Three Days Across Morocco to the Sahara Desert

The alarm went off early in Marrakech, but unlike the chaos we’d experienced the previous few days, the Medina was almost calm when we stepped outside.

The streets were quiet.

The usual noise, scooters, carts and crowds had vanished for a few brief hours before the city properly woke up again. We walked through Jemaa el-Fnaa while the square sat mostly empty, just a few people moving around setting things up for the day ahead. It was strange seeing such a chaotic place feel almost peaceful.

We were heading off on a three day tour to Merzouga and the Sahara Desert.

At that point, we honestly didn’t realise how far away the desert actually was.

The tour listing never really explained the amount of driving involved. We knew there’d be some long days, but we didn’t fully understand that we were basically crossing huge sections of Morocco by road over three days.

Before the pickup, we tried finding breakfast nearby, but almost nothing was open yet. In the end, breakfast was a chocolate croissant each, an apple and a banana grabbed from a small shop on the way. It definitely wasn’t enough food for the start of such a big day.

About an hour and a half into the drive, we pulled into a roadside stop in the Atlas Mountains. It wasn’t really a breakfast stop though. We grabbed some extra snacks for the van, Kia and I had a coffee, and the kids got a hot chocolate each while everyone stretched their legs for a bit.

The plan was basically to survive on snacks until lunch.

That first stretch out of Marrakech was incredible.

The city slowly disappeared behind us as the roads climbed higher into the Atlas Mountains. Tiny villages clung to hillsides. Valleys opened up below the roads. Snow sat on distant mountain peaks while dry rocky landscapes surrounded us everywhere else.

The kids spent most of the drive glued to the windows.

No phones. No iPads. Just watching Morocco roll past outside.

There was so much to look at that the excitement of the trip carried everyone along pretty easily. Every turn looked different from the last one and none of us had really seen landscapes like it before.

Most of the first day was actually pretty quiet on the bus.

The kids mostly looked out the windows, played games with Kia and took in everything around them. Every little village, roadside stall, mountain pass or group of goats seemed to spark another conversation or another thing to point out.

The tour itself was definitely built around tourism.

Every stop felt organised around some kind of tourist attraction, souvenir shop, scarf demonstration, fossil display or restaurant stop. Even when the scenery was incredible, there was usually some sort of sales pitch attached to it somewhere nearby.

Eventually we arrived at Ait Benhaddou, and before we explored the town itself, we stopped for lunch in the newer part of town.

That’s where we got our first real shock of the trip price-wise.

The lunch stop was basically a set menu with only a few small options to choose from, and the cost was 140 dirham per meal. With roughly 10 dirham working out to about $1.50 Australian, lunch for the four of us added up pretty quickly.

Definitely far more than we’d normally spend on lunch.

The problem was there really weren’t any other options. The tour buses all seemed to funnel into the same restaurants and everyone just sort of accepted the prices because there wasn’t much choice.

A few of the younger people in our group actually tried bartering on the lunch price because they were just as surprised as we were, but there was no movement at all.

That was the price.

After lunch we headed over into Ait Benhaddou itself, and honestly, it ended up being one of the most interesting stops of the whole trip.

Instead of just wandering through it on our own, we did a guided tour with a local guide who was incredibly proud of the town and its history. Straight away he started pointing out all the movies and TV shows that had been filmed there over the years.

And there have been a lot.

Gladiator, Game of Thrones, The Mummy, Prince of Persia and heaps more.

What made it even more interesting was hearing how involved the locals are in the filming process. The guide explained that many of the people from the town work as extras in the movies, help build film sets and props, and then dismantle them once filming is finished and move everything out to the nearby film studios around Ouarzazate.

He pointed out where the colosseum scene from Gladiator had been built and explained how they filmed it to make the town look much bigger than it really is. He also showed us areas used in Game of Thrones and other famous productions.

Apparently there’s only one film prop left standing in the town today. It was built during filming in the 1960s before Ait Benhaddou became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, so it was allowed to remain. Since the UNESCO listing, all movie props built for productions have had to be removed once filming finishes.

The old village itself was fascinating to walk through.

Tiny alleyways twisted between old mudbrick buildings. Small rug stalls, paintings, souvenirs and little shops were packed into almost every corner.

One thing that stood out was the local kids wandering around selling hand drawn artworks on pages torn from their school workbooks. Some were drawings of camels or the village itself, others were colourful paintings of desert scenes. Maddie and Emmett both ended up buying a few to keep.

We slowly wandered all the way up through the village toward the top of the hill where there was an incredible view looking back over the river and surrounding valley.

It honestly felt like stepping back in time.

The further south we drove after that, the more the landscape changed.

The mountains slowly disappeared behind us and everything became drier, flatter and harsher. Long stretches of rocky desert rolled on forever with small villages somehow appearing in the middle of nowhere.

The drives were huge.

That was probably the biggest thing we underestimated before booking the tour. You spend hours and hours in the van every day. At times it felt like you’d been driving forever, only to realise you were still nowhere near the next stop.

By the afternoon everyone was definitely starting to fade a bit. The excitement was still there, but the tiredness was creeping in too.

That first night we stayed in the Valley of Roses at a place called Rose Hotel.

By the time we arrived it was already getting late in the evening. Everyone piled out of the van stiff and dusty and started unloading bags ready to head into the hotel for the night.

Once inside, we were handed our room keys and told our room was on the “first floor.”

What we eventually realised was that our room number was 510, and in this case “first floor” definitely did not mean the first floor.

It meant the fifth floor.

So after sitting in a van all day, we ended up dragging our heavy bags up five flights of stairs all the way to the very top level of the hotel.

Definitely not what any of us felt like doing at that point of the trip.

Once we finally got up there though, the view was incredible.

Looking out across the valley toward the mountains, you could see a storm slowly rolling in across the landscape. The whole area looked dramatic and peaceful at the same time.

The hotel itself was actually really nice too.

There was a large outdoor pool, big sitting areas overlooking the valley and river, and surprisingly, they also served alcohol there, which isn’t something you come across very often in Morocco since most locals don’t drink because of religion.

Kia and I ended up buying a beer and a gin and tonic, although both were incredibly expensive, so one drink each was definitely enough.

Emmett was keen for a swim and jumped into the pool for a quick dip, but the water was freezing.

The days in Morocco had been warm, but the evenings cooled down quickly once the sun disappeared behind the mountains. I only made it in up to my knees while Emmett bravely swam around for a little bit before getting out.

Dinner didn’t even start until 8pm, which felt incredibly late when travelling with kids and knowing we had another early start the next morning.

By the time we finally ate and got everyone organised for bed, we were absolutely wrecked.

The next morning came around quickly.

We had to be up early, get breakfast sorted and pile back into the van not long after sunrise. Breakfast was rushed, with only about half an hour to eat before everyone had to be back downstairs ready to leave again.

I’d also woken up with a bit of a sick belly, which definitely wasn’t ideal knowing we were about to spend another full day in the van with toilet stops only every few hours.

Still, everyone loaded back in and we continued further toward the desert.

Later that morning we stopped at another town where we picked up a local guide who took us on a walking tour through a huge oasis filled with palm trees and farms hidden amongst the greenery.

It was really interesting seeing how people lived within the oasis itself.

There were date palms everywhere, mulberry trees, small farms and alfalfa crops growing, which the locals harvest to feed the animals they keep within their homes and properties.

The guide himself was an interesting character.

As we walked, he spoke a lot about the history of women in Morocco and how things had changed over time, from women previously not being allowed to attend school or be involved much outside the home, through to modern life where women are far more involved in education and everyday society now.

At the same time though, there was definitely an undertone to some of the things he was saying that felt a little uncomfortable at times.

Throughout the walk, local children followed the tour group through sections of the oasis trying to sell souvenirs or ask tourists for money.

Right at the start, we bought a few small things from two boys we first came across.

But later in the tour, the guide explained something we honestly wished he’d told us earlier.

He said many kids stop going to school once they realise they can make money from tourists instead. If tourists regularly hand out money, some children start believing they don’t need an education because asking visitors for cash is easier.

Hearing that afterwards definitely changed the way we looked at the interaction.

Eventually the guide led us out toward a nearby gorge where locals go swimming, camping and escaping the heat.

He explained that parts of the river flowing through the gorge are believed by some local women to have fertility benefits, and that women wanting children sometimes come to bathe in certain areas of the water.

By this stage of the day we were absolutely starving.

We’d had breakfast around 6am and didn’t end up eating lunch until around 1:30 in the afternoon after hours of walking around towns and the oasis in the heat.

Once the guide finished, we still had another hour and a half drive before we finally stopped for lunch.

It was another buffet style setup with very similar pricing to the previous day, although this time at least a bottle of water was included instead of needing to buy drinks separately.

After lunch, it was another huge drive toward Merzouga.

By the time we arrived, everything suddenly felt rushed.

We must have been running behind schedule because as soon as we pulled in, everyone was hurried out of the van and rushed toward the camels to try and make it into the dunes before sunset.

It honestly felt like we were the last people heading out.

Because everything happened so quickly, nobody really felt prepared for the camel ride. People were scrambling to grab bags, jackets, scarves and water while handlers were already trying to get camels moving.

We rode the camels out across the desert as just our family.

By the time we reached the largest sand dune in the area, we were the last camels to arrive there before sunset.

Everyone climbed off and made their way up the massive dune where people were already sandboarding down the steep slopes.

Emmett, Maddie and I all decided to give it a go.

None of us were particularly good at it.

We all had a decent crash at some point, filling ourselves with even more sand than we already had.

From the top of the dune though, the view was incredible.

We sat there watching the sun slowly disappear behind the distant mountains while the sky lit up with deep oranges, reds and pinks across the desert.

It was one of those moments where everything goes quiet for a little while and you just take it all in.

Once the sun dropped below the horizon, we climbed back onto the camels and continued the rest of the journey through the dunes toward the desert camp where we’d be spending the night.

Dinner at the camp was buffet style again and, once again, didn’t start until around 8:30pm.

This time though, we got in early.

We arrived, ate dinner straight away and then went for showers while most other people did the opposite. Somehow we accidentally beat the rush for both the food and the showers, which ended up working out perfectly.

After dinner everyone gathered around a fire for traditional music and dancing.

The desert sky was beautiful, although it wasn’t quite the dark star filled night I’d imagined because there was a full moon lighting everything up. Instead of complete darkness, the dunes glowed under the moonlight and the whole desert felt bright even late into the night.

Still, it was an amazing atmosphere sitting out there listening to the drums echo through the dunes.

The following morning came very early.

Wake up was at 4:30am.

Breakfast at 5.

Camels at 5:30.

Riding camels through the desert in complete darkness while slowly watching the sky begin to change colour was honestly one of the most magical parts of the entire trip.

The colours became more vibrant every minute as the sun slowly crept up over the horizon. Deep blues turned into orange, pink and gold while the dunes changed colour around us depending on where the light hit them.

The contrast across the desert was incredible.

Once the camel ride finished, it was straight back into the vans and the long drive back toward Marrakech began.

It was a huge day.

We stopped several times along the way, including another buffet lunch stop, before finally arriving back into Marrakech around 8pm that night.

By the third day, everyone on the bus had loosened up a bit more.

That’s when Maddie and Emmett started chatting with some of the younger travellers on the tour. They gave them their entire life story, talked about Australia, travel and school, and at one point Emmett proudly told them exactly how much money he had in his bank account.

The boy is definitely an oversharer.

The drive back was long, but honestly, the kids were amazing the whole trip and the van itself was actually really comfortable.

Looking back on it now, the whole journey was an incredible experience for our family.

It was exhausting, dusty, overstimulating and at times uncomfortable, but it also gave us the chance to see huge parts of Morocco we never would’ve experienced otherwise.

And more than anything, I’m just extremely grateful we were able to do it together as a family.