Magic of the south

Morning departure at 8.30am from your hotel in Ouarzazate to M’hamid and the dunes of Erg Lihoudi passing by Agdez, where the Dra’a valley starts, with a short stop for a coffee break. Later, we drive off-road along the Dra’a valley’s ancient caravan route as far as Zagora for lunch. In the afternoon the route continues to M’hamid which marks the end of the paved road and the beginning of the Sahara desert. Here an hour camel ride leads to the highest dune to enjoy an unforgettable sunset and to spend the beauty of the night in a comfortable desert camp close to the dunes.

After breakfast, the return to the village of M’hamid is on camel back to have lunch. In the afternoon, the 4×4 will take us to the Erg Chegaga with 66km of off-road driving. This route passes different features of the desert; ‘erg’, ‘hammada’, oases. The sunset from the top of Erg Chegaga is spectacular (300m) and afterwards there is dinner and the night in a comfortable desert camp at the foot of Erg Chegaga.

If you wake up early enough, you can watch the spectacle of the sunrise. After breakfast, the road takes us from Erg Chegaga to the kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou. We drive another 100 km across the sahara over the stony desert, “reg” and “hammada” and across the now dried up Lake Iriqui. In the middle of this lake, you are likely to experience a mirage but we can assure you that this “water” does not really exist. Here you can search for fossils, some lying around but most fixed firmly into the rock. At the edge of the sahara desert at Foum Zguid, we stop for lunch. In the afternoon, the drive back to the kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou is along paved roads via Taznakht, famous for its Berber carpets and rugs. We arrive in the course of the afternoon at the kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou, the oldest and most well-known of Morocco’s Kasbahs. In 1987 this Kasbah became one of the several UNESCO World Heritage sites in Morocco. We spend the night in a riad.

Morning departure from the kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou to the Dades gorge passing by the oasis of Skoura where we stop to visit the kasbah of Amridil. The main road passes through the valley of the roses and the road of a thousand kasbahs. We reach the Dades gorge by the lunch time. In the afternoon, we walk through the gorges themselves and along the Dades valley. We return to Ouarzazate by the end of the afternoon.