Cycling Skoura’s Palmeraie and hiking Todra Gorge

The weather has really warmed up in Morocco and the sun beat down on us as we slogged our bags up a dirt track to our hotel in Skoura’s Palmeraie. The view from the roof terrace was wonderful with a sea of palm trees and kasbahs below us and a long line of snow capped…

The good, the bad & the ugly | Two weeks in the Sahara 

Someone at the camp made the hilarious point that they thought they’d get into some really deep and meaningful discussions while volunteering in the desert – and yet there we were laughing and joking around the campfire about shitting in the desert. Things had developed surprisingly fast at the camp and the rancid squatter toilet…

Vehicle breakdowns and camel rides in the Sahara desert

Even though we were volunteering in the Sahara, we still wanted to see the main draw card of the area which was Erg Chigaga – the largest sea of sand in Morocco. I also wanted to go on a camel ride and our camp arranged a pretty good price for an overnight trip at €70…

Life in the Sahara | Volunteering in a desert camp

The red gorges and rocky desert scenery soon vanished as our bus drove into the night and we were left in darkness. The road ended at the small Saharan town of M’hamid which lies 24km from the Algerian border. It was 9.30pm and we were greeted by a rather unwelcoming chap named Ahmed, who would…

Storm clouds, rainbows and drowning sheep | Morocco

The typical Moroccan blue skies were quickly swapped with menacing black clouds as we set off on a 4-5 hour hike through the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Hallid led us along dusty tracks for superb views of the beige mountains stained with red patterns. We followed the river valley, passing little mud-brick villages and…

Living with Berbers and hiking in the Atlas Mountains

e wanted to extend our stay in Morocco by doing some volunteering and our first port of call for this was a small Berber village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. It actually didn’t involve any work, but we found it on the volunteering website we use. Instead of working we had to pay…

Casablanca | Morocco

When I was a kid I grew up with nannies, most of them were European, but our favourite one was a Moroccan lady called Nadia who had black hair as long as Rapunzel Nadia really became part of our family but we soon grew up and she moved on to start her own family. We…

The crumbling town of El Jadida | Morocco

The little Portuguese town of El Jadida was never on our list of places to visit in Morocco but we had a couple days spare before visiting family friends in Casablanca so we picked this town. It was pretty rough on first impressions, the bus station was in a bad state and there were a…

A misty hike up Jebel El Kelaa, Morocco 

There’s a lot more to Chefchaouen than just the picture-perfect blue alleys, just look up and you’ll see the raw peaks of the Rif mountains looming above the blue medina. We definitely wanted to do some hiking while in town so we decided to head up the 1616m summit of Jebel El Kelaa in the…

Chefchaouen, Morocco’s Blue City

Somehow on our first Moroccan bus we ended up with the only seats with limited leg room. I felt like we were back in Asia, squeezing our long legs in while looking around at everyone else with a foot of space in front of them. The bus stopped in a flat, lifeless place for lunch…