Marocko

One of the region’s most beautiful roads runs south of Aglou Plage, offering wonderful views of the ocean, rugged hills and the occasional empty cove. Then comes Mirleft, with a burgeoning surf scene and beckoning cafes under the arches on its main street.

Tetouan is a jewel of a town in a striking location at the foot of the Rif Mountains, and just a few kilometres from the sea. Despite seeing relatively few foreign visitors, there's an air of authenticity here that adds great value to a visit. The ancient medina, a Unesco World Heritage site, looks like it has not changed in several centuries. The modern center that abuts it gleams in white, its Spanish facades given a recent facelift to seductive affect.

There are numerous trekking opportunities of various durations in the vast 580-sq-km Talassemtane National Park, which begins just outside Chefchaouen. The name means ‘cold spring’ in Berber. Some popular destinations include the small villages of El Kelaâ and Akchour, and God’s Bridge, a natural formation that looks like a stone arch. The duration of these excursions depends on how much you wish to drive versus walk.

Being stuck between a rock and a hard place is a sublime experience in the Todra Gorge, where a 300m-deep fault splits the orange limestone into a deep ravine at some points just wide enough for a crystal-clear river and single-file trekkers to squeeze through. The road from Tinerhir passes green palmeraies (palm groves) and Berber villages until, 15km along, high walls of pink and grey rock close in around the road. The approach is thrilling, as though the doors of heaven were about to close before you.

The Anti Atlas remains one of the least-visited parts of Morocco’s mountainscape, which is surprising, as it is beautiful and close to Agadir. The mountains are the lands of the Chleuh people, who live in a loose confederation of villages strung across the barren peaks. Living in areas molded by the demanding landscape of granite boulders and red-lava flows, the Chleuh have always been devoted to their farms in the lush oasis valleys, now some of the country’s most beautiful palmeraies (palm groves).

In its heyday, Fez attracted scholars and philosophers, mathematicians and lawyers, astronomers and theologians. Craftsmen built them houses and palaces, kings endowed mosques and medersas (religious schools), and merchants offered exotic wares from the silk roads and sub-Saharan trade routes. Although Fez lost its influence at the beginning of the 19th century, it remains a supremely self-confident city whose cultural and spiritual lineage beguiles visitors. Something of the medieval remains in the world’s largest car-free urban area: donkeys cart goods down the warren of alleyways, and while there are still ruinous pockets, government efforts to restore the city are showing results.

An industrial center and thriving port, Safi is a lot less picturesque than neighboring coastal towns but does offer an insight into the day-to-day life of a Moroccan city. Most tourists stop here en route to or from Essaouira to visit the giant pottery works that produce the typical brightly colored Safi pottery.

Welcome to North Africa’s highest mountain range, known by local Berbers as ‘Idraren Draren’ (Mountains of Mountains), and a trekker’s paradise from spring through to autumn. The High Atlas runs diagonally across Morocco for almost 1000km, encircling Marrakesh to the south and east from the Atlantic Coast just north of Agadir to Khenifra in the northeast. Its saw-toothed Jurassic peaks act as a weather barrier between the mild, Mediterranean climate to the north and the encroaching Sahara to the south.