There was just under a week in Cape Town, a couple of nights in St Lucia to see hippos and a week in the southern parts of Kruger National Park. We had so much fun that we are about to go back for even longer and will include a month in Botswana. In February , we decided to do a 3-week self-drive trip around Morocco β inspired by recommendations from our friends Debbie and Nishant who we met at the Luxor Hub in Egypt.
We started by renting a car in Casablanca and driving to Rabat. We found Rabat to be relatively relaxing; it is not focused on tourism so we did not encounter any pushy sales or attempted scams.
We did encounter a bit more touting here but it felt very safe. There was some over-the-top Instagramming for example, during an early-morning walk, we watched an orange juice vendor hang up a fake grape vine in the street, and then festoon it with fake oranges.
Sure enough, when we walked back a few hours later Instagrammers were lining up to photograph themselves and his juice in front of it. But, we loved exploring the beautiful quiet backstreets and hiking up above the town. We also enjoyed the relatively warm weather and the lovely roof-top deck of our hotel. Unfortunately, though, we came down with colds while we were in Chefchaouen, which lingered for most of the rest of our trip.
Next, we stopped at the interesting Roman ruins of Volubilis, and then drove to Fes, where we stayed in another riad. Each morning at our riad, we enjoyed an incredible breakfast of coffee, tea, orange juice, olives, dates and figs, oranges sprinkled with cinnamon, bread, butter, honey, and jams, yogurt, and omelets and we explored the markets with a guide the riad arranged.
