rec.travel Morocco FAQ

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  1. Question: Any recommended organized trips?

    • Susan Davis has many personal recommendations for guides (and reliable merchants) garnered over 30 years travel in Morocco.
    • Sahara Holidays is run by a Berber, his American wife and a family full of brothers. They offer caravan tours and have accomodation at Merzouga
    • Olive Branch Tours of Casablanca are Morocco's oldest agency (since 1958), and offer city tours, golf tours and cruises.
    • Butterfield and Robinson of Toronto, Canada arranges biking and hiking tours worldwide - their Morocco tours come recommended by Anne Abbott.
    • Discover Adventure specialize in led group Mountain Biking
    • Kitty Morse runs annual culinary tours of Morocco
    • Oussaden Tours are Moroccan family owned and have offices in New York and Fez, offer a range of sporting and cultural tours, and specialize in Jewish Heritage tours - although there are few Jews left now, Morocco does have a long and rich Jewish history. Oussaden are at 1-800-206-5049 (US).
    • Heritage Tours offer specialized tours, and have a well illustrated web site.
    • InterGolf offer a variety of custom flight & hotel packages for golfing in Morocco.
    • Alizes is a local Moroccan travel agency and one of the first to have its own web page.
    • TravelNow will make personal travel arrangements for groups of 20 or over
    • List of Moroccan hotels, courtesy of www.hotelguide.com.
    • Discovery Travel in England run school trips, trekking, mountain biking and bird-watching holidays and Duke of Edinburgh Award courses for young people.
    • Mildred Green organizes ski mountaineering for vegetarians in the Atlas mountains.
    • Rosemary Sheel recommended Ali Mouni, who arranges trips for parties of 1 to 6 people across the Middle Atlas and Sahara. However, several other tourists have recently reported bad experiences with Ali; their common complaints are worth note, since you should be on the alert for other agents who may behave this way out of incompetence or greed:
      • Supplying a driver with no English, and little experience of the big cities
      • Providing a vehicle of insufficient size or reliability
      • Leaving tourists on their own without warning to find their on accomodation
      • Attempting to increase the previously agreed price during the trip
      • Give misleading and impractical journey times
      • Leave tourists stranded for a day or two
    • Allen Banick tried the Enigma du Sud trip run by a French company Nouvelles Frontieres with his 13yr old son, a Land Rover tour with 4 nights camping and 3 nights in 4-star hotels. The tour covered some out-of the-way villages in the Atlas, plus the regular spots: Marrakesh, Merzouga and Todra Gorge. Overall it sounds good, but with caveats:
      • the campsite used at Ouarzazate is next to the city and its noise and hardly the desert experience
      • his tour had one Land Rover with three tourists in it, but potentially there can be 3 LRs with 6 each inside (plus guides) in the caravan,
      • some of the villages were blocked by either mudslides or tourbus congestion.

      Highlights were: Skoura, Bou Thrarar and Tansikht - isolated and (so far) unspoiled villages.

    • There's a large selection of other tours available from Dragoman, Exodus, Africa Overland and others. Be prepared for two things:

      • condescending backpackers, to whom people traveliing in Mercedes 4WDs with couriers and itineraries are a lesser species, perhaps the missing link with Beachbumma Agadira.
      • unpleasant co-adventurers: there is a type of tourist who does not wish to see Africa, but to have seen Africa, the experience of the trip being merely a tedious formality in order to collect brag-points and photographs for those back home - those who have been unfortunate to spend a few weeks with such virtual tourists have reported it an excruciatingly frustating and irritating experience. However, it is practically unheard of for such sad human beings to buy a Rough Guide, stuff a ruck-sack, take some buses or even hire a Renault 4 - this being the guarantee of avoiding them.

Glossary
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soc.culture.berber

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Images of Couscous

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Music Review

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maghreb.net

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Moroccan Dictionary

Berber Original inhabitants of Maghreb. Never quite conquered by the Romans, and neither by Arabs or Islam. Most Moroccans are Berber by birth, many of the festivals and more colourful aspects of Morocco are Berber in origin, and Berber clothing (much less restrictive for woman than orthodox Muslim), dialects, holy men (remnants of pre-Islamic cults), shrines, rugs and jewellry are common throughout the country. Individual Berber tribes have their own distinct identity, language and designs.
Camion French for lorry. Provide the main, albeit erratic, transport infrastructure for the Atlas villages.
Couscous Pre-cooked cracked grain and staple food. Frequently accompanied in an invitation to lunch by gratuitous quacking motion of the hand.
Djellaba Traditional North African robe.
Erg Sandy desert in general, and a dune in particular.
Gnaoua Traditional and ritual music, accompanied by ecstatic dance, one of the traditional music brotherhoods.
Hammada Stony desert. Most of the Moroccan Sahara is composed of such.
Hammam Public steam baths
Jajouka A village in the Jibala hills near Tangiers, site of an annual moussem believed by some to be a continuation of the ancient Roman fertility rites of Lupercalia, and location of the musical Ecstatic Brotherhood.
Jilala Religious music, with Sufi origins, played on ceremonial and ritual occasions. Dancers, entering a trance, are able to slash themselves with daggers or touch glowing coals without pain or injury.
Kif Cannabis, grown in the Rif mountains, to the east of Tangier.
Maghreb Literally, the west. The Arab term for the north-west African states, the furthest western edge of the Arab world.
Medina The old non-European part of a city. Equivalent to a 'cantonment' in an English colonial city.
Medersa Old student buildings associated with large mosques. Usually built in the old Roman style around a pool-filled atrium with elaborately carved wood.
Moussem Berber festival, typically in honour of a local holy man (although it's believed that one of the "local" holy men is the Jewish John the Baptist). Stamp of hooves, crack of rifles, auto-winds of a thousand cameras...
Rugbuyer You!
Souk Market for specific produce in the medina.
Tajine Dome shaped terracotta cooking pot which lends its name to the classic North African dish. The ubquity of tajine cookery is responsible for the local song and traveller's saying 'tajine, tajine, tajine, tajine, tajine'
Ville Nouvelle The separate French or Spanish town built near or adjacent to the medina.
Words Not Defined Here
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Copyright (c)1992-2001 Jeffrey R Burrows (morocco@rhizomatics.co.uk)