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4 Day Tour from Fez to Marrakech via the Desert

Tour details

Four days to cross the country from Fez to Marrakech the long way, through the desert instead of around it, without covering the same road twice.

One night in the dunes, one in the gorges and time in each stop rather than a dash between them.

Departure and return

4 Day Tour from Fez to Marrakech via the Desert

Ruta de 4 dias de Fez a Marrakech por el desierto

Gallery

Departure time

Pick-up at your riad or hotel in Fez, or at its airport. We drop you in Marrakech.

Price includes

Between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning, depending on the season.

Price excludes

Private air-conditioned vehicle
Your own driver-guide
3 nights accommodation: hotels on the route plus one night in a camp at Merzouga
Dinner and breakfast each day
Camel ride at sunset and sunrise
Fuel, tolls and parking

Complimentary

Flights and travel insurance
Lunches
Drinks
Entry fees to monuments and museums
Tips

What to expect

Bottled water throughout the journey
Berber tea on arrival at the camp
Photo stops whenever you want one

Itinerary

4 Day Tour from Fez to Marrakech via the Desert

Four days north to south without doubling back. Days one and four carry the most road; the middle two leave free afternoons.

Private tour, never shared
Flexible pace: we stop where you want
Night in the desert included

The route

4 Day Tour from Fez to Marrakech via the Desert

Day 1 Fez, Ifrane and the Ziz valley

We leave Fez in the morning and head south. Within an hour the landscape changes completely. We stop at Ifrane, the mountain town of pitched roofs and gardens the French built in the 1930s, which people here call little Switzerland.

Next is the cedar forest of Azrou, one of the last cedar woods left in the Mediterranean. We stop by the Gouraud Cedar, where troops of Barbary macaques gather, used to people and easy to watch, and take a short walk among the trees.

We cross the Middle Atlas at Midelt, in the corridor between the two ranges, apple country with old mine workings. From here the vegetation disappears and the stony plateaux begin.

The last part of the day runs down the Ziz valley, a palm grove tens of kilometres long wedged between rock walls, with a viewpoint where the river and the palms run out of sight.

Dinner and overnight in the Erfoud area.

Day 2 Rissani, Merzouga and camp in the dunes

We start the morning in Erfoud, capital of the fossil trade, where blocks of marble are cut and polished with ammonites four hundred million years old.

Then Rissani, built over the ruins of Sijilmasa, the caravan city the gold routes left from for Timbuktu. Its souk runs on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and is still a market for local people rather than visitors. We eat medfouna, the stuffed flatbread baked under hot sand.

In the afternoon we move towards Merzouga and, depending on the season, out to Dayet Srji, the seasonal lake where flamingos stop in spring, or to Khamlia, where gnawa music is played live.

As the light drops we swap the car for a camel and ride into the dunes of Erg Chebbi, which reach 150 metres. An hour and a half in caravan brings us to camp, with time to climb a dune for sunset. Berber dinner, drums by the fire and a night in a tent under the stars.

Day 3 Todra gorge and the Dades valley

Sunrise over the dunes and a camel ride back to the village. Breakfast and a shower at the hotel before we set off west.

We pass through Tinghir, a long narrow oasis of palms between bare mountains, and walk into the Todra gorges, where the walls rise 300 metres and close to about ten metres with the river running along the floor.

In the afternoon we drive up the Dades canyon, with its zigzag bends and the eroded rock people here call monkey fingers, and stop in the rose valley at Kelaat M Gouna.

Dinner and overnight in the Dades valley.

Day 4 Ouarzazate, Ait Ben Haddou and Marrakech

We take the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs west, with a stop at the Skoura palm grove and the Amridil kasbah, the one on the fifty dirham note.

On to Ouarzazate, with its Taourirt kasbah and the film studios that made the town the desert set for half of Hollywood.

Then Ait Ben Haddou, best seen in the low afternoon light. We cross the Ounila river and climb between the earthen houses to the granary at the top, the whole valley below.

We cross the High Atlas by the Tizi n Tichka pass at 2,260 metres, stopping at the viewpoints, and reach Marrakech in the evening.

Photos

4 Day Tour from Fez to Marrakech via the Desert

4 Day Tour from Fez to Marrakech via the Desert

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