4x4 hire in Morocco
 

Anyone have any experience of renting a decent self drive 4x4 in Morocco?

I'm looking for a large vehicle capable of taking 5 mountain bikers, bikes and camping gear to some remoter areas of the atlas (110/landcruiser/patrol etc?).

I need a 'proper' 4x4 (no Rav 4s etc...) and don't particularly care if its slow/ noisy/ old, but it has to work properly, and preferably no pick-ups.

Roof rack essential for transporting the bikes whilst moving, but able to lock them inside when parked up.

Just starting to look and finding it relatively difficult to find a self drive 4x4.

any personal experiences/ideas/viewpoints welcome! cheers.

Never done it but last time I checked on the web it was easy to track down a big newish 105 Toyota out of Agadir, Marrakech or Ozt for around 900 euros a week.

Not sure about a rack included or if you can get 5 MTBs in the back without taking them to bits.

For that money I suspect you could as easily hire a couple of local jeeps to drive you around. It means no ne of you has to shuttle to the other end.

Ch

Thanks for that Chris, I'll take another look at hiring, although at that price I think we may be looking elsewhere eventually...

We may be coming round to the idea of buying a slightly worn (ebay-spec) vehicle in the UK and ferry/driving down, using it, then selling it on our return. Not sure if the trip would turn into a catastrophic haynes manual familiarisation experience, but would certainly be comparitively cheap if we were to go for upwards of two weeks, which it looks like we might be...

I'll keep looking...

Car rental in Moro
 

Hello to all (to-be) Moro travelers
Here is my way to explore the Berber country: fly in with Ryanair directly to Marrakech (aprox 100€ pp), arriving there at 8am and pick up the rental car right at the airport…. and reaching the edge of the Sahara at 12am!! :clap:
Regarding the car rental we had made good experience with those guys from Moroccar:

Nouvelle page 1

The cars are maybe not brand-new, but more than ok for this use. They will pick you up at the airport and you can drop the car at the hotel (where you spend the last two days for relaxing). A “full-sized” 4x4 is about 100€/day, which seems to be reliable if you should travel with five persons. Maybe it will be difficult to find a car equipped with a roof rack but it is worth to give them a call…
We have done it several times that way -even for an extended weekend:thumbup1:- because IMHO (especially from Germany) this is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to take a peek deep into Moro!

Hope this hint gives you some inspiration :smartass:

Greets
Jörn

Hi Jorn,
Thanks for that tip, i will look them up and ask about roof racks...

Buying a van, the transit would cost £2000 + 5 days all up, I'd guess.
Stick with the fly-in plan and among other ideas, strike a deal with Peter at Bikershone 4x4 Centre in Ouarzazate.
He has a crew cab pick up and another jeep (plus nice accom and food). Depending on where you want to go and you want to do he could service your ride.

I've never cycled in Mk but if you're doing a continuous ride or big loop rather than 'clover leaves', consider cheap hotels/auberges rather than (wild) camping.
Less weight, more riding fun/meeting people and proper food and rest.

Ch

The Link to Moroccar above has yeilded a good price (best so far) on a LWB Mitsu with a roof rack. I asked Peter in Ouzazazazazate for a quote a while ago, his prices are good for a car+driver, less competitive for just the car alone (one advantage though is I'm pretty sure he keeps his 4x4s in good shape). I was impressed by his knowledge etc and having a driver who knows their way around would be a bonus. His Hikershome looks like it might be a good base too.

Auberges: yep, prob easier than camping etc, although a few nights away from anything else (apart from the odd curious herder) would be good too. I guess there's plenty of auberge location info on here somewhere...

Think we're going off the idea of buying a vehicle for exactly the reasons you state below, the biggest one being the transit time from/to UK. Also the idea of spending two weeks elbows deep in the bowels of a broken landrover isn't all that appealing.

http://www.medloc-maroc.com/location_voitures/location-4x4.html
http://www.toutloc.com/

I’ve hired 4x4s from these two agenices and had no problems with either. Most recently (april 2010) I used medloc, when travelling from Marrakech to Ifni. They delivered the car (a lancruiser) to our hotel in marrackech and then collected it from Agadir airport about 5 days later. All very smooth. The car wasn’t exactly show room condition, but thats propably no bad thing.

Cheap car rentals - economybookings.com It was super easy to book and the prices are lower than all other competitors We rented a 4w drive car from Medloc in January 2018.They are an excellent company to hire from and were very helpful answering our many questions about driving in Morocco. The car was clean, new and had a built in sat nav but they also gave us a tom tom and we still got lost, not the companies fault. English was spoken and when we dropped the car of at the airport, very dusty, there was someone there to meet us to return our deposit. I would definitely use this company again as it was one of the friendliest and most helpful I have ever used and I have hired a lot of cars.

did it have decent tyres or just road tyres?