Tours of the City
Walking Tours
It used to be common to step outside a hotel and find a ‘guide’ willing to give you a tour around Marrakech for a fee, but these days the tourist police have clamped down on unlicensed escorts. If visiting Marrakech for a short time, a guide can be indispensable for revealing the little-known parts of the city that might only be discovered otherwise after a week of wandering. These freelance guides can still be found but it can be a hit and miss affair. As always, a fee should be negotiated in advance and visitors should be particularly cautious in the souks, as many guides have commission arrangements with shops and these will be the ones you will be ‘guided’ to. Better still, official and fully licensed guides can be hired at a cost of around Dh150 for a morning from any good hotel or from the tourist office but even these guides often have a commission arrangement. MCI Tours, 154 Avenue Mohamed V, Guliz (tel: (044) 438 742; fax: (044) 446 899) can arrange various walking tours, such as exploring the medina or the tanneries. A typical half-day walking tour costs around Dh150.
Other Tours
For tours of the city and day excursions, grand taxis can be chartered for around Dh200 a day. Visitors can find grand taxis for hire at the ranks in Guliz by the Post Office or at Jemaa-el-Fna. It is also possible to hire a calche for a tour of the town. For both modes of transport the price should be negotiated in advance.
There are scores of travel agents in the streets around Place Abdel Moumen ben Ali. Travel Link, 19 Rue Mauritania, Guliz (tel: (044) 448 797; fax: (044) 448 839), offers hot air ballooning just outside the city (30 minutes; Dh2500 for one or two people), as well as helicopter tours of the ramparts and High Atlas Mountains (30 minutes; Dh3500 for two or three people).
There is a growing market in more adventurous excursions, such as 4x4 safaris, Atlas trekking, hunting, fishing and whitewater rafting in the High Atlas Mountains. Operators include Voyage Voyages, 194/7 Rsidence Firdaous, 15 Rue Mohamed El Baqal 15, Guliz (tel: (044) 420 667; fax: (044) 430 310; e-mail: voyagevoyages@iam.net.ma; website: www.voyagevoyages.com ).
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Tours of the City