Morocco Uncovered

Morocco is a fantastic country and I truly enjoyed experiencing the culture and people. The trip itself had some great activities and add-on experiences (such as riding buggies in the Sahara and horse back riding). I feel like the actual itinerary for the trip is poor in that it leaves less time to experience each city and it mostly filled with driving every day. We spent so much time just traveling between cities we hardly spent much time in each place, only to maybe look at one attraction or eat one meal before either moving on or going to bed to drive out early the next morning. It is advertised in the itinerary that there is one long driving day (about 7-8 hours). This trip took over 10 hours total from point A to point B, and was followed 2 days later by another full driving travel day of ~7 hours. There was also little no free time for exploring or individual experiences on this trip, which is abnormal for most Contiki experiences and most of the travelers were very unhappy with this. I personally am a veterinarian (with a specialty interest in zoo/wildlife), and one of the reasons I was excited and supportive of the included camel ride experience is because Contiki's prior trip details come with a PSA advertising that they only use humane animal-welfare based companies and that the camels in this experience were humanely treated and regularly see a veterinarian. After being there in person, I can say this is false advertising and alarmingly untrue. This specific company (like most in this area) neglect their animals and leave the camels sitting out in the Sahara sun all day with no access to water. They are covered in dirt, urine, and feces and look so poor and underfed. I walked up to immediately notice a large corneal ulcer (extremely painful) in the eye of my camel and the eye was watering and the camel grinding its teeth in pain. The camels remain ******* so closely together they can barely walk in a line and are being dragged/trying not to be kicked while walking. At the end I asked one of the men if the camels regularly saw a veterinarian (I knew the answer), and he laughed loudly and said "Animal doctor? No." I was severely bothered by this experience and it ruined what was supposed to be one of the best days on the trip. During the last extended 5 day portion of the trip, our van broke down and we were stranded for hours, only to barely make it to the hotel and then be stranded for the day. With 2 travel days and 3 to sightsee on this portion, we lost 2 of the 3 sightseeing days and barely experienced anything (this portion added almost $1000 to the trip total) at all in this section. I was overall underwhelmed with the trip and would recommend doing the 10-day Morocco trip if you plan to go at all. I still had fun with the amazing people and our tour guides and bus drivers saved the trip. They were the best. <3