Fall in Love with Morocco

Morocco is an entire planet of a country, its cities as intriguing and mysterious as continents in miniature. Tangier reclines languidly on its hillside overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar, beckoning you in. Marrakech, meanwhile, has been a trading capital for thousands of years. The movement of its residents and visitors in the riddles of its medina alleys and the intoxicating souk are an eternal theatre against the backdrop of the High Atlas Mountains, their peaks like giant warriors, armored in white snow.

In the Jemaa el-Fna, the main square, stories are still exchanged for currency. Then there is Fez, one of the oldest seats of human learning, still under-explored by travellers, and Ouarzazate, Hollywood in the desert, where huge film sets recall and predict blockbusters. The white-walled towns of the Atlantic seaboard, Azemmour, El Jadida, Safi and Essaouira are bright with bougainvillea and alive with history. Founded and fortified by Portuguese seafarers and merchants, they were built on barter, haggle, fish and feasting. Morocco offers the stars of the Sahara, peerless cuisine, torrents of migrating and resident birds, the serenity of the rooftops and the oasis valleys of the desert’s edge – and best by far of all, the Moroccans themselves. Berber-Amazigh in the mountains, Touareg in the desert and Arab in the lowlands, Moroccans are a witty, wise, warm and shrewd people, delighted by visitors and hospitable to a fault.