11-Day Fes to Marrakech Fossil & Mineral Tour

Your fossil and mineral tour starts in Fes. Your driver meets you at Fes-Saïss Airport and drives you about thirty minutes to the old city, then walks you from the nearest gate to your riad.

After mint tea in the courtyard, the rest of the day is free to rest or wander the lanes near your riad.

In the evening your guide joins you to present the itinerary: two days in the minerals of Midelt, the desert and the Kem Kem, the trilobites of Alnif and the High Atlas.

Today a licensed guide leads you through Fes el-Bali, the old medina, a UNESCO World Heritage site of thousands of lanes. You see the Bou Inania Madrasa, the Al-Qarawiyyin, the coppersmiths' square of Seffarine and the dye pits of the Chouara tannery.

After lunch in the medina, you visit the Mellah and the gates of the Royal Palace, then climb to the Merinid tombs for a view over the whole city.

Tomorrow the fossil route begins, so the evening is free for a quiet dinner in your riad.

Your fossil and mineral journey begins as you leave Fes and climb into the Middle Atlas. The tidy town of Ifrane, with its sloping roofs and gardens, is a short stop before the cedar forest near Azrou, where troops of Barbary macaques live among the trees.

South of Azrou the road crosses a high volcanic plateau. Around Timahdite you see the rounded cones and black basalt of the Middle Atlas volcanoes, which were active only a few million years ago, and crater lakes in the hollows.

In the afternoon you come down to the Moulouya plain and reach Midelt, below the long ridge of Jbel Ayachi. There is time to visit the first mineral shops of the town before dinner at your hotel.

Midelt is the centre of a historic mining district, and today you explore it with a local guide. At Mibladen, a short drive away, the old lead mines are famous for their red vanadinite crystals, along with white cerussite and baryte; you walk the abandoned workings and search the spoil heaps for small specimens.

Further on, you descend into the Moulouya gorge to the mining village of Ahouli, empty since the mines closed, where houses and galleries cling to the canyon walls.

In the afternoon you visit Sidi Ayad, where copper minerals colour the rock blue and green with azurite and malachite and fluorite is also found. Back in Midelt, the mineral shops display stones from across Morocco. Dinner is at your hotel.

From Midelt you cross the Tizi n'Talghemt and follow the Ziz Gorges south, through High Atlas limestones laid down in Jurassic seas and later folded into tight arches, to Errachidia and the start of the palm groves.

In Erfoud you visit an orthoceras quarry and a polishing workshop, where Devonian black limestone full of fossils is cut into slabs and objects, and learn how to recognise natural specimens.

By late afternoon you reach Merzouga, where camels are waiting to carry you into the dunes of Erg Chebbi for sunset. The night is spent in a mid-range luxury desert camp (luxury camp on request), with dinner and music by the fire.

Today combines minerals and the Cretaceous. After breakfast in the camp, you head south by 4x4 to the old Mifis mine, where your guide shows you baryte and manganese ores on the spoil heaps.

At the Kem Kem escarpment near Taouz, river sands and muds around 100 million years old hold the remains of large dinosaurs, crocodiles, pterosaurs and fish. A local guide explains how fossils are found and traded here, and you hunt for small finds in the loose rock and see engravings carved by ancient inhabitants of the desert.

On the way back you stop at Filon 12 and Filon 13, two veins famous for vanadinite, where red hexagonal crystals sit on quartz and goethite. The evening and the night are spent at a hotel at the foot of Erg Chebbi.

Leaving Merzouga, you stop in Rissani, the old market town of the Tafilalet, beside the remains of Sijilmassa, the caravan city that once traded with Timbuktu.

West of Rissani the road enters the Maider, a basin of Devonian rocks. At Latchana, a flat open site, you search for trilobite fragments where spiny species such as Dicranurus have been dug, and at Jbel Issoumour you see the small family quarries where phacopid trilobites are worked out of the limestone.

In the afternoon you arrive in Alnif, home of many of Morocco's trilobite preparers, and check in to a local guesthouse for two nights.

With two nights in Alnif, today is given over to the oldest fossil sites around the town, in the company of a local guide. Your first stop is a Cambrian outcrop, where some of the earliest trilobites on Earth lie in the shale, large and yellowish against the grey rock.

From there the tracks lead to the Ordovician beds of Jbel Tiskaouine, where rolled-up calymenids and flexicalymenids are found. Along the way you learn how fossils are dated, and how to tell a natural specimen from a fake.

The afternoon ends in a preparation workshop, where you watch the slow work of exposing a trilobite under the microscope. You return to your guesthouse for dinner.

Heading west from Alnif, the road runs along the foot of the Jbel Saghro through Tazzarine, where Ordovician sandstones and shales outcrop beside the road; your guide stops at a known layer to look for trilobite fragments one last time.

Nkob, with dozens of earthen kasbahs, makes a good lunch stop before you reach Agdz and the palm groves of the Draa Valley, Morocco's longest river.

The last stretch climbs over the Anti-Atlas to Ouarzazate, where you spend the night in a kasbah-style hotel.

In the morning you visit Ait Ben Haddou, the fortified village of earthen towers listed by UNESCO, crossing the river to climb to the old granary at the top.

From there a quieter road follows the Ounila Valley up through red and green sediments and old salt workings, rejoining the main road below the Tizi n'Tichka, where stalls sell geodes, quartz and amethyst.

You come down through the High Atlas villages and reach Marrakech in the late afternoon.

On your final day, a local guide shows you Marrakech, timed to fit your flight. You see the Koutoubia, the painted courtyards of the Bahia Palace and the busy lanes of the souks before reaching Jemaa el-Fna.

With a later flight, add lunch on a terrace and the Majorelle Garden. Keep your fossil and mineral invoices together with your hand luggage, as customs may ask to see them.

Your driver then transfers you to Marrakech Menara Airport, about twenty minutes away.