By Clara the Exploradora

The Blue City was our favorite place in Morocco.

To describe in one word, It was…. so… cool…. Finding accommodation here is hard, so if you are going to travel to Chefchauen book lodging in advance.

As soon as our bus got to Chefchauen (the Blue City) we were harassed by taxi drivers who so badly wanted to drive us places. One thing people don’t know about me is that, if you try to force me to do something, I probably won’t do it. So if you try and force me to drive in your taxi, chances are, I’d rather walk. So walk we did. It turned out to be a good experience… seeing outside the Blue City and then inside the Blue City. They are two very different things.

In the Blue City we stayed at an amazing AirBnB called Dar Onsar. Click here to check out their lodging situation. The manager is Mehdi Iazrak. He’s opening his own AirBnB down the street that has an amazing upstairs roof patio. His number is 06 53 87 99 38 . Mehdi is literally the man, he hooked us up with a great deal when we asked to stay another night.

Our first night there we were able to catch the tail ends of the sunset over the Blue City and mountains from the rooftop patio.

Twas gorgeous in the brisk air. After that we started our evening musings to find food. We cleaned up a bit and then walked through the narrow blue winding streets until we found a wonderful restaurant called Casa Aladdin. The reason we picked this place is because as you walk around touristy areas in Morocco, everyone will try and drag you into their restaurant and when you finally get the message across that you don’t want to eat there, they offer you weed as a last resort. Casa Aladdin did not do that. They didn’t try and force us to eat their food OR sell us weed. So that was cool. The meal we ate there was really tasty and the ambiance was really Arabic.

The Blue City is surrounded by beautiful mountains and hikes you can do.

Patrick and I did a couple hikes in the area. One right behind the Blue City and one that we had to take a bus to.

Travel Hint:

Try and only

buy fruits with peals. It helps

decrease your chances of 

getting a bug.

On our way to the hike we bought some fruit with easily pealed off skin. The National Park system is still really new in most countries, including Morocco. That being said, it was not easy getting clear directions to the hike we wanted to do.  We went to the office and they didn’t even have a map so what we ended up doing was, walking continuously towards where we wanted to be until we found what looked like a trail.

Turns out it was and we were able to do the hike. On the mountains to the east of the Chefchaouen is the little lookout we were trying to get to. Once you get there you can keep going all the way up the valley that connects to this other hike we didn’t do that’s a big ole hike that loops around the east side of the other mountains. We went up this little valley a way, passed a trail runner doing the big loop and eventually turned around because some guy had been following us for a creepy amount of time.

When we turned around we took a different, more exploratory way back that somehow panned out. On the hike up there is this little area where you can look down the hill at some folks with their animals and huts and stuff. So on the way down, we decided to follow a trail that went through there. At times it was a bit unnerving how steep and rocky it got and how precariously built these huts were, but it was worth it. 

The path took us through rocky pastures…

Through peoples properties, past giant cacti, right by the front door of a cute family picking olives out of their tree and somehow dumped us right into the Blue Medina of Chefchaouen. I still have no idea how that happened because of the sketchiness of it all.

After that, we wanted to catch the sunset.

We walked up a path along the north west mountains to this perfect and crowded Spanish masque that offers up amazing views of the sunset. On the way down we encountered our first monkey.

Travel Hint:

Go to the

bathroom before, unless

you’re cool with peeing in a

hole in the ground

Akchour Falls is a really neat little hike you can do near-ish to Chefchaouen.

It’s a really nice little day trip. To get to there from the Medina of Chefchaoen you have to walk all the way down to the taxi station and the taxi van will leave as soon as it has enough people to fill the seats. Get there early. 

The drive there isn’t long, but it is sketchy and made me a bit car sick. The hike made it totally worth it. It is a bit confusing at the beginning because the map system doesn’t exist and neither do the signs. If you go to the right, you will do a completely different hike that I believe is called God’s Bridge or the Bridge of God. If you go left you will be able to hike Akchour falls. It is a great hike. You pass some really cool huts where you can probably buy food during the peak of tourist season. In my hiking opinion, it is a very easy and doable hike.

During the hike you walk through a couple forests that have monkeys! If you read this in advance, take trash bags so that you can help clean up some litter. There is SO much litter on the trail and in the streets of Morocco  in general. I didn’t think to do that but I wish I had…

Akhour waterfall itself is really pretty.

At the top there are these awesome hiking cats and a hut that you can buy some Mint Tea from. It is really refreshing. I imagine in the summer the water is quite refreshing to jump into, however we were in there in December and it was super cold. We enjoyed our picnic that we brought up, some tea and a cat that had joined us.

To get back, you just have to turn around and wait for a van to fill up.

It’s not too expensive but they will try and finagle more money out of you for the ride for various reasons. Just make sure you have enough small bills on hand so that you can convincingly say that you don’t have the money, or just try and have exact change. That’s always easier.

Travel hint:

Always have

smaller bills on you so that

when they want more you

will be able to hand them

exact change to avoid haggling.

That night, we had a nice dinner on the rooftop to watch the sunset and look at the infinite amount of stars. The next day, we went straight to Fez, a long and hot bus ride to Fez.