Coast to coast in six days, city by city
Casablanca, Rabat, Fes, the Erg Chebbi dunes, a lake in the Atlas and Marrakech, with a private vehicle and your own driver-guide for all six days. Not sure how long you need? How many days do you need in Morocco compares the routes.
Your driver meets you at Casablanca airport and takes you to the hotel. The rest of the day is yours: most people walk the Corniche along the Atlantic to shake off the flight, and dinner at Rick's Café, done up like the one in the film, is there if you want it. Nothing is compulsory on day one.
Casablanca first: the Hassan II mosque, one of the largest in the world, built out over the water, and the Corniche for a photograph of the Atlantic behind it. Then north to Rabat, the capital, for the outside of the Royal Palace, the Hassan Tower, the mausoleum of Mohammed V, and the Kasbah of the Udayas, where the lanes are painted blue and white above the river mouth. Fes in the evening, and a night in a traditional riad.
Breakfast at the riad, then a licensed local guide takes you into the Fes medina on foot — the tanneries, the workshops, the lanes too narrow for cars. After that the road climbs into the Middle Atlas. Ifrane has pitched roofs and clean streets and is called Little Switzerland; the cedar forest at Azrou just past it has wild Barbary macaques at the roadside. Lunch at Midelt, between the ranges, and then the land dries out: the Ziz Valley opens below a viewpoint, Erfoud is the fossil town, and Merzouga is where the tarmac stops. The camels take you over the Erg Chebbi dunes for the sunset, and the camp is on the far side — dinner, a fire, Berber music.
Get up for the sunrise over the dunes; it is the thing people remember. Breakfast at camp, then west along the edge of the desert to Todra Gorge, where the walls stand close together over the riverbed, and Tinghir with its palm groves below the old villages. The afternoon is Atlas scenery, and the day ends at Bin El Ouidane, a lake in the mountains with a hotel on the shore.
Breakfast by the lake, then Ouzoud: the highest waterfall in Morocco, a hundred and ten metres into a gorge full of olive trees. There are walking trails to the viewpoints, a boat that runs under the spray if you want it, and riverside restaurants for lunch. Marrakech comes in the late afternoon, and you check into a riad in the medina.
Breakfast at the riad and a free morning in Marrakech — the souks, the Koutoubia, the Jemaa el-Fna, or nothing at all. Your driver takes you to the airport when it is time.
Desert nights are cold from November to March and the cities are hot in summer, so pack for both — our Morocco desert packing list covers it, and the best time to visit Marrakech guide has the weather month by month. If six days is more than you have, the private Marrakech to Fes tour does the desert in three. Or tell us your dates on the custom tour page and we plan the route around you.
