Morocco 2022 Overview

Morocco is one of the most interesting countries I have visited. We fell in love with the people, especially those in our riads, both workers and owners. The landscape is so diverse, we drove through desert, oases, and farm land, it was beautiful.

We were on our way to the Sahara to spend the night and we saw camels walking around out in the desert.

This picture is taken in Skoura which is an oasis and you can tell by the vegetation.

One of the many villages we drove through, the mud houses disappear into the mountains behind them.

Here you can see the lush farmland of Meknes where we stopped on the way to Casablanca. Meknes is known for it's Roman ruins of Volubilis, seen here in the background.

We also drove through multiple seasons in two days. When we left Marrakech, it was sunny and in the 60s, hours later as we drove through the high Atlas mountains, it was 39 degrees and you could still see snow on the mountain tops. As we continued through the middle Atlas mountains the next day it was actually snowing. Once back in Fes, the temperature was in the 60's.

One of many views of the Atlas mountains and the roads we traversed.

I highly recommend hiring a driver if you are going to travel throughout Morocco. It can be fatiguing to do a trip the way we planned ours and it is nice to know you have the same person and car picking you up and driving you each day. It is also a convenience to be able to leave your shopping bags in the van without having to drag them in and out of each riad or hotel. Our driver, Hisham, would even drive us to dinner so basically he was at our service. 

Most of the drivers have a Mercedes Sprinter van which has plenty of room and is comfortable. Hisham was a wealth of knowledge and shared the history and other information about each town we drove through. We were never bored, even on the eight hour drive from the desert to Fes.

There are roadside cafes in every small village so it is nice to be able to stop, have a coffee and use their spotless restrooms.

There are also plenty of roadside shops and shacks where you can buy rugs, fossils, argan oil, you name it, each village has something they are known for.

Trilobite fossils

There is one village where they make "Berber Nutella", as they call it for tourists but the real name for it is Amlou. Women use a primitive stone grinder for the almonds which are then combined with argan oil and honey. You can watch them make it on site and you are able to sample it but you can't take their picture. 

This is an example of the grinder they use: a primitive stone design with a wooden handle. The handle is used to turn the conical portion, grinding the almonds which are on the stone base.

There is so much to share so I am going to give each city it's own post including the desert.

I hope you enjoy reading and sharing our trip.