Day trips
Out in the morning. Home for dinner.
Every trip leaves from your door in Marrakech with a private driver. Go as a couple, a family or a group, and stop wherever you want to stop.
Marrakech, slowly
Palaces, gardens and souks, with someone waiting outside each one.
The Bahia Palace in the cool of the morning, the Majorelle Garden before the crowds, Le Jardin Secret in the middle of the medina, then the souks when the lamps come on. We drive the long gaps between them so your legs are saved for the lanes.
- Length
- Half or full day
Agafay, after dark
A stone desert forty minutes from the medina. Ride it at sunset, eat under the sky, stay for the fire.
The Agafay is all ochre hills and wide light, with the Atlas on the horizon. Spend the afternoon on a buggy or a camel, watch the sun go down, then dinner at a camp and a fire show that throws sparks across the walls. We drive you out and bring you home.
- Distance
- 40 km from Marrakech
- Drive
- ≈ 45 min
- Length
- Half day or evening
The Ourika Valley
Out of the heat and into the river. Lunch with your feet almost in the water.
The road follows the Ourika river up into the foothills, past Berber villages and terraced orchards. At Setti Fatma, cafés hang over the water under the willows, and a trail climbs to the waterfalls for those who want it.
- Distance
- 60 km from Marrakech
- Drive
- ≈ 1 h
- Length
- Full day
High Atlas villages
Earth houses stacked up the mountainside, mint tea, and the air an hour above the city.
We head south through Asni toward the high valleys around Imlil, where villages are built from the mountain itself. Walk as far as you like with a local guide, then tea in a family home before the drive back.
- Distance
- 65 km from Marrakech
- Drive
- ≈ 1 h 30
- Length
- Full day
The Ouzoud Falls
A hundred metres of water dropping into a red-rock gorge.
Among the tallest falls in North Africa, reached by a path down through olive groves. See them from the top, then from the pools at the bottom, where small boats take you close enough to feel the spray. Barbary macaques are usually somewhere in the trees.
- Distance
- 150 km from Marrakech
- Drive
- ≈ 2 h 45
- Length
- Full day
Aït Benhaddou & the Tichka
The great pass over the Atlas, and the earthen ksar waiting on the other side.
A long day, and a spectacular one. Over Tizi n'Tichka with stops wherever the view demands it, then up through the lanes of Aït Benhaddou to the granary at the top. Lunch facing the ksar, and back over the mountains by evening.
- Distance
- 190 km from Marrakech
- Drive
- ≈ 4 h
- Length
- Full day
Essaouira
Wind, gulls and blue boats. The Atlantic, two and a half hours west.
West through argan country to the walled port of Essaouira. Walk the Skala ramparts, eat grilled fish at the harbour, lose an hour in a medina that is far calmer than Marrakech.
- Distance
- 190 km from Marrakech
- Drive
- ≈ 2 h 45
- Length
- Full day