3 Day 2 Night Sahara Desert Tour – Day 1

The most anticipated part of my trip was to start on our 3^rd day in Morocco. Prior to departing Canada, I had already emailed my riad to ask about whether or not they could help us arrange a Sahara tour.  I had read that it is generally cheaper to book it through your riad compared to pre-booking online prior to arrival.  We ended up paying 80 euros and this included transportation, 2 nights’ accommodation, breakfast, dinner and most admissions.

We were picked up promptly at 7:30am at our riad and driven to a meeting spot where we changed vans and waited for all the other people on the tour to arrive.  We didn’t end up leaving downtown Marrakech until almost 9am.  The van we took had 20 seats including the driver’s and although it wasn’t the most comfortable ride, I was expecting a lot worse, so it was a pleasant surprise. 

It was around noon by the time we arrived at Aït Benhaddou.  We were met by a local Berber guide who took us shopping immediately. He told us that we needed a scarf for the desert and he was taking us to the cheapest place he knew of.  We all knew that this was a bit of a scam, but many people still purchased scarves, in anticipation of the possible windy desert storms.  I was prepared and had brought along a scarf since the ones they were selling here were both expensive and of cheap quality.

As we were making our way into Aït Benhaddou, our guide explained that there are 3 possible tours he could take us on – one for 20 dirham, one for 30 dirham, and one for 40 dirham.  The prices were for admission into Aït Benhaddou and the most expensive one would include a cup of mint tea as well as a more thorough visit into one of the homes of the families living there. We had to decide as a group and we chose the 30 dirham one, although some people in our group were quite vocal about wanting the 40 dirham tour. 

It wasn’t until the next day when we all sat down together at lunch that we talked about the possibility of how the admission costs were likely a scam.  We think the guide likely just collected the admission as his tip.  Everywhere else we went, the guides blatantly asked us for tips but this was the only place in which the guide never did that.  Coupled with the fact that there were no visible official entrance points for Aït Benhaddou and that we saw the guide counting all the money we gave him afterwards, it started to look quite sketchy!

The biggest problem with our tour is that we didn’t have a tour guide with us.  We only had a driver with very limited English ability, so he wasn’t able to tell us too much about the places we visited.  For example, after having lunch at Aït Benhaddou, we drove to Ouarzazate which is quite famous for being the setting of some popular Hollywood films.  However, when we arrived, the driver just told us that we would be making a 20 minute rest stop there, so we weren’t even aware we were in Ouarzazate, until we started seeing the signs.

After a few more hours of driving, we arrived at a nice looking hotel but that was where the confusion started.  We realized very quickly that of the 19 people on our tour, only a select few were staying at this hotel.  It turns out that 6 people from our tour had paid quite a bit more money to be staying at this fancy hotel.  I found out later that four of them had paid 350 euros and the other two paid just over 400 euros, but were on a 4 day 3 night tour instead of a 3 day 2 night one that everyone else was on.  The confusing part was that the driver had to try and figure out who belonged to which hotel and it took him a good 15-20 minutes before the first 6 people would check into their hotel.  After dropping them off, it was another 45-60 minutes before we got to the second hotel and again, it turned out that only four more people would get off there.  Thankfully, the last hotel (my hotel) was only another couple minutes from the second hotel.  The people staying at the second hotel had all booked online via the same website and had paid 87 euros, which the rest of us all booked the tour at our riad and paid 80 euros.

The hotel that my group got to stay at was called the Kasbah de la Vallee Hotel 2.  It was very hostel like and the décor reminded me of old hotels from the 60s and 70s.  The most memorable part of the hotel was that it had pink toilet paper!  Dinner at the hotel was harira soup and chicken couscous, followed by fruit for desert.  It was nothing spectacular but was enough to keep us filled up for the night.  The funny thing is the waiter came and asked if we wanted more chicken but after waiting for another 20 minutes or so, we all ended up leaving since he seemed to have forgotten our chicken.     

3 Day 2 Night Sahara Desert Tour – Day 2

3 Day 2 Night Sahara Desert Tour – Day 3