Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen is a beautiful city nestled in the Rif Mountains. If you want to, you can take all day to get there from Ifrane, but if you drive straight from Ifrane to Chefchaouen, it will take about 3 1/2 hours. I think this drive is completely worth it, despite its potential for car sickness (and death).


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We arrived in Chefchaouen last Thursday evening and left on Sunday morning. We had to do a last minute hotel hunt that first night, but the hunt ended well. We stayed in a clean (but very cold) hotel. The next two nights, we stayed at  Dar Gabriel, an upscale medina hotel.

This was our hotel room at Dar Gabriel. The room is decorated with a lot of "typical" Moroccan stuff. Notice the painted wood and the sequined wall hanging. I think the bed cover is made from cactus; I bought something similar to it (but in completely different colors) in the medina.

I think this is a typical Moroccan hotel bathroom. Rather than an enclosed shower, there's just a showerhead and a drain. This means you have the whole bathroom in which to take a shower! Nothing could possibly go wrong!

After my experience with Peace Corps budget hotels in Rabat, Dar Gabriel was heaven. The towels and sheets were clean, the room had a heater in it, and there was a sitting room with a wood burning stove. We could have coffee, tea, or hot chocolate any time we wanted, and the hotel served dinner. Our room was off the terrace, so my first morning there, I did yoga outside, on the terrace, with a beautiful view of the mountains all around me.

We spent a great deal of our time in the Chefchaouen medina, which is famous for its "blueness." Observe:

Because this was the weekend right after Eid Kbira, not all of the businesses in the Medina were open. I actually liked this. The medina was a bit calmer than it might be otherwise, and all the closed shops made for good photo opportunities.

Besides its blue Medina, Chefchaouen is also known for its kif. That's fine, if kif is your thing, but it isn't ours, so we were happy to be spending most of our time with two little girls; their presence seemed to keep away the kif offers. T and I did get a few proposals when we were by ourselves. And I saw more hippies than I have ever seen in Eugene or Portland, Oregon.

One of the places where we were offered kif was outside of town. If you leave the Medina, you can walk up into the surrounding mountains. A popular walk takes you to the "Spanish Mosque." The mosque itself is not actually that interesting, but the walk to it is lovely.

The aforementioned mosque

View of the mountains around Chefchaouen

This donkey was looking very intently at something.

And in case you don't believe me when I say that Chefchaouen is a beautiful city, I will end with some random shots of the city.

View from the terrace at our first hotel

View from the Kasbah

Another view from the Kasbah (I think)

T and me in front of the entrance to the Kasbah. Our friend LW took this picture so that you could see the "cute old men" (those are her words).

Women doing laundry in the water of the river, Oued el Kebir (that basically means "big water"). I love that there are actual laundry stations set up by the river.