Morocco fits in a week. Getting the order right is the hard part.
Whether the Agafay night is worth it when Merzouga is nine hours away. What the Ouzoud boat actually costs. Which Sahara trip sleeps you somewhere decent. Reviews of every tour you can book in Morocco.
A desert night, a medina morning, a waterfall, and the long run south.
Four bookings a first Moroccan week is usually built around. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The first eveningAgafay Desert Sunset, Camel Ride, and Dinner ShowStony desert forty minutes out of Marrakech, a camel at sunset and dinner under lanterns. The cheapest big night of the trip.
02The medina dayBahia Palace, Saadian Tombs, Souk and Medina TourBahia Palace and the Saadian Tombs first, then a guide who gets you back out of the souks without buying a rug.
03The day tripOuzoud Waterfalls Guided Hike and Boat TripOuzoud drops a hundred metres in stages, with macaques in the olive trees and a boat that takes you under the spray.
04The long one3-Day Merzouga and Sahara Desert TourThree days to Merzouga and back. Gorges, a night on the dunes, and the only real sand sea in the country.
Morocco has three deserts, and only one of them has dunes.
Agafay is stone and hills, half an hour from Marrakech, and it does dinner and a camel by six. Zagora is a long day south for the first palms. Merzouga is the real thing, and it costs you two nights.
Marrakech first, then whichever coast or medina your week can reach.
A red city with a square that changes at dusk, a windy Atlantic port, two working medinas, a blue town in the Rif and a mosque built out over the sea. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Marrakech: gardens in the morning, the palm groves after them.
The whole Marrakech list →
The walled city is a morning job: Bahia tiles and Majorelle bamboo before the heat lands. Most of what people actually book happens outside the walls, in the palmeraie north of town and in the air above it at first light. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
A guide, or the souks on your own
The lanes are not signposted and the shortcuts are somebody’s courtyard. A local walks you through the dye souk and the tanners and gets you out again, which is most of what you are paying for.
Majorelle, Bahia and the Secret Garden
Majorelle sells timed slots and the early ones go first. Bahia is bigger, emptier and cheaper. The Secret Garden has the one shaded roof terrace in the medina worth sitting on.
Forty minutes over the Jbilat
Baskets lift from the flats north of the city just before sunrise, when the air is still. Flights are weather-called the night before, so leave a spare morning if it matters to you.
The Moroccan days out more travellers book than any other.
The full Moroccan catalogue →What the whole country converges on, and what each one earns its place with.
1
Agafay Desert Quad Biking Tour with Dinner-Show
Leave Marrakech by air-conditioned minibus for a guided quad ride in the Agafay Desert. You’ll practice first, follow your guide past dunes and nomadic camps, and stop for Atlas Mountain photos. Then enjoy tea, Moroccan salad, olives, tajine, fruit, live music, a campfire, and a fire show. Guides such as Youssef, Gâcha, and Le7ya are praised for warm, lively hosting.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Atlas Mountains, Ourika Valley, Waterfall & Lunch
from $16
3
Berber villages: Atlas Mountains Day Hike from Marrakech
from $15
4
Merzouga 3-Day Desert Safari with Food
from $122
5
Ouzoud Waterfalls Guided Trip with Boat Ride
from $16
6
3 Days Desert Tour From Marrakech To Merzouga Dunes & Camel Trek
from $115
7
Marrakech Quad Bike Experience: Desert and Palmeraie
from $14
8
Day Trip to Ouarzazate and Ait Benhaddou
from $21
The medina is the attraction, not the route to one.
Fez has the oldest working one and the tanners to prove it. Marrakech has the loudest. Both reward a morning spent on foot with somebody who knows which door is a workshop and which is a house.
An hour out of the red city the temperature drops ten degrees.
The Ourika road climbs to Setti Fatma and a chain of waterfalls you scramble between. Ouzoud is further and taller, a hundred metres in stages with a boat at the bottom. Above both, terraced villages and mule tracks toward Toubkal.
Every mountain day out →
What a Moroccan day out costs, band by band.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A surprising number of the best Moroccan days come in under the price of a hotel dinner.
Medina walks, palace tickets, quad hours, and the Agafay evening with dinner thrown in.
Full days to Ouzoud and Essaouira, hammam and massage, and the two-night runs to Zagora.
Balloon flights, private drivers, and the three-day crossings to Merzouga and Fez.
Three things you can only do on this side of the Atlas.
Deserts and old towns exist all over. A stone desert with a dinner service, a tannery unchanged since the eleventh century, and a whole town painted one shade of blue do not.
Dinner in the Agafay
The Agafay is not sand. It is pale rock and dry hills starting about thirty kilometres south of Marrakech, close enough that an entire industry of evening camps has grown on it. You arrive late afternoon, ride a camel along a ridge while the light goes, then eat under lanterns with Gnaoua drummers and the lights of the city on the horizon. Nobody would call it wilderness. It is still the cheapest way to spend a night out on a desert floor anywhere in the country.
- 1Agafay Desert Quad, Camel Ride & Dinner Show★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 10,209 reviews
- 2Atlas Mountains, 3 Valleys & Agafay Desert from Marrakech-DayTour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,903 reviews
- 3Agafay Desert Magic Sunset Dinner & Live Show★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,442 reviews
The Chouara Tannery
The pits at Chouara have been in use since the medina was young: white vats of lime and pigeon droppings to strip the hides, coloured ones of poppy, saffron, indigo and mint. Workers stand waist deep in them. The terraces above belong to the leather shops, which is why you are handed a sprig of mint at the door and nudged toward the bags on the way out. Go in the morning, when the dyers are actually working.
- 1Museum, Al Attarine Madrasa & Tannery and Medina Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,655 reviews
- 2Explore Fes: Unforgettable Guided Walking Tour of the Medina★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,339 reviews
- 3Exclusive Fez Medina Walking Tour with Private Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 392 reviews
Chefchaouen, blue from top to bottom
Founded in 1471 as a fortress against Portuguese raids, Chefchaouen spent centuries closed to outsiders and then, at some point in the last hundred years, went blue. Ask ten residents why and you will get mosquitoes, cool air, Jewish tradition and tourism in roughly equal measure. It is a two-hour drive from Tangier and a four-hour one from Fez, and it is small enough to walk out of in twenty minutes.
- 1Chefchaouen Day Trip with Local Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,287 reviews
- 2Chefchaouen Day Trip from Fez (Shared Group Tour)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,394 reviews
- 3Day Tour to the Blue Town of Chefchaouen★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,750 reviews
Four Moroccan bookings that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this country can be sorted from a riad terrace the night before. These four run on entry slots, prayer times, dawn weather calls and camps with a fixed number of beds.
- 01Shared Balloon Flight with TeaBaskets go up just after first light and the operators call the weather the evening before. Numbers are small and the good mornings sell out weeks ahead.
- 02Casablanca Tour with Hassan II Mosque VisitThis is the one mosque in Morocco non-Muslims may enter, and only on a guided visit at set times. The slots stop for prayers and do not resume for you.
- 03Majorelle & Menara Garden Tour and Carriage RideEntry is timed and capped. The early slots, the only ones before the coach parties, are the first to go.
- 043-Day Tour to Merzouga Erg Chebbi with Food & Camel TrekMerzouga is nine hours from Marrakech, so this is two nights whichever way you cut it, and the camps between the dunes hold a fixed number of tents.
In July the red city works before ten and after six.
Inland summers run past forty degrees and the medina holds it until long after dark. The answer is the same every time: be out early, spend the middle of the day under a roof or in water, and come back out at six. The coast never has the problem at all.
Essaouira and Agadir: where Morocco stops being hot.
The trade wind that makes Essaouira useless for sunbathing makes it the best beginner surf coast in the country, and keeps the old port at twenty-two degrees in August. Agadir, two hours further down, has the wider beaches, the quad tracks and the dunes behind them.
- 1Essaouira Full-Day Tripfrom $20
- 2Small Group to Essaouira & Sekkala Day Tripfrom $15
- 3Essaouira Day Tour with Optional Activitiesfrom $21
By place — red city, coast, mountains, north
By kind of day — dune, medina, valley or hammam
Marrakech, the Agafay, a valley, the coast, then south to the sand.
Marrakech
The Agafay
The Ourika
Essaouira
MerzougaReviews written in the last few days.
More freshly written Moroccan reviews →
Walking Tour in Old Medina Fez with Official Guide
Read our review →
4 Day desert trip from Fes to Marrakech and 2 night in merzouga
Read our review →
2 Days Sahara Group Tour Fez to Marrakech via Merzouga
Read our review →
Private Excursion to Volubilis Meknes and Moulay Idriss from Fez
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Full-Day Tour from Fez to Vollubulis, Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, Mèknes
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Best Tour In Fez Médina With ( Private )Tour Guide
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Full-Day Historical Tour to Meknes Volubilis and Moulay Idriss
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Private Meknes Volubilis -Mouly Idriss day trip from Fez
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Small Group: From Fez to Volubilis -Mouly Idriss and Meknes day trip
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