Lahcen was wonderful to work with both during the planning stage, as well as throughout the trip. He responded quickly with emails and was flexible and easy to work with. Halfway through the tour I discovered I had made a mistake in my communications with Lahcen regarding our departure date which added an extra day to our trip. This caused him to bump our entire itinerary down a day, change most of the dates with hotels and juggle manpower as our guide, Mohamed, surely had another group of tourists to guide after us. I felt quite badly about this, but Lahcen was very gracious and assured us that the most important thing was that we enjoy our trip and not to worry.
We were very happy with all of our accommodations (with Riad Yacout in Fes being the cherry on top) and our meals were delicious! Our guide, Mohamed, was absolutely outstanding! Besides being a professional, skilled, knowledgeable guide with so much local insight, he is also a warm, wonderful, kind, honest, generous and respectful human being. He is fluent in five languages and speaks perfect English. Every day Mohamed did his job with such genuine enthusiasm and happiness. He possesses a great sense of humor and is a complete joy to be around. For a young person he is an old soul and for someone who has never left Morocco he is more worldly than most well-traveled people I know.
He showed us the real Morocco, never taking us to shops or touristy places. He took us to a 100% local hammam, which was very clean and a wonderful experience. He was constantly thinking one step ahead to make sure that our experience was the very best. He told us numerous times that the most important thing to him was that we enjoy our trip, and we never doubted that he meant it. All of his actions backed up his words.
Mohamed is an excellent driver and we always felt very safe in his newer Toyota 4x4 which he kept impeccably clean and maintained. It is hard to say what the highlights of our trip were because the whole trip was one big highlight, honestly! We really enjoyed Essaouira, the High Atlas Mountains, our camel trek at Erg Chebbi with our fantastic camel man, Ahmed, whom we thoroughly enjoyed, the Sunday souk in Rissani and our experience at the hammam. We also enjoyed all the hours in the car taking in the beautiful scenery, talking with Mohamed and listening to his great mix of music.
Everyone we met in Morocco was so warm and friendly, and we felt very welcomed. If you are considering a trip to Morocco you really must go. It is a wonderful country, and I cannot recommend Around Morocco highly enough. I know that we will be returning!.