Storyline: Highlights of Morocco
To begin with, there was no bad! Usually we travel solo and slow, taking the time and enjoying the places we visit, with me doing the itineraries and the planning. Once in a while though, we act spontaneously.
Such was the case with Morocco. I ran into a discounted G-Adventures tour, and although their tours in general are over our budget, it was just coming up and we decided to give it a try. We called them and all our questions were answered to our satisfaction, including consideration for front seating on the minibus because of my motion sickness. The group was small enough for our comfort. We’ve only been on one other tour (with Rail South America), which also was a spontaneous decision, and we loved it.
This was a completely different tour though. Still, we loved every moment of it. We were very lucky to be part of an easy-going group of diverse ages (from 18 to 75).
We were also very lucky with our guide (what G-Adventures calls CEO) Said, and our driver Larbi. I’d say the combination these two was perfect. CEO stands for Chief Experience Officer; however, I’d change it to Chief Entertainment Officer in case of Said. He was lots of fun, making jokes, singing, dancing and drumming all the time.
We asked if he was always like this and the answer was – “No. With you guys it is fun. But if the group is uptight, too serious, with people who are never happy then it is just a job”. I understand this. We are in Africa after all. And while, in our experience Morocco’s infrastructure is well-developed, occasionally you may have a dripping shower head, low water pressure or dim lighting in some hotels.
But it is all part of the experience of getting out and learning from exposure to other parts of the world. We all loved the desert hotel with such dim lighting, but apparently it was a major complaint from other groups. And local people are so nice, accommodating, and in the case of the desert hotel, entertaining.
Remember our motto? “Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure!”
I’d say the chemistry of the group, including Said and Larbi was just right. We were 9 at the beginning, but unfortunately one had to leave for health reasons, just when we reached the desert. We were sad to see him go and missed him for the rest of the trip, but he kept in touch and we were happy that his medical issues were appropriately addressed.
Our trip started in Casablanca, where we joined this very fast-paced tour. I tried to keep notes, however pretty soon places, towns, cities and hotels began to blend in my memory. There was not enough time for my aging brain to observe and absorb a place before we had to move on to another. Many places we only stayed overnight and where we had 2 nights, we we’d usually arrive late the first afternoon or evening and run through the city’s medina the next day. Even the photos don’t help (unless I map the dates to the itinerary).
Was this Fes Medina or Marrakesh? In which hotel was this dinner? Or where were we yesterday? Don’t get me wrong though. It is a very diverse country and we covered most of its highlights in this short period of time.
From the clean and pretty city of Tangier facing Europe, just across the Straits of Gibraltar, and our first stop, to the beautiful Rif Mountains, through the ever-changing Sahara Desert, to the High Atlas Mountains and the coastal city of Essaouira to the medieval Marrakesh medina, it was all so different. We had signed up for only one of the additional activities – the Rif Valley hike from Chefchaouen and we really liked it. But glad we didn’t do all of the extras. This allowed for some free time here and there. In Fes, while some were visiting Meknes we had a few hours to walk around the area of the hotel, buy some wine of which 2 bottles ended up in our suitcases, travelled through the desert and up the mountains and made it all the way to Canada.
The tour was sold as 15 days duration, but in reality the actual tour was 13 days. We had our “get together, get to know each other and meet our guide” on the evening of day one. This was our second day in Casablanca and we had already eaten, so we missed the first dinner with the group after the meeting. But tour or not we don’t eat that late. The tour started on day 2 and ended on day 14 with a farewell dinner. Day 15 was the departure day.
Although we loved this tour and the experience, we probably won’t take another G-Adventures tour for sometime to come. We for sure would not have covered Morocco as this tour did, however it took a big portion of our small travel budget. Looking at our daily average spend, it is over double the daily average for our 2018 England and Bulgaria trip. There is a lot of hidden cost in these tours. At first it looked OK. With all the discounts we had, the tour came to $86 per person per night. Not ideal for Morocco (we thought though it was much cheaper, but reasonable given the additional costs for the tour company, tour and local guides, and driver.) Until we got there. First of all, the perception that Morocco is cheap does not hold water. Not for tourists anyway.
Although G-Adventures’ instructions indicated an average meal cost, in the places where they’d bring us for lunch/dinner a main course cost about double. For attractions and other there are prices for locals and prices for foreigners.
Breakfast excepted, most meals were not included. And breakfast was just heavy bread, sometimes heavily breaded sweets and olives. Plus honey and jams of course. Lots of them. If one was lucky at places, they could grab a very hard-boiled egg. Coffee was instant. Mint tea however was plentiful.
So, we’d end up buying coffee and other breakfast items at the first bio-break stop. Eh we added some wine from time to time, but not that often to make a huge difference in our budget. Then come tips. 10% in restaurants and cafes. Then one pays for the toilet. And then there were tips for the guides and many others. G-Adventures recommends a weekly amount per person for the CEO. This seemed a lot, at least for us, although we loved our guide. Tips for the drivers, tips for the local guides, hotels, porters, you name it. This quickly amounts to a lot more than the advertised price. I also didn’t like the idea of putting a requested amount per person in the pot at the beginning and our guide deciding on the amount we’d tip from this pot. It really was easy this way, so we didn’t have to think about it and ask our guide what is the appropriate amount every time we parted with someone.
However, on the con side this covered all the extra activities too. Again, not that it matters that much, but one can end up tipping for activities they didn’t participate in. And at the end in Marrakesh, I really didn’t like the way the local guide just rushed us through the medina with “Keep right and watch for the bikes”. I would not have given him a tip, because the way I understand it, tips are based on quality of the work, not for just showing up and going through the motions. All the other local guides, by the way, were excellent and deserved their tips. In hindsight though, all the tours I’ve heard of have such hidden costs, so one just has to take this into account when budgeting.
For us therefore, while it was a great trip and we went to places we probably would not have found in this country going it alone, the expense was much more than expected. I imagine that for those who regularly travel on this kind of tour, it would be quite reasonable. But as we normally have the time and inclination to research and book our own travels and activities, it’s steep. I could have stretched the amount of money spent in 2 weeks doing the tour to about two months in Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal. Would we go back to Morocco? In a heartbeat. And we’d revisit many of the places that were introduced to us on this trip, in addition to some new ones. To the people of Morocco: thanks!
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