The 2 Days Marrakech Tour from Fes is for travellers who need to get between the two cities but do not want to spend the day on the motorway or lose it to a train.
Instead of the direct route, this itinerary goes over the Middle Atlas: Ifrane with its pitched roofs, the cedar forest at Azrou where Barbary macaques live, the lakes and pastures of the plateau, and then down to the Ouzoud waterfalls, which drop around 110 metres in three stages through a green gorge.
You spend the night above the falls, which is the best time to see them, and reach Marrakech the following afternoon. No desert on this one: it is a mountain and water route.
Morning pickup in Fes and straight up into the Middle Atlas. The first stop is Ifrane, a town of steep-roofed houses and clipped hedges built during the French protectorate, which looks transplanted from the Alps and is a good place for coffee.
Next is the cedar forest near Azrou, where the oldest trees are several hundred years old and a troop of Barbary macaques comes down to the roadside. From there the road crosses the plateau past lakes and grazing land, with Berber villages and shepherds along the way.
Lunch is usually taken at Khenifra or Beni Mellal, on the edge of the Tadla plain and its olive groves.
The last stage climbs back into the hills to Ouzoud. You arrive in the late afternoon, when the day visitors have gone and the falls are quiet, with time for the viewpoint before dinner.
Accommodation: Hotel or guesthouse at Ouzoud
A morning at the waterfalls. A stepped path leads down through olive terraces to the pool at the bottom, where small boats take visitors close to the spray and rainbows form in the mist on a sunny morning. Barbary macaques live in the trees along the path and are used to people.
The walk down takes twenty to thirty minutes and a little longer coming back. There is also a terrace viewpoint at the top for anyone who prefers not to descend.
After lunch above the falls, the road runs south-west across the Haouz plain to Marrakech, around two and a half hours. Arrival in the afternoon, with drop-off at your riad or hotel.
No. This is the mountain and waterfall route between Fes and Marrakech. If you want the desert on the way, take the 3 or 4 day Fes to Marrakech versions, which go via Merzouga instead.
Because the falls are busiest between eleven and four. Staying above them means you see them in the evening and again early, which is when they are quietest and the light is best.
Around six to seven hours on the first day with stops, and about three on the second. The second day is mostly the falls.
It is a stepped path, twenty to thirty minutes down and a bit more back up. Ordinary walking shoes are fine. It can be slippery near the pool.
Yes. The route can run via Beni Mellal and the Bin el Ouidane lake instead, or through Imilchil in the High Atlas in summer when the road is open.
Yes, Marrakech to Fes works exactly the same way and costs the same.
The direct road between Fes and Marrakech is a wasted day. This route turns the same transfer into two days of cedar forest, mountain pasture and the tallest waterfall in North Africa, and still puts you in Marrakech in time for dinner on the second evening.
Private vehicle and driver, luggage carried the whole way, and no train station queues at either end.
