05 Feb 2025
I can’t say enough good things about this tour with Mohammed as our guide. We were fortunate to be the only guests during our tour so we had a private guide for three hours. Mohammed first took us through the “new” city before guiding us through the Medina and souks. He explained more than just food traditions, but also a lot about Moroccan culture and politics. He is incredibly knowledgeable (with impeccable English as well as speaking many other languages and dialects) and he has personal relationships with many of the vendors we visited.
All of the food we tried was new to us and delicious — amazing green tea with mint, local breads with cheese and honey, the best olives, dates and nuts, a fantastic smoothie, pea soup at a tiny local shop you’d never find on your own, and a fish pastry, then followed by a full meal of chicken and vegetable tagine and kebabs. You will not be hungry at the end of your tour!
We did our tour on a day trip from Tarifa and the timing worked perfectly with the ferry. We stayed in an apartment in Tarifa (Puerta la Mar on booking.com) right by the port where we parked our car overnight, then we walked over in the morning to board the ferry that left at 9 am. We had the perfect amount of time after disembarking the ferry to walk to our meeting place with Mohammed (less than a mile, but you could take a cab), and then after the three hour tour, we had enough time to make it back for the 3 pm ferry back to Tarifa. Certainly wished we could have spent more time in Morocco and we hope to go back, but if like us, you’re seeing the south of Spain in a relatively short time frame, this trip is doable, and I can’t imagine having any comparable experience without Mohammed as your guide. Everyone we encountered was very kind to us, but we would not have known where to start on our own, and we learned so much that we never would have known without a guide.
There are trips the start in Tarifa with a guide who will lead you on and off the ferry, but I doubt you would have the same experience we had with a local as knowledgeable as Mohammed (especially if you’re a foodie). If you’re debating this tour, all I can say is, we are so glad that we did it and we’d tell anyone who has a chance to do so!