Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Morocco road trip 2018 (report and video)

Hello everybody!

In November me and my wife made a road trip around Morocco. We flight from Venice to Fez where our adventure starts. In Fez we stay two days. This old city have a really nice and interesting medina. There you can see things that you can’t see them in Europe, The local people makes wonderful things with their hands. The medina is a labyrinth full of narrow streets where you must be careful to not lose yourself. Around old medina is an old city wall. We also go to a hill just around the wall where are the ruins of old castle. There the local people dry skins of animals for the tennery where they coloured them. This is a great spot to watch a sunset in Fez.

We continue our trip to the Erg Chebbi desert in Merzouga. Because the distance from Fez to Merzouga is very long we decide to make a few stops in our way. We visit Ifrane National Park where we walk in a forest full of magnificant cedar treas. There also lives a small monkeys which have big problems with theit weight because many local and foreign tourist feed them with food. Then we drive over Middle Atlas. I really enjoy to drive there. The road is wide and sorrounded with the beautiful views. We made stop over the night in a Ziz vally. Next day we continue our way to Merzouga. A few kilometers before our final destination for that day we were caught in a sand storm. Our rent car and our cameras were full of sand because we stops all the time to made some nice photos and videos there. The desert to us didn’t make any special impression. The company we choose for camel riding and driving with jeeps was great. They were very kind, helpful and they have very nice accomodations in the desert and also in a hotel they own. But for my opinion the Moroccan desert is too small for all the things the local people offers to tourists. The sunrise and also the sunset were still worth to see there.

After 2 night in the desert we decided to see the Thodra and Dades gorges. Thodra is nice to see, but full of tourists in the most famous part. I prefer Dades gorge. The road in that gorge is really made in a very interesting way. After both gorges we drive to a little city names Skoura where we stay over the night. In the morning next day our plan was to arrived to Marrakech. On the way to there we stop for visit a movie maker city Aït Benhaddou. The stop there was a right decision because Aït Benhaddou is really nice for see it. After that stop we drived across Tizi n Tickha pass in High Atlas. The mountains and the nature there is very beautifull. We spent a lot of our time for stoping all the time to take photos. In the late afternoon we arived in Marrakech. Our navigatin on smart phone all the time try to send us on shortcuts and a few time we have serious problems with driving in Marrakech old city parts. I was very happy when we parked our car. Marrakech is also very interesting city. There is a lot of tourists and a local people around in the evenings. We tried a local food there and of course fresh juice they made there in a every corner of the old city town. In Marrakech we stay only one night because we want to see also a waterfalls of Ouzoud before we goes to Atlantic coast site. The waterfalls are very beautiful. We were there early in the morning so there weren’t many tourists ad we really enjoy that. Our first stop in Atlantic coast was in the Essaouira city where we also slept in a very beautiful hotel. The old city is very interesting where you can see locals selling fishes and olives. There is also small port where are many fishermans ships.

Our next stop was in a small city named Oualidia. There is one very fine restorand called L'Araignee Gourmande. It is not the cheapest one but they have great sea food. It was really the best thing to remember from Oualidia. In afternoon we arrived to the third city in Atlantic coast named El Jadida, where we stay over night. Then we continued our way back to North. First thing we visited were Roman ruins in Volubilis. We slept very close to ruins in a white city named Moulay Idriss Zerhoun. We also visited Mediterranean sea coast. There we slept in a city named Tetouan. We also tried to visit Ceuta but there were many migrants and because of them on the road was a traffic jam and we decided to avoid that city.

For the end of our road trip around Morocco we visit a blue city called Chefchaouen. City is nice and beautiful, full of blue streets and cats. We also walk to the city wall from where is nice view to the city.

Moroccan people are friendly and helpful. We feel safe in all parts of the country. On the road there is a lot of police controls so you really need to drive under the speed limits. We made around 3300 km.

I made a short movie from our trip. You can watch it here: Morocco road trip 2018

. I hope you will like it. You can also leave any comment on youtube.

I hope I will help someone with our road trip report. Have a great and safe travel anywhere you will go.

Greetings from Slovenija, Mirko.