Lonely Planet Morocco Read online

  4Sleeping

  oLa Dune BlancheCAMPGROUND€€

  (%0667 96 64 64; www.bivouac-laduneblanche-zagora.com; N 29°56'05.53, W 005°41'28.13; per person incl half-/full board Dh370/450)

  La Dune Blanche offers a great alternative to staying in M'Hamid and gets you into the desert fast. Surrounded by dunes, 22km south of Tagounite, accommodation is in beautiful pisé cottages dressed with fabric inside to mimic the feel of a tent.

  Each 'tent' has a different colour and is furnished with comfortable beds dressed in natural woollen blankets, carpets and cut-metal lanterns, which cast swirling patterns on the walls. From here, any number of excursions are possible. Given the location, it is necessary to book in advance. Salah will meet you at the gas station at Tagounite with a 4WD to take you the remainder of the way.

  M’Hamid المحاميد

  Pop 3000

  Once it was a lonesome oasis, but these days M’Hamid is a wallflower no more. Border tensions between Algeria (which lies just 40km south), Morocco and the Polisario had isolated this caravan stop until the 1990s, when accords allowed M’Hamid to start hosting visitors again. From here, it doesn’t take long to reach the dunes – some nuzzle right up against guesthouses on the western side of town – but to be enveloped by large dunes, you’ll have to head out across the reg (hard-packed rocky desert) by dromedary or 4WD.

  1Sights

  M’Hamid encompasses two towns and five different ethnic groups: the Harratine, Berber, Chorfa, Beni M’Hamid and the fabled nomadic ‘Blue Men’. M’Hamid Jdid, the prematurely aged ‘new’ town, has a mosque, roadside cafe-restaurants, small budget hotels and a Monday souq (h6am-noon Mon). There’s a frontier-town feel here, with tough guys in shesh (turban) and sunglasses hanging around dusty cafes, swapping stories.

  The old kasbah sits in the palmeraie, 3km away across the Oued Drâa. Another worthwhile stop is the Ksar Ouled Driss, 5km before M'Hamid, which includes a small ethnographic museum ( GOOGLE MAP ; Dh20; hhours vary) displaying traditional household objects in a lovely mudbrick courtyard.

  oErg ChigagaDUNES

  The star attraction is the misnamed Erg Chigaga, not a single dune (erg) but an awesome stretch of golden sand sea some 56km southwest of M'Hamid. It is the largest sand sea in Morocco, snaking along the horizon for 40km and bordered to the north and south by mountain ridges. The best way to reach them is in classic movie style: by camel, which takes five days or a week (from Dh500 to Dh600 per day) round-trip.

  To reach the area in just a few hours, a 4WD costs from Dh1000 to Dh1300 per day with insurance, plus another Dh350 to Dh500 for the camp.

  This sea of golden crescents, which peak at 300m, hides small, semipermanent camps in its troughs. As a result the desert experience here is quiet and enveloping, offering spectacular night skies illuminated by the enormous arc of the Milky Way.

  Erg EzaharDUNES

  This tall 'screaming' dune set amid a sea of smaller dunes wails eerily when the wind kicks up. Located 65km southwest of M'Hamid, it takes three days to reach it by camel, passing an old marabout and the flat plain of Bousnaïna where artefacts from a long disappeared village are sometimes turned up. There are no fixed camps here.

  El MesouiriaDUNES

  Located just 8km northwest of M'Hamid, El Mesouiria is another possibility for an easy overnight camel trek. Dunes range between 60m and 80m in height and are characterised by their white sand and a smattering of tamarisk trees.

  Erg EsmarDUNES

  Located close to Erg Ezahar, this collection of smaller dunes, rising to just 80m, are well off the main radar with no permanent camps. With its mixture of red and white dunes, it's particularly photogenic at sunset.

  Erg LehoudiDUNES

  (Dunes of the Jews)

  The most easily accessible dunes to M'Hamid are the 100m-high Erg Lihoudi, located 8km northeast of M'Hamid. Characterised by their white river sand, due to their proximity to the Drâa, they are frequented by a higher number of day-trippers and some of the semipermanent camps are in need of attention.

  2Activities

  Many overnight camel treks from M’Hamid head to Erg Lehoudi or the smaller dunes of El Mesouiria, 8km from M'Hamid. You can arrive there by piste, off the main road 18km before M’Hamid, but a guide is advisable. The highlight is a camel trek to Erg Chigaga. Other nearby desert destinations include Erg Ezahar and the Iriki oasis mirage. And if you get the hang of camel-riding, you might consider an epic 12-day camel trip to Foum Zguid.

  BOOKING ERG CHIGAGA EXCURSIONS: TOP TIPS

  Book ahead Given the considerable logistics of desert travel (and the fact that top guides are often booked in advance through Marrakesh agencies), it's always best to book ahead. It also gives you time to nail down the details of your camp and itinerary.

  First time? Keep it short As any Sufi mystic will attest, being alone with your thoughts in the desert can be an illuminating, uplifting experience – but those not accustomed to such profound isolation may get bored quickly.

  Camel riding or camel trekking Be aware that not all camels are for riding. In fact, most dromedaries are used for transporting luggage and food. If you want to ride your camel, you need to specify that at the outset and it may cost more if additional animals are needed.

  Before you commit to a longer trip, get names The guide (and the guide's language ability) can make or break your experience. Ask for the name of the guide with whom you’ll be travelling, do an internet search for reviews, and solicit feedback.

  TTours

  Treks on foot, by camel or 4WD to Erg Chigaga can be arranged in Marrakesh, Zagora or M’Hamid. Sales ploys come with the territory, so don’t be reeled in by faux guide scare tactics. Prices are fairly standard at around Dh350 per person per day for an overnight camel treks and from Dh500 to Dh600 per day for a camel trek to Erg Chigaga. Also bear in mind that many desert tour operators only accept payment in cash.

  Most hotels can also arrange excursions and overnight camps in the desert.

  oSahara ServicesOUTDOORS

  (%0661 77 67 66; www.saharaservices.info; per person from €75)

  Far and away the most professional outfit operating in M'Hamid, Sahara Services offers memorable, all-inclusive desert trips via camel and 4WD, including overnights to an encampment of handsomely set Berber tents in Erg Chigaga. You'll dine well here, enjoy fireside music and watch the night sky light up with stars before falling asleep on a comfy bed surrounded by a sea of silence.

  Bivouac Sous Les ÉtoilesOUTDOORS

  (%0644 77 74 05; www.bivouacsouslesetoiles.org)

  Expert and friendly 4WD excursions and camel treks led by the personable Hassan and a team of M'Hamid locals. Operates several desert camps costing between Dh900 and Dh1600 per person.

  4Sleeping

  Auberge Kasbah Dar SaharaGUESTHOUSE€

  (%0667 85 33 17; http://darsaharatour.com; s/d/q Dh150/200/400; pW)

  A big draw for budget travellers, this small, very welcoming place has rustic rooms with shared facilities and relaxing common areas and outdoor space where you can unwind and contemplate the peace of the desert. To get there, head all the way through town and look for the sign leading up to the left.

  Auberge la PalmeraieINN€

  (%0668 72 98 51; www.aubergelapalmeraie.com; per person incl half-board Dh200)

  Located across the Oued Drâa in the shade of the palm grove is the Laghrissi brothers' budget-friendly camp. It provides simple accommodation, mixing traditional goat-hair Berber tents and modest pisé rooms with mattress beds on flat-weave carpets. Showers and toilets are basic, with the latter being of the squat variety. The brothers are both experienced guides and offer well-priced excursions.

  Turn left at the mosque as you enter M'Hamid and you'll find it just past Hamada du Drâa.

  Dar Sidi BounouGUESTHOUSE€€€

  (%0677 29 13 10; www.darsidibounou.com; s/d incl half-board Dh460/810, Berber tent per person incl half-board Dh350; pW)

  A desert
dream: dunes in the backyard, sand hammams, Saharawi music jam sessions and mechoui (whole roast lamb) feasts on starry terraces. Retreat to Berber tents and mudbrick huts that sleep six to eight, sleep on the roof, or curl up between crisp cotton sheets in the main house.

  Instead of the usual sandy pool, Dar Sidi Bounou offers desert immersion experiences such as landscape-painting, cooking or belly-dancing classes. It’s 4km beyond Ouled Driss.

  Le Drom'BlancINN€€

  (%0524 84 68 52; www.ledromblanc.com; N 29°49.054, W 005°40.681; s/d Dh180/400/550, bivouac/bungalow per person Dh180/210, all incl breakfast; paW)

  Well off the beaten track down a seemingly endless bumpy piste, Le Drom'Blanc is an excellent place for families and groups. Guest rooms are available in the air-conditioned riad or in small cottages dotted around the garden. Your hostess, Maguy, is an excellent cook, and if you book ahead, she'll prepare her famous spice-infused lamb baked in a traditional clay oven in the garden.

  Erg Chigaga Luxury Desert CampCAMPGROUND€€€

  (%0656 56 33 85; www.desertcampmorocco.com; per person all-inclusive camp Dh2500)

  Set in the shadow of Erg Chigaga's highest dune is Morocco's most luxurious tented camp. Co-owned by M'Hamid native, Mohammed Boulfrifi (aka Bobo) and British ex-pat Nick Garsten, the 13 sumptuous caidal tents (25 sq metres each) are furnished with wall-to-wall carpets, handcrafted beds, snug duvets, percale cotton sheets and solar-powered lighting.

  Camel rides, guided walks, chill-out zones furnished with hammocks, board games and magical evenings filled with Gnawa ballads played with goatskin drums – the experience here is second to none. For those seeking more privacy, the camp also operates two private camps (each with only two tents) and offers the option of wild camping on treks of three days or more.

  West of Erg Chigaga

  Exiting Erg Chigaga by 4WD, head north to Ouarzazate or Marrakesh via Foum Zguid. En route through the sahel and reg, you’ll pass the Iriki 'oasis' under an imposing plateau on your right. From here, you’ll spot thirsty birds and gazelles drinking from a vast lake. But look again: ‘Lake Iriki’ is actually a salt pan shimmering in the heat haze, with deceptive silhouettes of poisonous calitropis bushes.

  Travel another 30km or so and you’ll hit the N12 tarmac road. From here the road heads south to Tata and north to Foum Zguid. Foum Zguid is a strategic military base, so you may be asked to show your passport here. Downtown is a crossroads with all the necessities: water, petrol, a public phone, restaurants and coffee. As you head north out of town, past the guardhouse, a road east leads to the town's two hotels. The road north is rough, ruined by trucks serving the nearby titanium mines, but the scenery is spectacularly barren.

  Eighty-five kilometres north of Foum Zguid is Tazenakht, a handy stop for a quick bite, coffee, petrol and, yes, carpets. The distinctive local carpets (a mix of flat-weave and thick pile) with their extraordinary zigzagging patterns and bold colour schemes of red, orange and blue, are hung all around town. You can skip the middlemen and browse fixed-price pieces inside the government-run Agence de L'Artisanat (h8am-7pm), within a walled compound on your right as you enter the town from the south.

  More carpets await discovery 26km north in the village of Anzal at Jemaite Tifawin Carpet Cooperative (Association of Light; %0642 59 29 80; Anzal; hcarpet showroom 9am-noon & 2-6pm Mon-Thu, studio open house 9am-5pm Sun). If you phone a week in advance, they'll happily organise a studio visit and show you how to create natural dyes and spin raw wool into yarn. Approaching from the south, turn left at the sign for Khouzama in the centre of Anzal.

  4Sleeping & Eating

  You'll find Foum Zguid's two hotels signposted east at the police checkpoint at the northern entrance to the town.

  Maison d’Hôtes HibaGUESTHOUSE€

  (%0528 21 64 87; www.maisondhoteshiba.com; N° 30°07.549, W°006°52.411, Foum Zguid; per person from Dh250; as)

  A rock-studded guesthouse and restaurant serving restorative meals of tajine, salad and fruit on the scenic terrace or in the air-conditioned salon. Comfy grotto-style rooms have en suites making this a welcome overnight stop after roughing it in the desert.

  Bab RimalHOTEL€€

  (%0528 21 62 78; www.maroc-desert.com/hotel; N 30°07.722, W 006°52.062, Foum Zguid; s/d incl half-board from Dh500/740; paWs)

  A complex of faux-pisé cottages centred around a large, flower-fringed pool. Standard rooms come with platform beds, zellij floor tiles and Tazenakht carpets. More luxurious suites are housed in mini villas with double-aspect windows and their own garden terraces. It's a popular lunch stop for tour groups, who relish a few hours in the pool on the long drive south or north.

  Bab SaharaMOROCCAN€

  (%0524 84 10 70; Tazenakht; mains Dh50-90; h8am-11pm; aW)

  This Peace Corps–certified hotel on Tazenakht's main drag is a popular pit stop for pizza, brochettes and bubbling tajines. It also does a mean nous-nous (half-half) coffee that would almost past muster in an Italian bar.

  8Getting There & Away

  Sitting at the crossroads between Ouarzazate and Agadir, Tazenakht is something of a transport hub, although without your own 4WD transport onward travel to Foum Zguid and Erg Chigaga is impossible from here. If you're driving yourself, fuel up in Tazenakht as the two gas stations further south don't have a reliable supply of petrol. And for those contemplating the westward drive east along the R108, don't attempt it in a 2WD vehicle as the road is particularly bad.

  Dadès Valley & The Gorges سهول داداس ؤالمضايق

  Nomad crossings, rose valleys and two-tone kasbahs: even on paper, the Dadès Valley stretches the imagination. From the daunting High Atlas to the north to the rugged Jebel Saghro range south, the valley is dotted with oases and mudbrick palaces that give the region its fairy-tale nickname – Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs. Some of the best views are only glimpsed when travelling on foot, along hidden livestock tracks between the Dadès and Todra Gorges and nomad routes across the Saghro.

  Paved roads from Tinerhir to Imilchil and the intersection of the N8 between Beni Mellal and Khenifra, and from Er-Rachidia north up the N13 to Meknès, allow travellers to connect easily with Middle Atlas itineraries.

  Skoura سكورة

  Pop 2900

  By the time caravans laden with gold and spice reached Skoura, the camels must’ve been gasping. After a two-month journey across the Sahara, blue-robed Tuareg desert traders offloaded cargo from caravans in Skoura, where Middle Atlas mountaineers packed it onto mules headed to Fez. Ouarzazate is now the region’s commercial centre 39km west, but Skoura’s historic mudbrick castles remain, and desert traders throng Monday and Thursday souqs brimming with intensely flavourful desert produce. When market days are done and palm-tree shadows stretch across the road, no one seems in a hurry to leave.

  1Sights

  Navigating the mazelike network of dirt tracks in Skoura's vast palmeraie is challenging, so invest in a guide (Dh50 per hour). Most hotels offer their own excursions.

  oPalmeraiePLANTATION

  Skoura’s defining features remain its mudbrick kasbahs and vast Unesco-protected palmeraie, earning the moniker ‘Oasis of 1000 Palms.’ Under this green canopy, a 15-mile patchwork of carefully tended garden plots are watered by an ingenious, centuries-old khettara system of locks, levers and canals. More than 100 bird species flourish here. Stay overnight in a pisé guesthouse and explore the palmeraie on foot or bicycle.

  Kasbah AmridilMEDINA

  (%0524 85 23 87; with/without guide Dh60/10; h8am-7pm)

  Morocco’s most coveted kasbah is this 17th-century wonder, which appears on Morocco’s 50-dirham note. Signposted just a few hundred metres from the main road, this living museum shows traditional kasbah life over the centuries, with hand-carved door locks, an olive-oil press, still-functioning bread ovens, and stalls where animals were once kept.

  Confusingly, there are now two separate entrances, each claiming to be the 'authentic' kasbah. In truth, the original
kasbah is on the right; the building on the left was a later addition, and is actually a riad with a garden in the middle (a design not native to the area but imported from Marrakesh).

  Skoura Cultural CentreCULTURAL CENTRE

  (%0524 85 23 92; h8.30am-noon & 3.30-5pm)

  An enterprising NGO, showcases local ingenuity at its crafts centre on the eastern edge of town. Here Skoura residents sell items made with palm fronds, sustainably harvested without harming the trees. For travellers who’ve admired Morocco’s majestic palmeraie, these sun hats, bread baskets, mats and glass-lined lanterns make meaningful mementos – and purchases support the centre’s palm preservation efforts. It’s 300m on the left after the Skoura crossroads to Toundout.

  EVERY PALM TREE DESERVES A HAND

  Walking the Skoura Oasis, feet naturally fall into rhythm with the bossa-nova sway of stately palms. But they’re not here for looks: palms have work to do in the oasis, providing dates, shade and fronds to be woven into roofing material, floor coverings and fencing.

  Palms are plentiful in this ‘Oasis of 1000 Palms’, but not one of them can be taken for granted. One concern is Bayoud disease, a fungus that passes from palm to palm. Unesco is taking steps to protect palm oases from Aït Benhaddou to Figuig, declaring the oases a biosphere reserve, and the Moroccan government is planting palms believed to be resistant to Bayoud.