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To help you undertand more about us and our tours here are the answers to some of our more frequently asked questions 1. Who are we? Epic Morocco is a UK-registered tour company formed in 2005 and owned by Anglo-French couple Charlie Shepherd and Melodie Selvon. Charlie comes from an adventure tours background, having worked formerly as adventure tours manager in a London-based Latin American tour company. Melodie's background is in tourism sales and marketing. They live year-round in Marrakech with their young son Oscar.
Well, you’ve got this far so you’ve already showed some interest in the country. But in case you need more convincing…… Morocco is a unique country, located just across the Straits of Gibraltor from Europe but offering wilderness that’s hard to find in Europe. Add to this the drama and variety of landscape (from Sahara desert to cedar forest and snow-capped mountains), wonderful hospitality,excellent infrastructure, great food, thousands of miles of trails and jeep tracks, and a character and culture all of its own and you can begin to understand the appeal. For the more adventurous traveller the opportunities for discovery are virtually limitless.
On most of our tours you will be accompanied by a tour leader (usually British) and a certified Moroccan mountain guide. Our guides are trained at the only mountain guide training college in Africa at Tabant in the Ait Bougmez valley. The course is a six month one covering flora & fauna, astronomy, meteorology, anthropology, sociology, ecology, hygiene and first aid and mountain rescue. All our guides are English-speaking and are trained to deliver the highest level of service.
This obviously varies according to your chosen trip but each trip dossier includes a detailed equipment list. Generally speaking all camping equipment (except sleeping bags) is included on trek and on biking tours you can either bring your own bike or rent one of ours. The bikes we use are good quality, well-maintained mountain bikes with the obligatory front suspension forks.
Not at all. Our itineraries are graded according to their technicality and the level of fitness required by participants. All trips require a basic level of cardiovascular fitness (particularly grades 3-5) but they are not designed as military exercises. There’s always plenty of time built in to rest, take photos and enjoy the spectacular landscapes that Morocco has to offer.
As experienced outdoor adventurers, we appreciate the need for good food on tour, and on holiday in general. On trek we serve three “proper” meals playing on the strengths of local fresh produce. That means lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, freshly prepared salads and local delicacies such as meat and vegetable tajines (stews), couscous, kebabs and freshly baked flatbread and pancakes with honey, as well as carbohydrate rich foods such as pasta and rice and protein-rich foods for vegetarians. We ensure that each hotel we use during the course of a tour serves a different dish to show visitors a broad spectrum of Moroccan cuisine. On trek a stock of snacks are available.
Morocco has a developing tourist industry and small hotels and auberges with character are appearing throughout the country. We try, where possible, to use small hotels (from basic gites to comfortable guest houses) and to avoid the larger mass market places that are often less than inspiring. On most tours we try to spend a night in a very basic local house to illustrate how Berber families live and at the same time to give something back to the communities through which we pass.
Morocco is one of the world’s safest countries in terms of personal security. Crime of any nature is very rare and most visitors are quite startled by a friendliness and warmth of welcome that is becoming rare in other parts of the world. Moroccans take people on their individual merits and the vast majority pay little attention to world political events.
Morocco is sometimes described as a cold country with a hot sun. This generalisation is certainly true of the Moroccan winter and of mountain regions outside of summer. There are quite marked variation across the country and more detail can be found in each trip dossier. Suffice to say that the weather is generally sunny (Marrakech enjoys about 300 sunny days a year on average) and extremely pleasant!
Anyone between about 6 and 87. Although 6 year olds must be accompanied by an adult and 87 year olds require a doctor's note.
You must have an appropriate personal travel insurance poilcy. Be careful to make sure that you are covered for the activities that appear in your trip dossier. Many High Street insurance policies will not cover trekking, mountain biking and horse riding unless you pay a supplement.
We recommend Campbell Irvine brokers (our insurers) (www.campbellirvine.com) for annual multi-trip and single trip insurance. You can book with them directly or through Epic Morocco.
Just click through to “Booking Form” on the main menu, fill in your details and press “send”. You will receive an emailed confirmation invoice usually within 24 hours of filling in the form and paying your deposit.
Our booking conditions cover our cancellation policy. If you cancel having only paid a deposit you can use your deposit to put towards another of our tours.
In short, we require a deposit of £150 when you fill in your booking form with the completion of payment due 60 days before your departure date. You can pay online by credit card (Paypal) or by sending a cheque to our office in London.
We're aware that consumer protection is an important issue for many people. Once you've paid us for your trip, all funds/moneys are paid into a separate trust account. This money is not transferred into our Epic Morocco account until after the successful completion of your trip. And lastly the answer to the 64 thousand dirham question from our director.....
The most important difference
between Epic Morocco and the vast majority of its competitors is
that the company is managed by experienced travel professionals
who live year-round in Morocco. In a country like Morocco, where
unmonitored arrangements sometimes don’t go according to plan,
where services need to be constantly checked and improved, where
new exciting routes need to be regularly researched, and where tourist
services (new auberges etc) are changing so rapidly, we feel it
is essential to be on hand to keep control
of all these factors. We know the ground, we know the culture, and we've invested an enormous amount of time into finding routes that other operators don't know about in order to offer you the best of what rural Morocco has to offer. |