Overview
Chefchaouen sits in the Rif mountains, four hours north of Casablanca, and it is blue for reasons nobody entirely agrees on. What is not in doubt is what it looks like: a hillside medina painted in a dozen shades of indigo, with the mountains directly behind it.
This is a long day and it is honest about that. The driving is most of it, the walking is concentrated into the afternoon, and the reward is a town that photographs unlike anywhere else in Morocco. Travellers who prefer it slower usually turn this into the first night of a northern tour instead.
Trip Highlights
- The blue medina of Chefchaouen and its painted stairways
- Outa el-Hammam square and the 15th-century Kasbah beside it
- The Spanish Mosque viewpoint above the town
- The Ras el-Maa spring where the town gets its water
- The drive north through the Rif and the Ouazzane hills
