This camp was the reason we chose to travel to Morocco. I somehow came across Agafay Desert Luxury Camp on Instagram and absolutely fell in love…
Truthfully, I think I mostly just wanted to ride a camel in the desert.
Day 1
Our day started with an early morning flight to Marrakech from the Canary Islands. The camp sent a car to pick us up from the airport, and like most people we encountered while traveling throughout Morocco, our driver spoke very little English.
He was so sweet and gave us a little tour as we passed through the city to the dessert. We quickly became quick friends with him, communicating back and forth with the limited words we knew in each other’s languages.
Scheduling a driver is probably one of the best and most reliable ways to get around the city and outskirts of Marrakech (especially if you don’t speak Moroccan or French).
We booked our rides prior to arriving in Morocco, and each place we stayed at was able to help us out with the process. This made our time in Morocco so much easier, and we are glad that we prearranged our drivers beforehand.
Depending on where we went, we never spent more than about $30 USD or 300 dirham for the ride. (Let us know if the comments if we got ripped off or not lol).
The drive to the camp was about 40 minutes long and about 30 km from Marrakech (~20 miles). As we left the city, we passed through the little town of Agafay, seeing tons of orange and olive trees.
Once we arrived to the camp, they welcomed us with tea and took our luggage to our room. Our luxury tent was about a 7-minute walk from the base camp and overlooked the Atlas Mountains and the Agafay desert!
This experience turned out to be everything I expected and more!
Our tent had a patio with a built-in bathtub to sit outside in, and the room was spacious and beautiful. We also had a fully equipped bathroom with a tile shower and a European toilet. Most importantly, we had multiple air conditioning units that blasted air at all hours of the day to keep the tent cool.
After settling we went to the pool to drink some coronas and rest up prior to our first dinner.
After relaxing at the pool for a few hours, we went back to our tent to change for dinner. I have few complaints about this place except that the food options were extremely limited! With that said, the food was amazing and affordable, with each meal costing about $25 a person for three courses. However I recommend splitting the courses with another person unless you are extremely hungry.
Course one consisted of bread, beets, cucumber salad, carrots, eggplants, potatoes, broccoli, and zucchini (Moroccan zucchini looks very different than American zucchini).
For course two, Josh had kabobs, and I had lemon chicken. We decided not to eat dessert, being so full from the first two courses.
Around 9:30 p.m. at dinner, they had live entertainment play consisting of 2 guys that played Moroccan drums and danced. We had a ton of fun, and Josh even got up to play the drums and dance around with the performers! Around 10:30 p.m., we walked back to our tent after having a long day.
Day 2
Day 2 ended up being one of my favorites of the whole trip! We woke up at 4:30 a.m. and waited for a driver to pick us up to go on…. a hot air balloon ride!
We went with a company called Ciel Da Frique, and our pilot ended up being the owner. We saw some of the best views in Marrakech and do not have enough good things to say about this experience!After our ride they served us a traditional Moroccan brekky consisting of Moroccan pancakes, OJ, coffee, honey, olives.
Our driver then took us back to our Luxury camp (about 1.5 hours) and went to the pool to lay out.
We then got lunch. The first course was a mozzarella and tomato salad (Moroccan version of a Caprese??) and shared penne with pesto. This is where we realized sharing food was the move because they continued to serve us so so much food. Following lunch we had a couple of Estrella beers by the pool before going to our tent.
We decided to chill in the outdoor bathtub on our patio to cool off after being in the sun all day! We also played cards with our view overlooking the Agafay Desert.
Next came our 7 p.m. sunset camel ride. The camels were cute but were not at all comfy after about 30 minutes, but our guide was a lot of fun as he took us through the desert. After, we walked up the rainbow steps (139 to be exact) to finish watching the sunset on top of a canyon prior to heading to dinner.
For our final dinner we got soup and couscous with chicken and veggies. We had a bottle of red wine, and the same Moroccan performers came and played music. Josh joined in again of course, and following dinner, we sat by a bonfire and finished our wine while staring up at the stars. I’ve never seen so many stars, and even saw a shooting star over the desert sky!
We packed our stuff and headed to bed because we were leaving the camp at noon the next day to head back to Marrakech.
Overall, we had a truly amazing experience at the Agafay Luxury Camp and would highly recommend staying if you ever travel to Morocco. We thought that two nights and three days was a nice amount of time at the camp, however at times, we did feel a bit bored and limited in what we could do. If we could do it over, we would probably only stay for one night, giving us more time in the city to explore different food choices.
Check out more of our photos and blogs from our time in Morocco!
Till next time – Mason 🙂
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JPG