Three days in Chefchaouen: the blue town everybody leaves too soon

Two nights in the old town, one full day in the Rif, and enough left over to sit in a square and do nothing.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Chefchaouen
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Chefchaouen is tiny. The whole medina is about fifteen minutes across, there are perhaps a dozen streets you will use, and you can see everything on the standard list before lunch on the first day. Almost everybody who comes here for one night wishes they had booked two.

The reason is that the town is not really a sight, it is a place to be in. The blue is the obvious part: whitewashed houses washed over in every shade from powder to indigo, repainted often, with the wash carried up the steps and around the door frames. The rest is the Rif above it, the water running down through the town, the cats, and the fact that at eight in the evening the main square is full of families rather than tour groups.

Three days here is one day for the medina, one for the mountains, and a last morning at the spring where the town does its laundry. The day trip to the Akchour waterfalls is what turns a pretty stop into a real one.

Highlights

  • The kasbah gardens in the middle of the medina, with the Rif standing over the walls
  • Sunset from the Spanish mosque on the hill, twenty five minutes up a dirt path
  • God's Bridge at Akchour, a natural rock arch the river cut for itself
  • Ras El Ma, where the mountain water comes into the town and everybody washes carpets on it

Where to stay

Chefchaouen, two nights

The town was founded in 1471 as a fortress in the mountains, and filled up shortly afterwards with Muslims and Jews expelled from Spain, which is why the medina looks more Andalusian than Moroccan: tiled roofs, arched doorways, small squares with fountains. The Grand Mosque on the main square dates from the 1470s and the kasbah beside it from about the same period.

Nobody agrees on why it is blue. The oldest explanation ties it to the Jewish community, who painted doors and walls blue in the 1930s; others credit mosquitoes, or heat, or simply that it looks good and brings visitors. What is not in doubt is that it is repainted constantly, which is why the colour is so even and so bright.

Two nights is the right length. It is enough to see the town twice, once in the morning light and once after dark when the lamps come on, and to give a whole day to the mountains without feeling rushed at either end.

Day by day

Day 1 in Chefchaouen

Uta el-Hammam square, the kasbah and the hill at sunset

Arrive, walk up into the medina, and start where the town does. Uta el-Hammam is the main square, a wide low space under the red-brown walls of the kasbah with the Grand Mosque and its octagonal minaret at one end and a line of cafes along the other. Sit down first. Everything else here is within five minutes.

Then go into the kasbah, which is nothing like as forbidding inside as it looks from the square: an Andalusian garden of orange trees and fountains, a couple of small museums, old prison cells, and a tower you can climb for the best short view in town, straight down onto the blue roofs with the mountain behind them.

Save the last two hours of daylight for the walk up to the Spanish mosque. The path leaves from beside Ras El Ma on the east side of the medina and climbs the hill opposite in about twenty five minutes, on a rough but obvious track. The mosque itself is empty and has been for decades; everyone is there for the view back over the whole white and blue town with the Rif closing in around it. Bring a torch for the way down.

  1. 15:00

    Outae Hammam square

    Visit

    The main square of the medina, and the place to work out where you are. Mint tea at a cafe on the north side costs almost nothing and buys you an hour.

  2. 16:15

    Kasbah

    Visit

    Fifteenth century walls around a quiet garden, with a small ethnographic collection and a tower to climb. Half an hour, and the ticket is a few dirhams.

  3. 18:30

    Jemaa Bouzafar Mosque

    Visit

    Built by the Spanish in the 1920s and never really used, now the sunset spot. Twenty five minutes up from the east gate, and busier than anywhere else in town at that hour.

  4. 21:00

    Dinner on the square

    Eat

    Tagine, fish from the coast, and the local goat cheese that turns up in every salad here. The terraces above the square are worth the extra ten dirhams.

With more time: If you would rather not climb, the hill behind the Hotel Atlas on the west side of the medina gives a lower version of the same view for a five minute walk, and catches the sunset just as well.

Day 2 in Chefchaouen

Akchour: God's Bridge and the big waterfall

Akchour is a valley in the Talassemtane national park about forty minutes north of town, and it is the reason to give Chefchaouen a second night. Grand taxis leave from the stand by the bus station when they fill up, which in the morning is quickly; agree the return with the driver or take your chances on the way back, because there are far fewer taxis in the afternoon.

From the car park two paths lead off. Right, and it is an hour or so up the side of the gorge to God's Bridge, a natural rock arch high above the river, cut by the water and left standing. Left, and it is a longer walk of about six kilometres each way along the riverbed to the big cascade, crossing and recrossing the water on stones and plank bridges, past small cafes that have set up tables in the shade.

You can do both in a day if you start early and do not linger, though most people pick one. The falls are the better walk and God's Bridge is the better thing to look at. Take more water than you think, wear shoes that can get wet, and expect the last stretch to the cascade to be slow going.

  1. 08:30

    Grand taxi to Akchour

    Travel

    From the stand near the bus station, about forty minutes on a winding road. Shared taxis go when full; leaving before nine gets you the cool part of the day.

  2. 09:30

    The God's bridge

    Visit

    About ninety minutes up from the car park, steep after the dam and on the right bank of the river. There is a cafe on the rock beside the arch.

  3. 12:30

    Grand Cascade D'Akchour

    Visit

    Six kilometres along the riverbed each way, mostly flat with some scrambling. Allow four hours including the swim at the bottom, which is very cold.

With more time: The shorter option, if the long walk does not appeal, is the small falls about forty minutes up the valley: two kilometres each way on an easy path, with cafes and pools at the top, and back in town by lunch.

Day 3 in Chefchaouen

Ras El Ma, the old quarter, and the bus

Spend the last morning in the part of the medina people photograph least. Ras El Ma is where the mountain stream comes into the town, channelled past the old mills, and it is a working place: women bring carpets and laundry down to it, especially on a sunny Sunday, and there are cafes on the terrace above with plastic chairs and a good deal of noise.

Walk back into the medina through the Souiqah quarter, the oldest residential streets after the square, where the shops are still mostly aimed at people who live here. This is where the blue is at its deepest and where the light is best in the morning, before the day trippers arrive from Tangier around eleven.

Then down to the bus station. Buses to Tangier, Tetouan and Fez run through the middle of the day, and the ticket office is worth visiting the day before if you are travelling in summer.

  1. 09:00

    Ras El Ma

    Visit

    The spring at the east edge of the medina, with the old water mills below it. Come early and sit at the cafe above the water.

  2. 11:00

    Souiqah quarter

    Visit

    The old Andalusian quarter, full of small workshops and stalls selling wool blankets and goat cheese. Walk it slowly; it is only a few hundred metres.

  3. 13:30

    Bus out

    Travel

    The station is a fifteen minute walk downhill from the medina, or a very cheap taxi with luggage. Tangier is about three hours, Fez about four.

With more time: With a later bus, the Ecomuseum by the medina wall is a quiet half hour on the wildlife of the Rif and hands out hiking maps of Talassemtane, which are hard to find anywhere else.

Before you go

Getting here

There is no railway. Chefchaouen is reached by bus or grand taxi, and that is true whatever guidebook you are reading. CTM, the national coach line, runs from Tangier in about three hours via Tetouan, from Fez in around four, and from Tetouan in ninety minutes. Book the CTM seat online or at the station the day before in summer; the cheaper local buses take longer and stop more.

The bus station sits below the medina, a fifteen minute uphill walk or a very short taxi ride from the old town. If you are flying in, Tangier is the usual airport, Fez the other one.

Coming by car is easy and parking is not. Several small unsignposted car parks ring the medina, minded by men who will ask for around ten dirhams a day, payable when you leave.

Where to stay

In the medina, without question. It is small, it is closed to cars, and the guesthouses are converted family houses with roof terraces looking either at the mountain or over the blue roofs. Rooms are among the cheapest in Morocco.

Anywhere within a few minutes of the main square works, since nothing is further than that from anything. If you sleep on the square itself, ask for a room at the back: the cafes run late.

Two practical notes. The town is at around six hundred metres in the mountains, so nights are cold from October to April and many older houses have no heating. And there is effectively one bar in the whole town, with the nearest shop selling alcohol an hour and a half away in Tetouan, so this is not a place for a night out.

Touts and the obvious question

Chefchaouen sits on the edge of Morocco's cannabis growing region, and you will be offered hashish, repeatedly, in the medina and on the mountain paths. It is illegal, prosecutions do happen, and the only thing that works is a calm no, said as often as necessary without stopping to discuss it.

The other pitch happens at the bus station, where men will tell you your guesthouse is closed or being renovated so they can take you somewhere that pays them a commission. It is not closed. Walk to the address you booked.

Hikers heading into the Rif on their own should stick to marked paths towards Akchour and Talassemtane rather than wandering up the valleys behind the town, which is where the plantations are.

When to go

April to June and September to October are ideal: warm days, cold nights, water in the rivers at Akchour. July and August are hot and full, and the falls can slow to a trickle by late summer.

Winter is quiet and often beautiful, with cloud sitting in the valley below the medina, but it rains properly here and snow on the Rif is not unusual. Bring a fleece whenever you come; the town is high enough that evenings on a roof terrace are cold most of the year.

Chefchaouen rewards slowness more than any other town in Morocco, which is odd for a place that became famous through photographs. The blue is worth an hour. The other two days are worth more: the walk up the valley, the cold pool under the cascade, the square at nine in the evening when the day trippers are back in Tangier and it belongs to the town again.

From here, Tangier and the ferries to Spain are three hours north, Fez is four hours south, and either makes an easy next stop.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Chefchaouen worth more than a day trip?
Yes, and the difference is large. Day trippers arrive around eleven and leave by four, which is exactly the window when the medina is busiest and the light is flattest. Staying two nights gets you the town at breakfast and after dark, and makes the Akchour walk possible.
How do I get to Chefchaouen?
By bus. CTM runs from Tangier in about three hours, Fez in about four, and Tetouan in ninety minutes, and there is no train station anywhere near. Grand taxis cover the same routes faster and less comfortably.
Do I need to hike to enjoy it?
No. The medina, the kasbah and the spring are all flat or nearly so. The sunset hill is twenty five minutes uphill on a rough path, and there is an easier viewpoint on the other side of town if that is too much.
Is it safe?
Yes, with the usual caveats. The persistent hashish selling is a nuisance rather than a threat, and refusing politely and repeatedly works. Do not follow anyone offering to take you to a plantation, and do not buy, whatever the local tolerance appears to be.
Can I adjust the plan?
Copy it and edit the second day first: swapping the long waterfall walk for the short one, or for a hammam and an afternoon on a terrace, is the change most people end up making once they have seen how steep the valley is.