26 Sep 2024
We got a message from Karim the night before confirming our meeting so we thought good. However our guide was not Karim, but Karim showed up to give our guide, Abdul, his car. Both of them were late. So did Karim outsource our tour?
To start with our guide wanted to take us to places in Fez that were not on the tour. Our guides English was not good and it wasn’t until we told him that we wanted to get to Volubilis before it got too hot that he turned the car around to leave Fez.
When we got to Volubilis, after making a couple of nice, scenic stops, our guide asked us if we wanted a private guide to see the ruins. Abdul told us it would be 300MAD but when we checked later that day we found we should have paid less than half that. On top of that our private guide in the ruins demanded a tip.
We had a good visit walking through the Medina in Moulay-Idriss. And then our guide arranged lunch which was very authentic. He bought meat and vegetables at the market and then we went to a kitchen to have our lunch prepared.
Meknes was a big disappointment. We started at an artisan shop where they kept trying to sell me a rug that I said I liked but had no interest in buying (we learned that in Morocco showing any interest opens you up to harassing sales people). We bought one small item and after negotiating a price they got us to pay in Euros and gave us a very poor exchange rate. Thats our fault but by this point we didn’t trust our guide and figure he took us to a shop where he had a relationship. We really didn’t see Meknes but just drove through and our guide said that’s all they ever doing Meknes.
After convincing our guide that we didn’t want to do anymore we drove back to Fez without air conditioning on a 90 degree day.
I would avoid this tour.