Morocco in winter is the most misunderstood season of the year. Visitors arrive expecting North African warmth and find Merzouga at 4°C after dark and snow closing the Atlas passes. Others avoid winter entirely and miss the clearest light of the year and the emptiest sites. Both reactions come from the same mistake: treating Morocco...Read More
Morocco in summer is not one climate, it is two. Inland it is genuinely hot: Marrakech averages 40°C in July and Merzouga 42°C, with nights that stay above 22°C. On the Atlantic, three hours away by road, Essaouira sits at 26°C and does not move all summer. That gap of fourteen degrees is the single...Read More
Morocco in spring is the season most people are told to pick, and for once the advice holds. Between March and May the whole country is comfortable at the same time, which happens twice a year at most. Marrakech sits around 24 to 31°C in the day, the Atlas is walkable again, and the coast...Read More
Ouzoud is the highest waterfall in North Africa, and the things to do in Ouzoud are built around one thing: getting to the bottom and back up. The water drops about 110 metres in three stages into a pool you can reach on foot, and there are resident Barbary macaques in the olive trees on...Read More
Ait Ben Haddou is a fortified earthen village on a hillside above a river, UNESCO listed since 1987, and the first of the things to do in Ait Ben Haddou is to climb to the top. The ksar is a cluster of kasbahs behind a single wall, built on the old caravan route between the...Read More
Imlil is a village at 1 740 metres at the end of the road into the High Atlas, and almost all the things to do in Imlil involve walking. It sits at the foot of Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa, and it is the last place a vehicle can reach: everything above it...Read More
Ouarzazate is where the Atlas ends and the desert begins, and the best known things to do in Ouarzazate are the film studios and the kasbahs. Most visitors pass through on the way to the Sahara and see it in an afternoon, which is roughly what it deserves on a first visit. The town itself...Read More
Agafay is a stony desert thirty minutes from Marrakech, and almost all the things to do in Agafay happen in the late afternoon and evening. There are no dunes: it is a landscape of grey hills and dry riverbeds that empties completely at sunset, which is the whole appeal. It works as an evening rather...Read More
Essaouira is a walled fishing port on the Atlantic, three hours west of Marrakech, and most things to do in Essaouira fit inside a morning of walking. The medina is UNESCO listed, the harbour still works, and the wind never stops, which is what makes it bearable in August and cold in January. It is...Read More
Merzouga is a village on the edge of Erg Chebbi, and almost all the things to do in Merzouga happen on or around the dunes. The sand rises to roughly 150 metres, which is what separates it from every other desert in Morocco, and what you do there is dictated by the light: activities happen...Read More
