I visited the most advanced country in Africa | Morocco
Morocco I couldn't believe my eyes this country has gone from a developing nation to one of the most advanced country in Africa Morocco has been quietly reshaping its future from high speed trains to green energy large automobile manufacturing industry to advance port infrastructure and in 2023 it became the most visited country in Africa tallying with Egypt and attracting north of 14 million visitors I've never seen this much people Morocco will stage the 2025 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations in 2025 Morocco will host the AFCON games and in 2030 would co-host the FIFA World Cup this speaks so much about this northern African country over the next few days I'll be travelling through four different cities in Morocco exploring what really make them unique but more importantly finding answers as to why this country seems to be way ahead of other African countries as a renowned tourist destination I'll also be exploring some of the best tourist attraction and show you how you can plan yourself an exciting itinerary if you're thinking of visiting Morocco I would appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel and please give this video a like so more people can see this awesome story my adventure here in Morocco starts off from Casablanca Morocco's biggest city and the economic capital okay all right accommodation here isn't so expensive and you can trace it to the fact that Casablanca isn't a touristic city I'm just gonna be in Casablanca for two nights However i was told of a neighborhood called the Casa Finance City where property prices can go through the roof and in 2024 it was the most popular neighborhood for real estate in the Moroccan industrial city of Casablanca we are at Casa Finance City right here in Casablanca I'm very much impressed by the development I'm seeing right here in Morocco you guys are not gonna understand and if I say Morocco is one of the most developed country in Africa as a whole i don't think anybody can deny that fact man if you're looking for a two bedroom apartment yeah it'd cost you around $300,000 it's the regional Hub for you know businesses who are looking to set up um their headquarters in Casablanca or yeah in Morocco Casablanca is located on Morocco's Atlantic coast with a population north of 4 million this city is where young Moroccans come to seek their fortunes where business and creative industry prosper Morocco is the largest manufacturer of automobile in Africa beating South Africa that was previously on the number one spot two and a half million vehicles have been produced here since 2012 most of that manufacturing happens here in Casablanca Somaca Facility one of the biggest automobile manufacturing factory in all of Africa it looks like the future of automotive manufacturing for market in Africa Europe and North America will be made in Morocco and they are produce here in Casablanca as I drove through Casablanca the French colonial architectural style couldn't go unnoticed before independence in 1956 Morocco was a French protectorate while Spain controlled the northern region of Morocco that is why cities like Tetouan still speak Spanish while majority of Moroccans will speak French and then Arabic so behind me is the biggest mosque in Morocco and the second biggest in Africa the Hassan II Mosque at 9,000 square meters it was Africa's largest mosque and the fifth largest in the world but lost that title to Algeria just recently and then at the top there's a laser that points east so if you come here at night you'd see a green laser pointing east Mecca is located east of Casablanca and that explains why The mosque is built predominantly over the Atlantic Ocean and it's one of the many tourist hotspot in Morocco it's open to tourists but at the moment I think it's closed for prayers if you want to visit you probably you know how to get here in the daytime probably between 10 and 4PM I'm fascinated about how well organized and developed the public transportation in Morocco is I'm very impressed actually with the public transportation system here as a matter of fact after a decade of construction and planning in 2018 Morocco launched its high speed train called the Al Boraq Morocco has inaugurated Africa's fastest train the train will have travelling time between the commercial industrial hubs of Casablanca and Tangia the journey between the two cities will now take around two hours only the train travels on a dedicated high speed line and reaches speed of up to 320 kilometers or 109 miles per hour The high speed line was completed at a total cost of $2.4 billion and took seven years to construct if you're looking to explore different cities in Morocco there is no better way than by train so to experience this first hand I decided to hop on a train to the touristic city of Marrakech but I had to do a quick stop at the capital city of Morocco after a one hour train ride I arrived at Rabat Welcome to Rabat Morocco's capital rest along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean on arriving in Rabat I couldn't help but marvel how developed clean and well organized this side of Morocco is you see how develop it is it's clean is serene the grasses are well manicured the sun is good and they are like several tunnels, flyovers Oh by the way this tunnel runs underneath the Casper and right there is the tallest building in Africa right there the Muhammad 6 Tower is 3rd highest building in Africa at 55 storeys Rabat is known for its landmark that speaks to its Islamic and French colonial heritage like the Hassan Tower a building you almost cannot miss it's a minaret of an incomplete Mosque commissioned near the end of the 12th century this is the mausoleum it's actually a tomb where the past king uh Muhammad 5 was buried with two of his sons I wasn't allowed to film inside the tomb the interior looks expensive and it is manned by the king's guard I only wondered why a big building like this served as a tomb and why the guards are still protecting the corpse you want to give me flower huh free buy buy buy oh oh oh I thought she wants to give me flowers like I was about to say nobody give men flowers and a random person was just gonna give me flowers that would have been the cutest thing ever though so it is then time to visit the popular city known by so many people Marrakesh alright so this is gonna be my apartment for the next 6 days here in Marrakesh let's look around so this is the living room just here and behind me is the kitchen I don't plan on doing any cooking at my stay here I like the interior design it looks pretty so this is the room what it looks like so 1 bedroom 1 bathroom it has an open kitchen in the dining, living room internet in a very nice neighborhood but one thing I don't like about my location already is like the temperature here seems to be very hot 40 so if you're in Marrakesh I think I can get like a good deal with the owner for you you can book this place and stay so you can find all the details in my travel guide link in the description of this video Marrakesh is known for it's early morning hot air balloon experience and of course I wanted to try it out so the next morning I was picked up by 4:30 to the launch point which was about half an hour drive from Marrakesh towards the rising mountain they're just setting up the balloons right now before I sowed high over the timeless Agafay desert I was welcomed with a coffee it was then time to take off and in a few minutes we were high up in the sky just right in time when the sun started to rise I have flown a hot air balloon in Tanzania and Egypt but there was just something very special about this flight here in Marrakesh and now I understand why I was advised not to miss this experience after a ride I go to refill with the berber's breakfast here in a traditional Moroccan setting so we have some salmon some kind of bread yeah and yeah Moroccan bread I have banana jams and olives and then you have orange juice and this satisfy you the markancy no hahaha I ended that morning by riding quad bikes in the Agafay desert it was nice on my travel guide I will share details about how you can book this experience and how much it cost FYI for most of you that don't know I do have a travel guide PDF I made after travelling 15 days in four cities exploring Morocco travelling to a new country where you don't know anyone and don't have a fat wallet to splurge can be difficult a lot of people ask me how I travel to these places meet people and get things for cheap to answer all of these questions inside my travel guide PDF you'd find contact of the tour operators I use and the personal tour guides like the one you see my videos that would help you plan your trip and get things for cheap like I did you'd also find accommodation options how to book the trains the best areas to visit in each city the best time to visit and the strategy you can use to get cheap deals but more importantly I would suggest a perfect itinerary you can just copy so you don't have to spend days scrolling on Expedia or trip advice or looking for a perfect Moroccan itinerary look at the description section of this video to download the travel guide and of course the first 20 persons will get it for free if you use this coupon code so arriving Marrakesh the first thing that you're going to notice is all the colors of the buildings they are all the same Marrakesh is known as the Red City because of the color of its building this is the first thing you would notice here other than the high temperature of 45 degrees so get ready to drink plenty of water the buildings in Markesh are painted in red ochre and even the local taxis to match the colour of the surrounding land also giving the city a distinctive hue also the buildings are painted in this reddish brownish colour yeah just like which you can see all of this yeah most of the buildings you find in Casablanca are White yeah I think that's also where the name is derived Casablanca which is White White White House kind of yeah to learn more about Marrakesh there are few places of interest I needed to visit so we are at the Madrasa Ben Yusuf the first impression entering this structure is that of magnificent the colours the light the richness of the details and materials used for the decoration of this Koranic school which at the time was the largest in North Africa this place served as an intellectual hub for students from you know different parts of the world come you know learn things about Islam science um art today it's a cultural site you know in Morocco that attracts a lot of um tourists everyday so what you're gonna find very common especially in the architectural design here in Morocco uh the repeating parttern and churches you're goning to see on the wall you're gonna find such you know inscription and architectural style in most uh you know buildings here in Morocco and it's very interesting to see like they are preserving that their native way of designing buildings which is something that I feel a lot of African countries should uh imitate other than looking too modern right and we should just learn from Morocco learn from the way that they are reserving and preserving all of these things native to them which is very beautiful look at the patterns a mix of like white, brown it's beautiful guys a few steps inside the chaotic and buzzing Medina you'd find the Secret Garden of Marrakesh but the Secret Garden which was built in the 16th century from the Sultan Mulay Abdullah it used to be a Riyad that was abandoned and then it was renovated you know into this beautiful space so he built this Riyad just like relax a quiet place that's the meaning of the Riyad a Riyadh is you know a traditional Moroccan home um with a garden and it's usually owned by you know merchants traders people from maybe the royal families as well the trees the plants the fruit shows you what a typical um Riyad looks like in the Moroccan you know society so how many people visit here a day an average number sometimes like 5,000 sometimes 6,000 person in the day 6,000 persons just come to look at the garden yeah guys come on mehn but a garden with history as we walked around we noticed a huge square i was told it changes its face as the hours goes by it is silent in the morning and very busy at night you want big one no haha bro what if this snake just bite you now it's a garden snake so it's harmless he's harmless eh they can bite but they don't have venom that's that's definitely not gonna be me no I'm not putting that thing on my body guys we are right here at the Jemaa el-Fnaa square in Marrakesh it is crazy a lot of people you have magicians trying to perform you have storytellers you have also like people selling arts and craft restaurant local market and also the snake charmers as well like yo it's a whole entertainment ground you're gonna find like Little Circle and this is like a performance happening on there so I'm just gonna go see what's all about get entertained, get some drink and just enjoy the night life here in Marakesh this place actually has an um interesting history because um from what I heard it used to be an execution square but then like over time you know it transformed and now you have people performing people telling stories snake charmers musicians all of that all of them here at night not just that you also have like you know people selling food selling you know um uh items whatever you wanna buy you you probably would find here there are couple of places I visited on a day trip from Markesh and I will suggest the same for you as well the first was to Ourika Valley it is a beautiful valley in Morocco that's a popular day trip option from Marrakesh located on the foothill of the High Atlas mountain here I learnt about how the traditional berber people live this is the traditional refrigerator this is like a refrigerator for them like a local one can I touch one of the drinks okay it's cold yeah it's cold the cool water comes from top of the mountain and the locals utilize it to chill their drinks it surprisingly works so how long to make something like this one day one day to make this I hiked up the mountains and we got to the waterfall and I was shocked and how many people came here to experience this as well Ourika Valley is known for its breathtaking scenery the traditional berbers village and many waterfalls the second day I embarked on a trip to ait benhadouu located in the foothill of the southern sloop of the High Atlas in the province of Ouarzazate the province of Ouarzazate houses the Noor Ouarzazate Power Plant at 510 megawatts this is the world's largest concentrated solar power plant that cost $9 billion to build renewable energy is big business for Morocco the country has the capacity to produce 37% of its power from renewable energy and it is targeting 52% by 2030 and much of that comes from here Noor Ouarzazate it is spread out over 3,000 acres the equivalent of 300 football field but what brought me here to Ouarzazate is to visit ait benhadouu impressive car which stands at the foot of the cliff and evoke a sense of having travelled back in time a striking example of southern Moroccan architecture so we're walking closer to ait benhadouu so the village you see it's very it's very old it's from 11 century wow like 1,100 years the key to ait benhadouu's importance is that it's a very popular stop to the route of traders travelling between Markesh and the Sahara transporting gold silver and spice one of the great features of ait benhadouu ksar which made it a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1987 is a standard of preservation and authenticity the Buildings for example have been maintained using original materials everything you seen Old Village like the materials is that is just come from MUD because tradition of MUD they have something very important like cheaper for work second reason is that Mud helps with cooling the house (like insulation) like in summer they make cold in winter they make different the only problem is that every one year or like two year three year lot of renovated restoration why because there is big problem from the rain so there's a lot of rain so that means so lot of work a lot of renovation ait benhadouu architecture provides a perfect set for films and TV series it is now part of the history of cinema both as a backdrop and a character in many hugely successful Hollywood films one of the most significant is the numbers of movies that have featured this uh village this location has been featured in Gladiator Game of Thrones the mummy and 20 other famous movies too exhaustive to mention and there in the river in this place in the river in 2012 there people use for Game of Thrones you see game of Thrones game of Thrones it for season 3 kallisi with dragon and first gladiator in this place also on the second Gladiator in same place it's with the actor with Denzel Washington and last three months ago there is other movie but it like Series it's Outer Banks outer bank yeah outer Banks like No. 4 Climbing the staircase yo the stairs are not easy how many steps do you know but the steps were created by UNESCO or heritage yeah for tourists because before it used to be quite difficult yeah so now this little stairs I'm not sure if you can see it very well but right there you're gonna have this is the new village ait benhadouu but we're standing at the old village so a lot of people have left the old village to the new village cause life here is a little bit difficult no electricity no water you know um no cooling system so I think it's majorly a tourist destination now with just five families living here my name Majub where are you from ait benhadouu I was born in Old Village if you're a fan of moving picture a few kilometers you'd find the Atlast film studio in Ouarzazate some of the big blockbusters have been filmed here too wow feels surreal to be actually where all of these movies are made man like it's crazy everything here is staged like from A-Z all staged and when they show you the movie you think it's like a real place but it's not real it's staged, look at this and this is a market place in adventure of Aladdin most Morocco movies Arabic movies is a market place here Atlas studio in Morocco has some of the diverse location within the studio walls in just steps you can go from feeling like you're in ancient Egypt to a Buddhist temple this area has become a very popular choice for Hollywood starting from The Lawrence of the Arabian in 1992 and since then it has been used for movies and TV shows like the Gladiator the mummy and Prison Break the studio is one of the largest in the world at over 300,000 square feet its popularity come from its reliable climate that can mimic variety of countries till today it is to used as a film set and I was very privileged to come here as my adventure ended in Marrakech I decided to visit the coastal city of Tangier the first thing you should know about Tangier is it is the closest points to Europe just 14 km away just direct in front of you over there you see Spain today is little bit foggy we cannot see clear but if it was clear weather we can see directly Spain from there 14 km away so for people who are in Spain and they want to visit Tangier or something there is a ferry actually at night you can even see lights coming in from Europe a lot of immigrants will travel here to Tangier to get into raft boat and sneak illegally into Europe most immigrants don't make it across alive and I just weep for all the bodies that has been swallowed by this ocean unfortunately some stupid people they think that they are more stronger than the sea but the sea is stronger than them but I mean just right there I don't know if you guys can see it but Spain so if there was a road it's gonna take you like 14 minutes to get to Spain 14 minutes yeah 20 minutes maximum your'e there Morocco is now a gateway to international market home to 22 shipping ports and the largest port here in Tangier called Tangia Med it handles over 100 million tons of cargo in a single year and that includes hundreds of thousands of cars produced in Morocco after 1 hour 30 minutes drive from Tangier I made it to the blue village of Chefchaouen built on a mountainside and a bucket list destination for me so welcome guys to the blue city the blue village of Chefchaouen Chefchaouen is a city with a special vibe with blue rays houses the whole city seems to be bath in bright light blue rays why is it blue is it like everybody decided to paint their houses blue it had a lot of Jewish people Jewish was living in Spain and they were they were refugees and they came to this village and the blue color for the Judaism for the Jewish religion something very spiritual and something very valuable and with time they discovered that the blue color in this hot in this weather in the summertime is making the the houses from inside cooler also the blue color is kicking off all the mosquitoes oh really yeah mosquito doesn't like blue colours content creators influencers famous people they discover this place they came over here they shoot they do a lot of social media things and Instagram and everything it's become very popular the people in here is very easy very easy going very simple they don't have big needs like other countries how many people right now live in Chefchaouen you have around like 450,000 I learnt that the local government still gives out paint brushes to locals each spring to help keep the town's look blue everything here is blue like I'm in front of someone's house there are several restaurants shops and hotels they even got rental apartment for tourists that wanna spend a few night here you know what the average price of like uh if you want a rent like rent for the night yeah so depends it starts from like 30 bucks $30 $30 up to $100 200, 150 depends how many people it depends if the property is big or not yeah on my way back I passed through the city of Tetouan nicknamed the White Dove of the Mediterranean Sea welcome to Tetouan guys all this city is painted in a white color oh really yeah and it was under Spanish colony for a long time and this world what you see over there this is a symbol of a freedom more than half the population here speak Spanish because it was a Spain colony before independent when people come here to Tetouan what are the things that they can do it's very famous by the summer time yeah the beaches, we go to the beach yeah a lot of water activities water activities jet ski boats yeah kayak banana the boat things like this why would local people prefer to live here in Tetouan and not Marrakech or Casablanca or Rabat easy answer because Marrakesh doesn't have a beach oh and the way that in Marrakesh is not the same way that here in Tetouan or Tangia yeah is very different we have here Mediterranean weather so you can never get boring from right also it's healthy why are the buildings painted white here why the white building is coming from also from the symbol of freedom because it has two colors the green and the whites and as you see over there all the building is planted in a green and white not only white but green and white symbol of freedom now understand why the beach is packed and full with a lot of people this is the beach capital of Morocco everybody's up there in their bikinis but for me I'm just here to see to explore take some photos I've never seen this much people in the Beach Mehn like I just wanted to show you guys what you can do if you come here to tetuoan you are in search of activities to do actually you can rent yourself like uh you can do kayaking you can get a jet ski that's the love like aquatic activities you can even do the group tours I think they are going to take you on the boat and for the ballers out there you can rent yourself a yacht to go on a a sunset or sunrise cruise or whatever but seems like this is where it's going down you see a lot of luxurious yachts and boats and everything and those yacht are private but in the summertime their owners they give them for rent to make a business but if you want for example to go for day trip it's supposed to be like $3,000 also we have these apartments over here uh beach apartments if you come to to spend the weekend or the summer or something you must pay minimum like $350 for a night yeah also you have everything close to you the beach the water sports activities everything you think about the restaurant the coffee shops all what you need is already here so like you are in paradise so we are at the point right now where the mediterian sea and the Atlantic meets together and is just right behind that rock so you can see like a lot of people come here to see that I spend the rest of my time in Tangia visiting several areas like the Medina and the grand soco in here we call it the Casbah the Casbah is a small is a Berber word because here in Morocco we are divided by the Arabs and the Berber people this is the whole this is the whole map of the whole area this is the whole map and in here if you see the grey I think this is the narrow streets alright so the narrow street which is making any Medina here in Morocco like a maze if you don't have the tour guide you get lost a lot alot of local people live here right yeah 20,000 local people live here then foreigners which is they come to do Airbnb businesses yeah local people they are living over here like this businesses we call them family businesses you find the owner living upstairs and he has a shop down he close whenever he wants even people here are very satisfied they are not needy like other countries they need Villas and all they are born over here they die over here and they feel very very comfortable with from what they have and everything my name is Hafad, I play music in the streets my Instagram is @hafadwcelma and I also drove through a neighborhood where the king live and you can see how beautiful it looks like you're in California after spending 15 days in Morocco learning about the history the economy of the country I'm already planning another trip this country has one of the richest of cultures that I have seen their native architecture is still very much reserved in the country the friendliness of people cannot go unnoticed and the rapid development is fast making this country, my most favourite African country please visit Morocco and when you do please download my travel guide link is in description section below or to the next episode I'll see you guys soon
2024-12-15 10:26
