5 Day Tour from Casablanca to Marrakech

Your driver picks you up from your Casablanca accommodation at 8:00 AM. The drive north crosses the Atlantic plain through Meknes before the road begins climbing into the Rif Mountains. The landscape shifts from open farmland to forested ridges as we gain altitude. The air cools noticeably and the road narrows.

We arrive in Chefchaouen in the early afternoon. The blue medina sits in a valley against the mountain face and the colour of the walls is visible from the road as we descend. The main square, Place Uta el-Hammam, has a restored kasbah on one side and a row of cafe terraces on the other. The day-trip groups from Fes leave in the late afternoon and the medina is considerably quieter after they go. That is when Chefchaouen shows its best side. The streets are genuinely blue, the tiled steps and painted walls running in every direction. If you want the Spanish Mosque hike above the town, the walk takes about 40 minutes each way on a rocky path and gives the best elevated view of the city against the Rif backdrop. The light from the west in the late afternoon is useful for that climb.

After breakfast we leave Chefchaouen and descend through the Rif Mountains toward the Saiss plateau. The drive from Chefchaouen to Fes takes around three and a half hours. We arrive in the early afternoon, check in to the riad, and meet your licensed local guide for the afternoon medina tour.

The guide meets you at your riad. Fes el-Bali is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most intact medieval urban environment in the Arab world. Without a guide, the tanneries are invisible from street level and the Bou Inania Madrasa is behind a door that looks like every other door on the alley. The afternoon tour covers the Bou Inania Madrasa and its carved cedarwood and zellige tilework, the Chouara tanneries from the correct viewing terrace where leather has been processed in the same open stone vats for over 1,000 years, and Nejjarine square with its ornate cedar-framed fountain. The tour takes two to three hours and ends at your riad. The evening in Fes is yours.

After breakfast your driver picks you up early. Day 3 is the longest drive of the tour and the window to reach the desert before the sunset camel trek depends on leaving on time. The road south from Fes crosses the Saiss plateau before climbing into the Middle Atlas.

Ifrane is our first stop, the French protectorate-era town whose tiled rooftops, clean streets, and stone lion at the main square look more like a Swiss village than a Moroccan city. We continue into the cedar forest above Azrou, where Barbary macaques move freely through the trees and around any stopped vehicle. These are entirely wild animals. We allow 20 to 30 minutes here before continuing south.

Midelt is the lunch stop, a market town between the two Atlas ranges with honest food and no tourist pricing. After Midelt the road enters the Ziz Valley, where the road rises above the valley floor and the date palm oasis stretches south for as far as you can see, flanked by old ksour and red-clay cliffs. We stop for photographs before the final push through Erfoud and into Merzouga.

We arrive at the camp in the late afternoon in time for the sunset camel trek. The ride into the Erg Chebbi dunes takes about an hour each way at the pace the camels set, the sky turning orange and the sand still warm. Dinner under an open sky, Gnawa music around the fire, overnight in a private tent with en-suite bathroom.

The light outside the tent changes before sunrise. Step outside and find a spot near the camp to watch the sky above the Erg Chebbi dunes turn from dark to gold. The sand is still cold and the shadows run long and sharp. Most people who do this tour count this as the best twenty minutes of the five days. Breakfast at the camp before we load the vehicle and head west.

Our first destination is Todra Gorge, about two hours from Merzouga. The canyon at its tightest section is only 10 metres wide, with walls rising 300 metres on either side and the river running along the floor year-round. We walk the tightest section before the organised tour groups arrive. After two days driving through open plains and mountain ridges, the scale of the enclosed gorge takes a moment to register.

After Todra we head west toward the Dades Valley. The road approaching from the east gives the best first view of the monkey finger formations, the columns of folded limestone that jut from the canyon walls above the hotel cluster in a way that has no equivalent anywhere else on this route. We stop at the zigzag road viewpoint above the gorge, where a series of hairpin bends cut into the canyon wall give a view back down the valley and toward the Atlas behind it. We descend to the valley floor and check in to the hotel. Dinner and overnight.

After breakfast we head west along the pre-Saharan corridor. The road passes through the Rose Valley between Kelaat M’gouna and Boumaln Dades, where Damascus roses are grown for cosmetics and rose water. In April and May the roadside is planted in pink and the distilleries are running. The valley is worth the drive in any season for its terraced gardens and the old kasbah walls above the river.

We arrive in Ouarzazate around midday and stop briefly at Kasbah Taourirt, the old administrative complex of the Glaoui clan. We then continue west to Ait Ben Haddou, the UNESCO-listed ksar whose earthen towers rise above the Ounila River. Recognised as a World Heritage Site in 1987, the fortified village has appeared in Gladiator, Game of Thrones, and Babel. We give you a full 90 minutes to walk from the river crossing at the base to the granary at the summit.

After Ait Ben Haddou we begin the climb into the High Atlas. The Tizi n’Tichka Pass at 2,260 metres is the highest paved road in Morocco and the final major feature before Marrakech. The road switchbacks up through the southern mountain face before the long descent into the Marrakech plain. We arrive in the late afternoon and drop you at your riad or the nearest accessible point. Five days, two imperial cities, the Blue City, the Sahara, the gorges, and the High Atlas between them.