Morocco Travel Guide

A week covers one substantial region properly — either Marrakech with a Sahara excursion, or the imperial north with Chefchaouen — but not both. Ten days allows a full one-way traverse from the northern cities through the desert to Marrakech, and two weeks adds a third region such as the Atlantic coast or several days walking in the High Atlas.

Spring and autumn, when the whole country works at once: comfortable cities, bearable heat in the south, open mountain routes and a pleasant coast. Summer is severe inland and suits a coastal trip; winter is excellent in the desert by day but cold at night and closes some high ground. Check your dates against Ramadan, which moves each year on the lunar calendar.

Yes — fixed prices are rare in the souks and for taxis and tours. Starting well below the asking price and negotiating from there is the norm and not considered rude, and walking away is a legitimate move that often improves the offer. Restaurants and larger stores have fixed prices.

Covering shoulders and knees is appreciated away from beaches and resort areas, for men as well as women — visitors often forget that shorts and vests stand out in an ordinary town. Beach towns and the tourist districts of the big cities are considerably more relaxed. Most mosques are closed to non-Muslims, with a few well-known exceptions set up for visitors.

It is one of Africa's safer destinations for visitors, and violent crime against travellers is rare. The realistic problems are opportunistic theft in crowded medinas and a high volume of persistent selling and unsolicited offers of help, which is tiring rather than threatening. A calm, brief, repeated refusal is the effective response, and smaller towns are noticeably gentler than the big tourist cities.

French is the de facto language of business, administration and tourism and is more useful than English outside the main tourist areas, where English thins out quickly. Arabic in its Moroccan form, Darija, and Amazigh (Tamazight) are the languages of the country, and Spanish is widely heard in the north. A small amount of French goes a long way here.