4 Day Tour from Casablanca to Marrakech

Your driver picks you up from your Casablanca accommodation at 8:00 AM. The drive to Fes follows the main road northeast across the Chaouia and Saiss plains, passing through Meknes on the way. We arrive in Fes in the early afternoon, check in to your riad, and meet your licensed local guide for the afternoon medina tour.

Fes el-Bali is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most intact medieval city in the Arab world. A licensed guide is not optional here. The 9,000 streets of the medina follow no logical pattern and the significant sites are easy to miss entirely without someone who knows where they are and what they mean.

The afternoon tour covers the Bou Inania Madrasa, the finest example of Marinid-era carved cedarwood and zellige tilework in the city. From there the guide takes you to 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 surrounding terraces is one of the most recognisable sights in Morocco. We finish at Nejjarine square, with its ornate cedar-framed fountain and the surrounding woodworking souks. 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 from the riad. Day 2 is the longest drive of the tour and we leave early. The road south from Fes crosses the Saiss plateau before climbing into the Middle Atlas. Our first stop is Ifrane, the protectorate-era town with its tiled-roof chalets and stone lion that looks nothing like the Morocco you drove through yesterday. We continue into the cedar forest above Azrou, where Barbary macaques move freely through the trees and around any stopped vehicle. They are entirely wild. We allow 20 to 30 minutes here before continuing south.

We stop in Midelt for lunch, a market town in the Middle Atlas known for its apples and its straightforward food. 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 unhurried pace the camels set, the sky turning orange and the sand still warm from the day. Dinner at the camp under an open sky, Gnawa music around the fire, and overnight in a private tent with en-suite bathroom.

The light outside the tent changes before sunrise. Step outside and find a comfortable 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 are long, and most people who do this tour count this as one of the best moments of the four 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. After two days of open desert and mountain driving, the enclosed scale of the gorge is striking. We walk the tightest section before the organised tour groups arrive.

After Todra we head west toward the Dades Valley. The road approaching from the east gives the 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 looks entirely deliberate. We stop at the zigzag road viewpoint above the gorge, where the hairpin bends cut into the canyon wall give a view back down the valley and toward the Atlas behind it. One of the better photographs of the whole tour. 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 kasbah walls above the river.

We arrive in Ouarzazate around midday and make a brief stop at Kasbah Taourirt, the old administrative complex of the Glaoui clan. We then continue 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. 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. Four days, two imperial cities, the Sahara, the gorges, and the High Atlas between them.