Travel for real
Enjoy the Southern rhythm
Be seduced by the laid-back life-style of Southern Morocco. Sand, roses and cinema: there is everything for a pleasant stay.
The sand
One of the best ways of reducing urban stress is to take time off in the middle of the desert. Travel agencies and packaged tour operators propose many formulas, from trekking (on foot, camelback or mountain bike) to staying in a tent (sometimes very luxuriously). Courses of meditation, painting, yoga etc. are also available. Sand baths, a specialty of the Drâa Valley, are another more and more appreciated specialty: claimed to have curative effects they also help simply to have a nice complexion.
Roses
Kelaât M'Gouna is a fortified village in the south of Rose Valley. Its rose water distillery should be visited. This highly perfumed water has soothing effects on the skin; it revives the complexion and prevents wrinkles. Every Spring, usually during the second weekend of May, the entire village celebrates this flower which fills the air, for thousands of kilometres, with its fragrance. The population of the village doubles during the two days of the festival. It is an opportunity to get together and to discover the various cosmetics based on rose water and, also, to sing and dance... and to elect the Rose Queen!
Film Festival
Since 1984 you can't think of Ouarzazate without thinking cinema. Film studios have known how to take advantage of its features: a stable climate and imposing scenery. The most recently built studio is also the biggest in the world. The sets of films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra or The Sheltering Sky and Gladiator haven't been dismantled and can be visited.
To remember
The sand dunes and the myriads of roses will make you recover your serenity.
