Christmas in Marrakech

On 20 December I left with my children, aged 25 and 16, to spend Christmas in Morocco, heading for Marrakech with the intention of spending at least one night in the desert. For this purpose I booked an excursion with "Maroc en liberte". I was very happy with the 2 riads where we slept in Marrakech;

The welcome for the night in the desert was fairly good... the only problem was with the driver who accompanied us on the excursion:

3-day, 2-night accompanied circuit

Day 1: Departure from Marrakech at 8:00 am by car. Heading for the Tizi n'Tichka pass towards Ouarzazate. Visit to the famous Kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou. Lunch and then on to Agdz, gateway to the Draa valley as far as Tamnougalt. Visit of the kasbah and palm grove. Dinner and overnight stay at a Ksar. Day 2: Draa valley, pre-Saharan oasis, Tazarine, Alnif, Merzouga. Sunset, transfer into the desert by camel. Meals and overnight stay in the Berber tent. Day 3: Return to Marrakech after sunrise.

Overall we cannot consider ourselves satisfied with the excursion.

Having said that we were aware of the relationship between the distance to be covered and the brevity of the excursion, we list below some of the main reasons that left us with a bad opinion of the organisation.

The driver, after introducing himself, limited himself to giving telegraphic information about the places we were passing through.

The same driver, as the first thing, as soon as we got into the car, said he was "only the driver", an expression that already hinted at the long and awkward silences of the car journey.

We expected the atmosphere to be friendlier, whereas the driver's aim was clearly to reach the set places as quickly as possible. Again as regards the driver, every attempt at conversation we made proved fruitless since he was unable to understand sentences, even very simple ones, in English. None of the people who took part in the excursion speaks good French, but we had not worried since in the excursion offer the driver had been described as speaking English and French.

All of this contributed to increasing the awkwardness of not being able to communicate and of making awkward attempts at gestural communication necessary to express needs such as: "I need to go to the toilet".

In addition to the unfriendly atmosphere that had built up in the jeep, many of the places indicated on the route were passed through without even getting out of the car.

Sometimes the driver remembered to tell us that we were passing through a town indicated on the route and pronounced its name. In a few rare cases he decided on his own to stop, urging us to get out and take a photo, but leaving the engine running, hinting that we barely had time to take the shot and had to get back in the car.

If for some reason I lingered getting back into the car for more than 2 or 3 minutes he would start honking the horn. A rather annoying behaviour. Let us point out that the walk in the palm grove was not carried out.

As for the desert excursion, although that too was rushed, once we reached the camp we paradoxically had a warmer welcome than in the car with our driver Mohammed.

On the way back from the desert, however (departure at 6am), at the hotel our driver Mohammed was waiting for us and hastened to tell us that we had fifteen or at most twenty minutes to take a shower and set off again. Note that we were 3 people, only one of them male, so clearly it was not possible for each of us to take a shower, even wanting to be very quick. On top of all this, as soon as we got back to the hotel the electricity mysteriously went out, almost as if to urge us to be quicker and not dry our hair. We only managed to shower two of us by candlelight and without the possibility of drying our hair.

On arrival in Marrakech, after making us get out of the car, we gave the driver money in euros (40€) that he had advanced us in dirhams (300Dh). Instead of giving us 100Dh in change (corresponding to about 10€) he got into the car and drove off keeping the extra money and, much more annoyingly, without saying goodbye.