7 Day Tour from Casablanca to Marrakech

Your driver picks you up from your Casablanca accommodation or airport at 8:00 AM. If time allows before we leave the city, a stop at the Hassan II Mosque is possible. The mosque sits on a promontory over the Atlantic and the exterior is one of the most striking pieces of architecture in Morocco. The guided interior tour takes about one hour and is available if your departure time permits. We will confirm this stop when we plan your Day 1 timing.

We drive north from Casablanca along the Atlantic coast to Rabat, Morocco’s capital city. Rabat is the most undervisited capital in North Africa. It is also the cleanest, the most orderly, and the most relaxed. The afternoon covers three sites in sequence. The Hassan Tower is the unfinished 12th-century minaret that rises from an open plaza beside the columns of what would have been the largest mosque in the medieval world. The project was abandoned when the sultan who commissioned it died, and the plaza was left exactly as it was. Directly opposite, the Mausoleum of Mohammed V holds the tombs of Morocco’s late king and his two sons, its interior decorated with some of the finest contemporary Moroccan craftsmanship in the country. The Kasbah des Oudayas sits at the headland where the Bou Regreg river meets the Atlantic. Its whitewashed walls and blue-painted doors look back toward Chefchaouen in palette and toward the sea in orientation. We walk the kasbah and the Andalusian gardens inside before continuing to the hotel.

After breakfast we leave Rabat heading northeast. The drive to Chefchaouen covers the coastal plain before the road climbs into the Rif Mountains, where the landscape shifts from open farmland to cedar and pine forest. The air cools as we gain altitude and the valley where Chefchaouen sits becomes visible from the road as we descend.

We arrive in the early to mid afternoon. The blue medina is exactly what photographs suggest and entirely different from what photographs prepare you for. The colour runs everywhere: tiled steps, painted walls, flower pots in doorways, and the mountain face rising immediately behind the town. Most day-trip visitors from Fes leave in the late afternoon. The medina after that is quieter, more personal, and more interesting to walk. The main square, Place Uta el-Hammam, has a restored kasbah on one side and cafe terraces on the other. The Spanish Mosque hike above the town takes 30 to 40 minutes each way and gives the best elevated view of the city against the Rif backdrop. A good option in the late afternoon before the light goes.

After breakfast we descend from Chefchaouen through the Rif Mountains toward the Saiss plateau. The drive southwest takes about two hours before we turn south toward the Zerhoun foothills and Volubilis.

Volubilis is the most significant Roman site in Morocco and one of the best-preserved in all of North Africa. The settlement was a provincial Roman capital from the 1st century AD and remained occupied long after Roman withdrawal. The site sits in open farmland with no modern development around it, and the scale only becomes apparent once you are inside. The Triumphal Arch is the most photographed structure. The in-situ mosaic floors in the residential district are the reason to come. Detailed mythological narrative scenes, preserved at ground level in rooms you walk into directly. We allow 90 minutes at Volubilis. It takes at least that to cover the Triumphal Arch, the Basilica, the Capitol, and the mosaic houses properly.

We continue east to Meknes for a brief stop at Bab Mansour, the ornate 18th-century ceremonial gate at the edge of the medina commissioned by Sultan Moulay Ismail as part of his project to build a city to rival Versailles. Then on to Fes, arriving in the afternoon and checking in to your riad. Tomorrow is the full guided day in the medina. The evening is yours.

A full day in Fes el-Bali with a licensed local guide. The medina is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most intact medieval cities in the world. A licensed guide is not optional here. The 9,000 streets of Fes el-Bali follow no logical pattern. The tanneries are not visible from street level. The Bou Inania Madrasa is behind a door that looks like every other door on the alley. Without a guide who works this city daily, you navigate by luck rather than by knowledge.

Your guide meets you at the riad after breakfast. The morning covers the Bou Inania Madrasa, whose carved cedarwood panels and zellige tilework represent the finest Marinid-era craftwork in Fes, and the Chouara tanneries, where leather has been processed in the same open stone vats using the same plant-based dyes for over 1,000 years. The view from the terraces surrounding the tanneries is one of the most recognisable sights in Morocco. The afternoon continues through the spice and copper souks, Nejjarine square with its cedar-framed fountain, and the Andalusian quarter across the river. The guided tour ends around 4:00 PM. Two nights in Fes means the evening is entirely at your own pace.

After breakfast your driver picks you up early. Day 5 is the longest drive of the tour and an early departure from Fes is essential to reach the desert before the sunset camel trek. The road south from Fes crosses the Saiss plateau before climbing into the Middle Atlas.

Ifrane is the first stop, the French protectorate-era town whose tiled-roof chalets and stone lion look more like a Swiss mountain village than any city you have been in on this tour so far. We continue into the cedar forest above Azrou, where Barbary macaques move freely through the trees and around stopped vehicles. Entirely wild, not managed. We allow 20 to 30 minutes before pressing south.

We stop in Midelt for lunch, a market town between the two Atlas ranges with honest local 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 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. Dinner at the camp 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 at this hour. 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 the open desert of yesterday, the scale of the enclosed gorge is striking.

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. These geological formations are specific to this section of the upper gorge and have no equivalent anywhere 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 at Kasbah Taourirt, the former administrative centre of the Glaoui clan and one of the most extensive earthen palace complexes in southern Morocco. 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, Babel, and dozens of other productions. 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. Seven days, the Atlantic capital, the Blue City, the Roman ruins, Fes, the Sahara, the gorges, and the High Atlas.