If you came to me and asked how were the prices in Morocco I’d need to answer „It depends”. I wouldn’t be lying and I wouldn’t be avoiding your question. Because it really does depend on a lot of factors. When in other just a bit more civilized countries there are usually just more expensive towns and less expensive towns, more expensive restaurants and less expensive restaurants then in Morocco there are more variables. If you’re from United States you can expect to pay a lot more for the simpl... read more

When you first enter Morocco, you are required to fill out a form and fill in fields such as your name, your flight number, your departure airport, the place you’re going to stay in Morocco, reason for traveling and your occupation. In most cases feel free to write down your correct occupation. However, not every time might it be a good idea. Jailing local journalists in Morocco isn’t very uncommon practice. Back in 2003 journalists were sentenced to prison for insulting the monarch. In 2007... read more

When in Morocco you’ll get in contact with a lot of people who want to sell you something. One theory says that you shouldn’t even answer them and move on or watch in a different direction. While it might work, I don’t like that much plus in many cases it might not work anyhow. The reason I don’t like it – maybe it’s just me but it’s not polite. While they might want to sell you something, it IS their job and why should you be impolite towards people just doing their job? And the other thing ... read more

Before going to Morocco, the friend I was traveling with, said it’s difficult to find clean hotels. At least from his experience in Morocco the last time he was there. He might have been right at that time – as he was using even cheaper hotels ( probably something like 50-80 Dirhams a face) we were in this time (75-125 Dirhams a face). But what we saw during our trip this time – you can find pretty great hotels for very little money. For 230 Dirhams for a room for two you could get a very nic... read more

In Morocco, everyone are working. Except for the mothers with their up-to-two-year-old children on the streets begging for money, it seems everyone in Morocco really are working. Usually instead of begging people call their activities work. We don’t even have to talk about the numerous street-sellers here. Even though there’s really hundreds of people working in this „industry” on every street. Selling watches, perfumes, sunglasses, cleaning your shoes. In many cases the „service” indust... read more

We all know about Darwin’s theories. The strongest survives, the species that can adapt the quickest survive and so on. It’s the same with traffic in Morocco. At first glance it seems that people can drive (I mean, they must, considering the driving culture over there) but it seems that there are no rules or other laws related to it. That’s the impression anyway. Whenever you’re behind the wheel, you need to pay attention. In Morocco, you need to pay attention 3 times more. You can’t count on... read more

We bought the tickets to Essaouira and waited for our bus. Well, about one and a half hours later the bus still wasn’t there and I went to talk to the guy who sold us the tickets. Would have been nice if he mentioned it before, but now he said there was no room in the bus and the next one goes in about 8 hours. So much of that plan. Fortunately we managed to sell our tickets back and as we didn’t have much time before our plane from Marrakech back to Düsseldorf-Weeze anyhow, we decided to go ... read more

Foreign journalists or people working in the fields related are not very welcome in Morocco and especially in Western Sahara. So writers of any kind usually tend to claim some other title when asked for occupation. Before going to Laayoune couple of days back me and my friend had stayed in Agadir for two days, walking in every possible direction, so we already knew our way to the beach (not always did we know the way back, but that’s already a different story). And we also knew that there’s a... read more

Fortunately by the time we got to Laayoune, the sun was already up and after a cold night in the bus we were starting to warm up. Besides the sandy football field with dozens of too many people were kicking the ball back and forth (as you can see, I’m not a huge football fan, shoot me) there was a closed cafeteria, shop for carpets and closed office for SupraTours (office for one of the normal bus companies), nearby we also noticed an internet cafe. Before anything else we decided to smoke s... read more

Western Sahara was annexed with Morocco in 1976 and about half of the native population fled to Algeria where most of them still reside in five specially created refugee camps. No countries have officially recognized the country. „A guerrilla war with the Polisario Front contesting Rabat's sovereignty ended in a 1991 UN-brokered cease-fire; a UN-organized referendum on final status has been repeatedly postponed. In April 2007, Morocco presented an autonomy plan for the territory to the UN, which... read more

Remember that in Morocco, taking one wrong turn might result in a number of wrong turns (in which cases you won’t even be able to decide on the last turn, confusing, eh?). And by taking the bus by a wrong company which cost more, took more time and was more uncomfortable than the “right” bus, we didn’t really reach Agadir but its transportation center (Inezgane) about 12km away from Agadir. The station for the better buses is also about 12 km from the center of the town, but these stations are s... read more

Getting to the bus station is usually easy, you just look for signs to "Gare routiere". But in Morocco, in many cities, there seem to be at least two different bus stations. One for stupid people and one for just a bit smarter ones. Or okay, I could say that one is for poor people and the other is for rich people, but that would be a plain lie. The main difference there is – the busses in one station are old, ugly and if it catches fire, I guess it’s a normal thing. And in the same bus station, ... read more

The name Marrakech comes from a Berber language and means a Land of God. With its one million inhabitants the city is divided between two parts – the new town (Gueliz) and the old town (Medina). Couple of decades ago Marrakech not only was the name of the city, but referred to the country itself. Morocco as a country was known by many as the Kingdom of Marrakech. Marrakech airport has been built to use solar energy to heat and power the building. While we were there, the screen showing a... read more

A friend of mine has asked me quite a few times if I’d like to go to Morocco with him. He’s been there before but thought that even though it shouldn’t be too dangerous, he wouldn’t like to take the trip to West-Sahara, more specifically Laayoune alone. Last time he was in Morocco his bus caught fire, go figure. I do hope it won’t happen this time, at least not while I’m there. Or if it does, I hope I can at least get a few good shots of it. If I remember correctly (well, I got my friend to ... read more