocco. The interesting part of it is the fact, that there were still some locals living in the Kasbah but the number of souvenir shops were definitely more that the local homes.
We finally got to the famous Tizi-N-Tichka pass in High Atlas mountain with crazy roads and amazing views and on the other side of the pass, we could see Marrakesh in the horizon. Just before sunset, Hasan and Mohammad dropped us on the edge of the Marrakesh Medina, from there we could walk to our riad in Marrakesh.
That was a bitter sweet experience saying goodbye to those young boys that did the amazing job of showing us around but that trip made us realized that we can not cope with tailor made trips even for 3-4 days. It feels terrible and takes our freedom and local experiences away from us. At the same time, we knew that the way that we’d like to travel won’t work with using public transportation and backpacking anymore since it won’t allow us to see as much as we want to see and above all time is the essence. allowing for few weeks in a year to see something is not deep enough and you won’t be able to even scratch the surface. especially in the countries like Morocco that tourism is huge, to experience something authentic and real, we need more time and effort to get to know it well.
We’ll get to overlanding and planning for it in the future posts but this trip was one of key ones that made us realize what we need and how we enjoy a trip.
In the next post, we’ll go through the famous Marrakesh and the hustle and bustle of this main city of Morocco. Till then take care.
