Morocco Guidebooks, by Max Buten

Guidebooks are most helpful to the independent tourist, almost always substituting for guides and touts. We used:

Michelin green guide to Maroc. It's in French, but not too hard to read if you've every had any course in the language. We struggled, but used it, sometimes with the help of an old dictionary I took with. It's much more complete on the sights, the background, and the history, than anything in English.

Lonely Planet, for hotels and restaurants. Their city maps are usually helpful (but not in Taroudant). Easy reading, compared to Michelin.

Michelin map of Morocco is essential on the highway - but for cities, you need the maps in the green guide. Pay attention to the legend - dotted lines on one side of the road means "piste", or "track". In bicycle racing, a piste is a smooth, banked, oval track - but in Morocco, it's an unpaved, but graded, track; suitable for 4x4 or bus, but not for small cars. (Why does Michelin insist on referring to the highways by number? Michelin's route P32 is marked "10" on every kilometer post; there's never a route number on the direction signs.)

Toyota puts out a pamphlet listing a few hotels and major restaurants in major cities. It wasn't very helpful.

We read the Passport guide before we went, but didn't take it with us. It's focused somewhere between Lonely Planet and Michelin.

There's a Guide Routard for Maroc, dated 1997-98, in French. We tried to buy one, but weren't able to find it in Maroc. Didn't know of it before we left the U.S.

This page last updated December 15, 2001.home | john | max