Two deserts, four imperial cities, one trip.
Which desert night is worth the drive. What a hammam should really cost. Whether Ouzoud beats the Ourika valley in August. Every tour in Morocco worth a day of your week, taken apart one at a time.
The Sahara, the Atlas and the souks.
A dune camp at Erg Chebbi. A waterfall and a boat at Ouzoud. Dinner on the stones at Agafay. A morning lost in the Fez medina. The handful of days most Morocco trips are built around, and the best way to book each one.
Agafay leads. Ouzoud is second. Then the Sahara.
Every review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country — and what each one is actually like on the day.
1
Agafay Desert Sunset, Camel Ride, and Dinner Show
Camel ride at Agafay Desert sunset from Marrakech, argan oil tea stop, authentic dinner, Berber music, and a fire show.
From · $20
Read our review →
2
Ouzoud Waterfalls Guided Hike and Boat Trip
from $17
3
Agafay Desert Quad & Camel Rides with Dinner Show
from $24
4
Agafay Desert Quad Biking Tour with Dinner-Show
from $21
5
Atlas Mountains, Ourika Valley, Waterfall & Lunch
from $16
6
3-Day Merzouga and Sahara Desert Tour
from $134
7
Berber villages : Atlas Mountains Day Hike from Marrakech
from $15
8
Merzouga 3-Day Desert Safari with Food
from $122
Almost everything in Morocco leaves from Marrakech.
The Agafay camps, the Ouzoud minibuses, the Atlas trailheads and the three-day Sahara runs all pull out of the same city, most of them before seven in the morning. So does the best eating in the country, on foot, after dark.
Twenty dollars still buys a day out of Marrakech.
Every tour on the site sorted by what it costs. The waterfall buses and the stone-desert dinners sit at the bottom of the scale; the multi-day Sahara circuits and the private drivers sit at the top.
Waterfall day trips, medina walks, an hour on a camel at Agafay, steam and a scrub at the hammam.
The long ones: Merzouga and Zagora runs, dawn balloon flights, private Atlas days with lunch.
Private drivers, multi-day desert circuits and the trips that bring their own cook to the camp.
Agafay, Zagora or Merzouga: pick the one your week can afford.
All Sahara trips →
Agafay is an hour of stony hills from Marrakech. Zagora is a long day over the pass and a night in the Draa valley. Merzouga is the one with the big dunes, and it costs you three days.
Agafay: quads, camels, back the same night
Stone desert rather than sand, forty minutes out of the city. A quad or a camel at dusk, a tagine under the lamps, drums after dark, and your riad bed by midnight.
Zagora: over the Tizi n’Tichka, one night out
Up over the 2,260-metre pass, a stop at the Ait Ben Haddou ksar, then down the Draa palm groves to a camp. The dunes here are modest; the road and the kasbahs are the reason to go.
Merzouga: three days to Erg Chebbi
The dune field people picture, rising well over a hundred metres near the Algerian border. It is roughly ten hours of driving each way, broken by the Todra and Dades gorges — which is why nobody sells it as a weekend.
An hour past the souks, the road starts climbing.
Ourika for river cafés with their tables in the water. Imlil for the trailhead under Toubkal. Ouzoud for the long drop and the little boats that row you into the spray. All of them leave Marrakech early and all of them are back for dinner.
Essaouira has the wind. Taghazout has the waves.
Three hours west of Marrakech the air changes: blue boats and gulls at Essaouira, argan groves and point breaks down at Taghazout, and Paradise Valley cut into the rock behind Agadir. This is where Moroccan trips slow down.
- 1Essaouira Full-Day Tripfrom $20
- 2Paradise Valley Atlas Mountains Tourfrom $21
- 3Quad Bike Safari Desertfrom $40
Fez moves by mule. Chefchaouen moves by paintbrush.
A medina no car has ever driven through, a tannery you smell a street before you see it, and Roman columns standing in a wheat field an hour away at Volubilis. Four hours north of all that, a whole town is painted blue.
The hammam, the argan goats and the Berber house.
Tagine and mint tea have travelled. A three-room bathhouse, a tree full of goats and lunch at fifteen hundred metres have not.
The Hammam
A Moroccan hammam is a public bathhouse of three rooms, each hotter than the last. You steam, someone works you over with a coarse kessa glove and black olive soap until the old skin comes off in grey ribbons, then you rinse from a bucket. The visitor versions add argan oil, a massage table and a pot of tea; the neighbourhood ones cost a couple of dollars and are the real article.
- 1Spa Massage and Steam Hammam with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,873 reviews
- 22-Hour Traditional Moroccan Hammam Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,653 reviews
- 33H Traditional Hammam & Massage & Hotel Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 3.9 · 1,262 reviews
Argan
Argan grows almost nowhere on earth outside this corner of southwest Morocco, and the goats climb it — six or eight of them balanced in the branches, eating the fruit. The kernels are still cracked by hand at women’s co-operatives on the Essaouira and Agadir roads: one oil roasted for the kitchen, one cold-pressed and pale for skin.
- 1Traditional MRC Hammam and Massage with Argan Oil★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 1,202 reviews
- 2Traditional Moroccan Hammam, Massage & Argan Oil★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 294 reviews
- 3ATV Quad Biking and Goats On Argan Trees with Tea★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 209 reviews
The Berber House
The Atlas villages are Amazigh, not Arab, and the language changes as the road climbs. Lunch is bread baked that morning against the oven wall, a tagine that has been going three hours, and mint tea poured from a height until it foams. It is the best cheap meal in the country and the quiet reason half the Atlas day trips exist.
- 1Berber villages : Atlas Mountains Day Hike from Marrakech★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 14,007 reviews
- 2Balloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & Certificate★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 8,164 reviews
- 3Hot Air Balloon Flight with Berber Breakfast★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,832 reviews
Two Moroccan nights: the food stalls, and the fire out on the stones.
All evening tours →
Agafay Desert Quad, Camel Ride & Dinner Show
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Agafay Desert Dinner Show with Quad Bike & Camel
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Agafay Desert Package, Quad Bike, Camel Ride and Dinner Show
Read our review →Four things Morocco will not sell you on the day.
Most of this country can be arranged from your riad the night before, over a pot of tea. These cannot: they run on dawn slots, licensed guides, driving distances and a mosque timetable.
- 01Balloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & CertificateBalloons only fly at first light, the baskets are counted, and in spring and autumn the dawn slots go weeks ahead.
- 02Merzouga 3-Day Desert Safari with FoodErg Chebbi is around ten hours of road from Marrakech each way. It gets cut into the itinerary before the flights are booked, not after.
- 03Mt Toubkal Ascent Express Trek 2 Days 1 NightsNorth Africa’s highest summit goes out with a mountain guide and a bunk in the refuge below the peak. Both are arranged in advance, and the winter ascent wants crampons.
- 04Casablanca Tour with Hassan II Mosque VisitOne of the few mosques in Morocco that admits non-Muslim visitors, and only on the guided tours at set hours — the timetable closes around Friday prayers.
July in Marrakech runs to 45°C. Go up, or go indoors.
High summer in the interior is brutal by eleven in the morning, and the desert is worse. The answer is altitude or thick walls: the Ourika river cafés, the spray under Ouzoud, a tiled hammam, a cooking courtyard with the shutters pulled to.
By city — wherever you are based
Marrakech864 tours
Agadir190 tours
Fez135 tours
Casablanca80 tours
Tangier60 tours
Essaouira102 tours
Merzouga105 tours
Chefchaouen42 tours- All 11 regions →
By experience — what kind of day is it?
In at Casablanca, out of Marrakech: the shape of a first trip.
Casablanca
Rabat
Fez
Merzouga
Ouarzazate
Marrakech
EssaouiraReviewed this week in Morocco.
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Agafay Desert Sunset, Camel Ride, Dinner and Show
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Ouzoud Waterfalls Group Tour – Cascadas De Ouzoud – Ouzoud trips
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Summiting The Atlas Mountains, Day Hike & Trek From Marrakech
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