Agadir to Tangier via Merzouga
 

Hi folks, I would love some input on the following (currently very rough) itinerary.

20-21/11 Tangier to Agadir (2 days)
22-26/11 Agadir (5 days)
27/11 - 3/12 - Agadir to Chefchaouen via Merzouga (or somewhere else close to the Sahara) (6 days)
4/12 Chefchaouen (1day)
5/12 Chefchaouen - Tangier (1day)

It'll be two of us on a WVCaddy. We've never been to Morocco before, so the main question marks are about the quality of the roads (keeping in mind that we won't be driving a 4x4) and as to whether 6 days to reach Chefchaouen is gonna be rushed or not, considering that we would love to spend a night camping in the desert. Ideas/suggestions of course are more then welcome too!

Re: Agadir - we are gonna need to spend those 5 days in the Agadir area as my gf needs to work and requires decent wifi. I'll be free though so any suggestion as to things to do would be very much appreciated. Or if you are in the area and would like to catch-up give me a shout!

Link to the itinerary: https://bit.ly/3o8Ovr4

Many thanks,
Andrea

I note in another post you say you like near Malaga. Although ferries are running between Spain and Morocco they have been freight trucks-only for the last 18 months or so and the situation isn't considered likely to change any day soon.

Let me know if this doesn't affect your plans and I'll then comment on your questions.

Hi Tim, thank you for raising this. I read weeks ago that they were planning on resuming normal traffic from the 1st of October, though that may have never happened in the end? doh . Either way, if we can't enter Morocco by car we'll fly to Agadir, rent a car locally and aim to do a similar route, so if you have any advice that'd still be very much appreciated :D

Agadir is a firm favourite with the blue-rinse winter snowbirds but is rather like the concrete Spanish costas, devoid of culture. Unless you have some overwhelming reason for choosing Agadir (other than wifi), I'd suggest you pick somewhere else. Best bet for decent performance is to get a relatively inexpensive Moroccan data SIM and tether the computer or whatever to it.

Andrea:

I've toured extensively through Morocco on my Honda ST 1100 (definitely not an off-road motorcycle!) and my experience has been that all the highways in Morocco will be no problem at all for your vehicle. The roads between major & medium size communities are generally well-maintained.

Below is a quote from a post Tim made some years ago when I inquired about road conditions:

"There's four categories of roads in Morocco
A = autoroute (A1... A9)
RN = routes nationales (N1...N19)
RR = routes régionales (R101... R999)
RP = routes provinciales (P1001... P9999)

You can normally expect all of these to be tarmac with the exception of part of the N12 either side of Zagora."

I'm not at all optimistic that ferry service between Morocco and Spain will have resumed by the time you plan to start your trip (2 weeks from now). There are several discussion in the Morocco forum that address the suspension of ferry service in great detail - have a careful look at the contents of those discussions.

As Tim noted in his post, Moroccan SIM cards are cheap, you can get a prepaid card with gigabytes of data on it for very little money. You'll need to bring your passport with you to purchase the SIM card.

Expect that you will be stopped frequently by police at the entrance and exit to cities. They will want to check your passport. This is a good thing, it is one of the reasons why it is so safe to travel in Morocco. The police are always very polite and pleasant to deal with. You can speed up the checkpoint process by pre-printing "fiches" that you give to the officers at the checkpoint. They appreciate this, because it speeds things up. Here's a link to a post at the Morocco Knowledgebase forum that explains the process of creating fiches, and provides a link to an Excel spreadsheet you can use to create fiches: Print 'fiche' forms for checkpoints. Disregard the information in the first post on that thread about import forms, all that has changed since that post was created in 2011.

Michael

My first visit to Morocco was in a Land Rover, then motorbike a couple of times, then after some more visits I drove from the UK in my Triumph Vitesse. Part of my route was Marrakech - Gorges - Merzouga area - Fez - Chefchaouen and the roads were OK-ish and that was 1974.

http://www.morocco-knowledgebase.net/photos/e15007.jpg

1974 the Dades Gorge was a piste (groomed track)

http://www.morocco-knowledgebase.net/photos/e15008.jpg

2010 by which time it had long been asphalted.

N12 either side of Zagora has been asphalt for the almost 10 years now (certainly since 2014) and checkpoints in and out of towns haven't been around outside of the WS for longer than that, you certainly don't need fiches in the North. If there is a rare checkpoint they will normally wave tourists through. (NB last time I was in the WS fiches weren't being asked for, news today from someone in the region is the police at the checkpoints are just taking a photo of passports now)

I'd avoid Agadir as a base to do some work, there are much better options around the area, if it was me I'd base my self in Essaouira, much nicer.

Morocco's mobile network is fantastic and in towns you will have a very good 4G service, often much better than hotel wifi services. 10GB of data is 10euros on the Orange network.

As said the Spanish ferries are very unlikely to be running any time soon.

You are critiquing Pan's quote about a post I made almost seven years ago.... LOL



Ignore the Youtube 2019 date on the video which is when I uploaded it, this was the N12 east of Zagora in February 2014 riding with Peter Buitelaar of Bikershome. I am riding (one-handed) on the freshly engineered piste which was eventually asphalted, Peter and the other rider are on the original piste.

Of course the road is no longer the N12, it was renamed the N17 three year ago.

Thank-you everyone, this is all very helpful information.

Re: ferry, yes we'll definitely fly in and rent a car locally. During the first week we'll be staying in a small town north of Agadir (Taghazout). There is a coworking there that a friend recommended. I'll see if I can rent a bike and do some exploring from there or worst case I might take up surfing :Beach:

It's good to know that roads are in good conditions, and I'll look into the fiches thing on the forum. Still not sure if we'll go to Chefchaouen or leave that out for another trip as living in Malaga we could make that a long weekend trip.

Cheers,
Andrea

Not a critique just providing up to date info rather than old info which may not help someone wanting to travel in 2021doh. The note on fiches in the WS is from today!

Tarmac was down on the east side of Zagora by October 2014. The route had been prepared in 2012 when it was used for the final Stage of the Oil Libya Rally du Maroc.