01 Agafay desert quad bikes, camels and dinner shows
5 compared from €25 typically 6h 4.87 average
Forty minutes from the medina to a stone desert that photographs like the Sahara and is not one. From €25, median €31, for an afternoon of quad biking, a camel ride at sunset and dinner under a tent with music. Ratings sit near 4.9 from thousands of reviews, and the value is not close: this is the cheapest thing in the catalogue and the one most people book first. Six hours, back in the city by eleven.
02 Aït Ben Haddou and Ouarzazate over the pass
3 compared from €42 typically 10h 4.92 average
Over the Tizi n'Tichka pass at 2,260 metres to the mud-brick ksar that has stood in for half the ancient world on film. From €42, median €120, and eleven hours door to door with four of them on switchbacks. It rates near 4.95 and the reviews are unanimous that the pass itself is half the trip. Take a front seat and something for travel sickness.
03 Essaouira on the Atlantic coast
2 compared from €65 typically 12h 4.94 average
Two and a half hours west to a walled port with an eighteenth-century medina, a working fishing harbour and wind that never stops. From €65, twelve hours, and the trips here are private rather than coach-based, which is why the price sits above the mountain days. The argania groves and the goats in the trees are the stop everyone photographs on the way.
04 Casablanca and the Hassan II mosque
2 compared from €44 typically 11h 4.87 average
Three hours each way on the motorway for the only mosque in Morocco non-Muslims can enter, built out over the Atlantic with a retractable roof and a minaret of 210 metres. From €44. Eleven hours, and the reviews are consistent: the mosque justifies it and the rest of the city does not. Check the visiting hours for your date, because the guided entry runs on a fixed schedule.
05 The Atlas Mountains and the Berber valleys
13 compared from €25 typically 7h 4.96 average
Half the catalogue and the highest-rated day out of Marrakech: the five valleys, a Berber village, a tagine lunch on a terrace above a river and usually a camel ride at the roadside. From €25 all-inclusive, median €79. Seven to eight hours. The Ourika valley half day at €35 is the shortest version and the waterfall walk at the top of it is a real hour of climbing, not a stroll.
