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Plaza in Medina

We first heard about Chefchaouen from a British couple we met in the Majorelle Garden in Marrakesh. We looked it up in our two guide books: Lonely Planet and Michelin (of which more later) and learned that it was reputed to be the most beautiful town in Morocco. We also learned that it was in the mountains and thought that we might get a couple of days rest here from the tourist rut of Medina, Casbah, and Mosque.

Chefchaouen Weekly Market

Treking is just next door

So on a whim, we took a bus here from Rabat. What we found did not match expectations. Rather than find a mini Switzerland with a Moroccan accent, we found Morocco with a faint trace of a Swiss accent. There are indeed mountains here, and perhaps if you can hike around in them, a stay here would be worthwhile. If not, then it is rather a dull place with little to do except visit yet another medina or gaze once again at the peaks that surround the town. The mountains are covered in scrub, so have neither the glory of a pine forest to soften their slopes, nor the rugged appearance of true desert mountains like those behind Tehran and perhaps those in Ouarzazate.

The only positive note in all of this is that we did find a very nice little bed and breakfast where we spent quite a lot of time catching up on website duties, reading books and papers, and watching Al Jazeera English TV. A bit of a rest cure you might say. The weather didn't really cooperate in that on each of the two full days we spent here, we had downpours, the first of the torrential kind.