Our 17 day tour in Morocco ends with an overnight in Casablanca before catching a plane back to France the next morning.
The drive from Chefchaouen to Casablanca (via Ouazzane to hit the A1 toll road in Kenitra) takes about 6 hours with a short stop for lunch. Some trip calculators may give a shorter time estimation, but with literally every form of transportation – pedestrians, bikes, donkeys pulling carts, tractors, big trucks, etc. using the N1 and the meandering by pass around Rabat, driving is slow and intense.
Once we near the coast the landscape flattens out and we lose the green rolling hills we’ve been following since before Meknes. Although not the most scenic drive, there is plenty of activity on the road to keep you entertained. In early spring we pass load after load of fodder on carts pulled by an assortment of donkeys, mules and horses. Sheep continue to graze by the side of the road, even in the bigger cities.
Driving in Casablanca
Driving in Casablanca is the typical big city chaotic jumble. Streets are poorly signed but we manage to find the hotel easily enough with the GPS ap on the IPad. Beware, though, that although using the Ipad to navigate is far easier than using the old fashioned paper maps, road conditions can be out of date. Leaving for the airport the next morning, the intersection where we planned to get on the auto route had both on-ramps closed due to construction with no detour indicated, adding a good 20 minutes to the 35 minute drive. Thankfully we had left plenty of extra time to get to the airport.
April 10, 2013
For links to all the posts in this series see the Morocco page.