Motorhome Touring Costs in Morocco

I keep a track of all of our spending as we’re going along and here I’ve broken it down by country, so you can see what we’ve spent to give you an idea of how cheap/expensive a place can be.

Morocco – One Month Tour in 2012

Travel Cost
Ferry 180.00 €
Tolls 20.55 €
Fuel 199.31 €
Insurance (bought at port – 1 month) 92.00 €
Daytime parking 0.64 €
Train/bus/tram (lifts to Marrakech) 14.68 €
Camping Nights
Wild Camping 0 0.00 €
Guarded Parking (no services) 1 2.29 €
Car parks (restaurants/auberges) 5 21.10 €
ACSI Sites – do not cover Morocco 0 0.00 €
Camping Cheque Sites 0 0.00 €
Other Campsites 24 210.23 €
Subsistence
Food (ie Supermarket) 160.10 €
Food (ie eating and drinking out) 298.90 €
LPG – not available in Morocco 0.00 €
Repairs 0.00 €
Laundry 20.64 €
Contact with home (phones, post) 23.31 €
Tours/Entrance fees 124.40 €
Supplies (Tom Tom Map, Paper Map, ad-hoc items for Dave non-motoring) 49.17 €
Souvenirs 81.42 €
Summary
Total cost 1,498.74 €
Days away 30
Cost per day 49.96 €
Cost per day not including ferry & insurance 40.89 €
Total Mileage (@ approx 29mpg) 1830
Average miles per day 61.0
Comments
I’ve included a cost per day without the ferry and insurance and these were quite a considerable cost for the trip. Also the insurance was only for a month, if we had stayed longer the cheaper fuel, food etc would have brought the cost per day down even further.  The moral of the story is – make sure your insurance company will provide you with a green card for Morocco.
We mainly used the tolls to make our way back up the west coast. We also used them between Meknes and Fez when we discovered after four hours of driving that the campsite in Meknes had closed, and once on our way to Chefchouen when we took a wrong turning and ended up on one!  But they are really cheap and you can eat up the miles on smooth wide roads. It’s worth watching your speed though as we saw quite a lot of police speed traps (mainly in the cities), also our MPG drastically reduced as J got carried away with the speed – from around 32 to 26!
Fuel is around 60p per litre (it gets cheaper the further south you go), so be sure to arrive with little in your tank and leave with it full. We stuck to using Afriqua or Shell garages and they were all over the place. But do note you can’t get LPG in Morocco, so make sure your tanks/bottles are full, especially if you’re heading into the mountains as it gets really cold at night.
Wild camping isn’t allowed in Morocco, so it’s campsites or guarded parking. Most of the campsite sanitary facilities are no where near what you’ll be used to in Europe. Most showers were taken in Dave.
We stocked up on food, wine and beer before we left (around €100) and again when we got back (about €70) which isn’t included in the above. This is because while there are supermarkets, they are mainly in big cities or on the west coast – we went about two weeks without seeing one. There are small shops in every village but choice is limited.  There is a limit on the amount of wine and beer you can import, but we weren’t checked (and didn’t see any other vans being looked in at the port), and a 55c brick of wine from Lidl is worth around 40 – 50dh (€4 to 5) in bartering terms, so worthwhile to have plenty in stock.
To keep in touch we spent €18.95 on a 3G dongle from Maroc Telecom, which gave us unlimited internet for a month because our vodaphone data traveller would have been an extra £5 a day to use.
2 replies
  1. george ottley says:

    My wife and i are hoping to travel to morocco in April 2014 and your info is a great help. Can you tell me how you brought your insurance in Tangier?
    thanks George Ottley

    Reply
    • Jason says:

      Hi George

      I’m jealous! One day we will make a chance to go back.

      At Tanger Med port, once you have been through immigration and customs, there is a row of cabins. Look for the one with an ‘assurance’ sign and go see them. There is lots of parking. Park somewhere where you can point to your van, so they can see what it is, although they are very familiar with camping cars going through there. You’ll need your carte gris (v5c), and a fistful of Euros. It’s much cheaper to get a Green Card from your EU/UK insurer if they will issue one, plus the local insurance is 3rd party only (as far as we could tell).

      Note this is Tanger Med, not old Tangiers, I don’t know if there is an assurance office there. Also if you head to the Cueta Spanish enclave, I couldn’t find any mention of an assurance office at the border post, so you’d have to go through into Morocco and then find someone at the next town to sell you insurance.

      Shameless plug: there’s much more info here:

      http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B007MFDSEG

      Have a fabulous time guys, Jay

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.