Morocco Desert Explorer 7D/6N

Customer Reviews

• TK

  Tim

  · August 24th, 2018
  My husband and I took the 7 day Morocco Desert Explorer tour with Bamba, and we have a love/hate relationship with the company after that. The hate part comes from the actual tour, as you'll see in our summary below we encountered so many issues that could have been prevented if the company Bamba outsourced their tour to - Rouge Travel - actually had done their job of taking care of their guests. They didn't, and our honeymoon turned into a nightmare rather quickly - double bookings, missed bookings, bed bugs, rude guides, terrible accommodations - you name it. The love part comes from customer service that followed when we sent our review to Bamba after the trip. They seemed apologetic and disappointed we had such a horrible experience, and gave us a partial refund for our troubles. Unfortunately it doesn't really change the fact that our honeymoon was ruined, and we sure hope that after our review Bamba books a different tour operator in Morocco, one that actually cares about their guests. Now onto the tour itself. Where to begin? To say we had a disappointing experience is a gross understatement, as at times the best way we could describe it is horrific. There wasn't a single day in our tour where we didn't run into an issue. When we got to the airport arrivals area there was no one holding a sign with our name on it. The only way we managed to find our driver is when we saw Bamba on someone's sign, but it had someone else's name on it, not ours. Thank goodness at least it said Bamba or we would never have found who to talk to amongst a hundred people holding up signs. This is a minor detail, the real trouble started as soon as we got to our "hotel". First of all, the 3 star hotels we paid for in our package were hostels or small riads half of the time (in Marrakesh and Fez). The rooms were private, but with thin walls and outside noise easily heard in the rooms. When we pay for a 3 star hotel, we expect a room in a real hotel, not a hostel. Before we arrived in Marrakesh, we had a full communication with a few Bamba representatives via Tour Radar chat that we would be arriving a day early and we want to have an extra night booked at the hotel, so we just need the hotel name. We agreed with Bamba that we will book an extra night ourselves. Bamba initially offered to book it for us for 100 USD for two people, which is a ridiculous rate considering that the actual price we paid through Expedia was about 40 USD. That wasn't even the real issue. Once we got dropped off at the Riad Jennah Rouge hostel, we were immediately told that we owe a balance of 45 EUR for the room Bamba had booked on our behalf. A young gentleman at the hotel proceeded to explain to us that a room was already booked under our name, and we proceeded to tell him that we ourselves booked a room through Expedia. So now there were two rooms under our name and he was confused what to do about it. He wanted us to cancel our Expedia booking (which was not eligible for cancellation) and pay the 45 EUR, which is more than what we paid on Expedia for the same room. We insisted that we never asked for the room to be booked for us and that it was booked without our authorization and we will not pay for that room. He stared calling someone to clear things up, and passed the phone off to us. The woman on the phone first said yes when we asked if we are talking to Bamba. But she wasn't from Bamba, she was either a manager of the hostel or a representative from Rouge Travel, the agency Bamba booked our tour with. We are still not sure. She was rude on the phone, ignoring our explanations about the situation and proceeded to tell us it is our fault that we booked two rooms and that we must pay for both. We realized that it was pointless talking to her and told her we will try to contact Bamba through their WhatsApp number. When we tried messaging Bamba no one replied to us right away even though the message was read. We then called. Someone got back to us saying they will look into it and get back to us that day. No one did. No one called back. Thankfully the young gentleman at the hostel let us check into our room so we could finally rest. That room, by the way, was extremely smelly for the next three days. It reeked of sewage as the septic system probably hasn't been updated in decades. We would not recommend Riad Jenna Rouge for that reason. The next day we got a message on Tour Radar from a Bamba representative, who also misunderstood the situation and insisted that Bamba never booked a room for us as per our instruction (which is true, that is the whole point) and that we must pay for the room ourselves. He didn't understand that we did book it ourselves and we already paid and that the hostel wanted to charge us for a second room which Bamba booked without our authorization. So we had to explain ourselves again in the Tour Radar chat. He took another two days to reply where he finally understood what happened and apologized. In the meantime we had to be kept in suspense about what is going to happen with these double bookings, which was stressful. In Marrakesh, according to the electronic itinerary Bamba sent us, we were supposed to get a tour guide pick us up at 9am for a walking tour of Marrakesh. No one came at 9am. The gentleman that works at the hostel saw us waiting for someone and started calling Rouge Travel to ask what's going on. They said some will be there in 15 min. In about 20 min a tour guide came and proceeded to sit down at our table and start eating our breakfast food without asking us. He walked us out of the hostel, making it look like we're starting the tour right then, but waiting for the hostel boy to close the door. As soon as the boy closed the door, he turned us around and knocked on a place next door, where he apparently knew the owner and proceeded to sit down for another breakfast with him while we waited on the side. After he was done we finally started the tour. The guide mentioned a couple of places that we would visit on tour, but he failed to have the full list of what Bamba promised on the tour. I went over that list and it looked like he never even planned to take us to most of those places. He dismissed visiting places like Badi Palace and Saadian Tombs saying there is not much to see, as well Medersa Ben-Youssef (but he said that was closed for restorations, so that's not his fault). He did take us to a garden that was not on the itinerary. At Bahia Palace and Museum of Marrakesh he barely gave us any explanation expected from a tour guide, and basically just told us to walk around ourselves. He also took us to a couple of places where he gets commission if we buy something, even though we told him that we are not interested in shopping. He tried talking us into buying some souvenirs (ironically the staff at these shops were not aggressive in selling, but he was very insistent we buy something). When he realized there is no money to be made with us, he quickly finished the tour. He thought we would pay him for the tour but we said the tour was already paid for by Bamba. We tried to be nice despite the fact that he barely did any work and gave him a tip of 20 dirham. He proceed to tell us that it's nothing and we owe him more. We had to give me another 20 so he would leave us alone. The following morning we got picked up and transferred to a minibus with a few more people and proceeded to drive out of Marrakesh on our way to Dades Gorges. The bus had air conditioning, but it was so low on cooling that a guy sitting at the back of the bus could not bear the heat, and had to sit on the floor at the front to get some air. When our group got dropped off at Ait Benhaddou, it was close to 50 degrees outside. A tour guide started leading us through this heat and stopping every 5 min to talk about what movies were shot there. Because the temperatures were so high it would have made more sense to tell us the backstory while we still had shade before we started the 20 min hike up the hill. When the tour is done in such high temperatures, it's a good safety precaution to hand out water before these tours, which they didn't. We've done low cost tours in Thailand and even there the company provides water to make sure no one gets a heatstroke. Again, this was a minor inconvenience compared to what was waiting for us when we got to a hotel in Ourzazate - Auberges des Gorges du Dades. This hotel, by the way, was not listed on our itinerary provided by Bamba, all the itinerary said was "guesthouse". Had we known in advance where they were going to leave us and saw the reviews on tripadvisor, we would never have agreed! When we got dropped off for the night at this hotel, we were excited that finally it was a real hotel with a room that didn't smell like sewage. Our excitement didn't last long. About an hour into our sleep we got woken up by the sound of bugs crawling on us in our bed. When we turned on the light our bed was crawling with bed bugs (some the size of a dime) and was covered in spots of blood, our blood because some of them must have been squished by us in our sleep. This was nothing short of a nightmare to wake up to. We took a video of this and quickly packed our stuff. We went to the reception explaining what happened. They asked if the we had our window open. Of course we had our window open, our room didn't have air conditioning and it was sweltering inside. They reception staff tried to pass the bugs of something that must have crawled into the window. We are not idiots, we know these creatures live in the mattress, and the size of them was so big that they must have been living there for months. The staff tried to tell us this is "normal", but in no sane person's mind having a bed full of bed bugs is normal. They changed us to another room where we tried to get some sleep, but it was extremely hard as we were paranoid it would happen again. Now, having looked this place up on trip advisor after, you see a review that clearly indicates that the place has a bed bug problem (this review is from 2014, that's how long the bed bugs have been living there!!!). This hellhole should never have been booked as part of the tour to begin with. It is a direct responsibility of the tour company to book us safe and clean places to stay in, and for Bamba and Rouge Travel to put their guests into a place known to have bed bugs is completely unacceptable. The psychological distress that followed us for the rest of the trip is just as bad is the physical pain and discomfort that was caused by the bed bugs. The next day the bug bites started to show on our bodies, including our legs, arms, back and even our faces were covered in huge, extremely itchy bites. It was excruciating, we never wanted to get on a plane to get home so much. But our dream was to visit the Sahara Desert, so we did our best to calm down. We did enjoy our camel ride and we were very excited when we realized we have a private tent with a bathroom and shower and a clean bed. Honestly, this desert camp had the nicest accommodations from the entire week. The only downside was that it didn't have a fan or air conditioning and it was almost impossible to sleep at night due to the extreme heat. And with our bodies covered with itchy bites, you can only imagine how comfortable we could get. Next day, thankfully we did not have any accidents while riding the camels back to the civilization, although the way the camel gets up can easily topple you over if you are not careful. We heard from another couple later that one of them fell off the camel and she was blamed for the accident, rather then being helped. There should be some sort of safety briefing for the proper positioning of your body before you get on the camel. We're just glad it didn't happen to us. Once we got back to where our driver dropped us off the night before, we were told to wait for our taxi. Now, this was a nice bonus as the itinerary said we were supposed to take a bus back by ourselves. (Side note, there were misleading instructions in the itinerary, where one paragraph told you to wait at the bus station for arranged pick up, and immediately after instructions said that we must make our own way to the riad. If we had to take the bus, we wouldn't know which instructions to follow). Our pleasant surprise, however, didn't last very long. The driver we got was completely reckless, speeding a dangerous amount, especially around corners where you couldn't possibly be safe driving at that speed when you can't see what's around the bend. He proceeded to honk at single women walking down the road, and would look around or down at his cell phone instead of actually looking at the road. At one point he didn't see that the traffic ahead was slowing down and breaking, so if we hadn't yelled "watch out" at the last second, he would have crashed us into the car ahead. There were a few close calls like this until he finally caught up to his buddy ahead. We feared for our lives until then. We don't care what he does outside of work, but when you're driving a car full of passengers, you better be careful not to endanger their lives, which he totally did. When we got to Fez it took awhile for him to figure out where to drop us off. He finally did, and a worker from the riad (not a 3 star hotel we payed for) walked us back to the riad. When we arrived there he said that there was no registration under our name. Honestly, after a week of this [obscenity] I'm surprised we didn't lose it. But it wasn't his fault. Once again Bamba and Rogue Travel dropped the ball. Instead of double booking like what happened in the first hostel, we now had no booking whatsoever. It took a few hours for the riad worker to sort out the mess. We were lucky that they actually had a room open considering the riad could have been full and we didn't have a booking. After breakfast we got picked up by a driver for a day tour. In our itinerary for the day that Bamba sent us, it said that English speaking driver and entrance fees are included. Of course the driver did not speak any English. And we had to pay for entrance fees. And the last stop where he took us - Bab Mansour in Meknes - we got told that the place is closed for restoration (does the driver not know such things beforehand?). It's the only place he took us in Meknes before we begged to stop for lunch. We were starving by then and the driver seemed to have no plans to make a stop for food until we asked someone on the street who spoke English to help us translate to the driver that we must eat. He left us by the restaurant near those gates, which was extremely expensive by Moroccan standards, even the overpriced food on other stops during this tour was not as expensive as this restaurant. We were so hungry by then that we had no choice. Finally this trip came to an end, but not before a final suprise. Before we checked out we were basically sat down by the workers at this riad and forced to write them a 5 star review as they stood over our heads telling us how many stars to give them and only to write nice things. Apparently this is how these places get good reviews, either through all fake reviews by their relatives, or through forcing their guests to write fake reviews before they check the guests out. Needless to say, we couldn't wait to get the [obscenity] out of this riad and out of this country. We never ever want to be back, and definitely would never recommend Bamba as long as they book their Moroccan tours through Rouge Travel. If you do go to Morocco, keep in mind that it is not a magical exotic country one imagines. There are nice people and places, yes, but also pushy and aggressive people that just want your money and might even try to rob you (we had a close call with that). The old parts of the cities are dirty and smell of urine. There is garbage everywhere and many places are completely unsanitary. The food gets repetitive once you taste tagine a couple of times, and it's not a super tasty dish you'll dream about after, at least in our experience. In short, if you want to save money and risk the conditions we faced, you're still better off booking with the companies directly in Morocco upon your arrival. And if you want to avoid a nightmare trip, we'd suggest booking a reputable company that doesn't outsource their tours and has an actual guide with you the whole journey. This way they can address any issues you have on the trip as they come up and you're not forced to deal with guides or drivers that cannot understand you. **Original review was edited to remove obscenities.**
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  Bamba Travel commented on this review

  Dear Tim, Thank you for sending us your comments and I want to extend our sincerest apologies for the experience that you had. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention so we can continue to improve our... Show more
  Trip date: July 2018
• WK

  Wendy

  · February 20th, 2018
  My friend and I had a great time on our trip and appreciated the combination of planned and personalized events. Our primary complaint is that there were a few things that were not quite as described in our pre-travel paperwork or were not explained well enough. Overall, the things I liked: great variety and selection of events. Marrakech had lots of flight options so a good place to start, Fes is an interesting and fun city, the desert stops were fascinating and a great contrast from city life. The itinerary was packed, but this is what we expected from a trip of only 1 week. Everyone we interacted with was extremely friendly and helpful. The tours they arranged were very educational. The bus transport during the desert tour was comfortable. Drivers were for the most part safe and cautious. Accommodations were very nice, although they were not heated! For anyone traveling during the colder winter months, be aware that if there is no heat inside your hotel/riad it's absolutely freezing. Communication with Tourradar before the trip was easy and prompt, and having a Whatsapp contact with the local tour company made it easy to communicate about small changes along the way (delayed flight, etc.). What I didn't like: it was not entirely clear ahead of time how the individual pieces of the trip were going to connect. Everything went smoothly, but I would have liked to know ahead of time instead of just closing my eyes and trusting that we'd figure it out. We knew that we did not have a single guide and driver the whole time, but we weren't told how we were supposed to find the drivers and guides on different days (in this case, they found us, but we didn't know that ahead of time). It would have been reassuring to know this. Also, some of the things that we had scheduled on our itinerary didn't happen. There were 1 or 2 stops on our Marrakech day tour that we didn't do (Marrakech museum, university). We missed the visit to Ouarzazate entirely because the snow caused a long delay in the bus ride (not Bamba or Rouge's fault, but still was a portion of our trip that we paid for that did not end up happening). Our second day in Marrakech we were promised breakfast and did not get it. One item turned out better than promised, which was that instead of taking a local bus alone to Fes, as indicated on our itinerary, we were given a shared van with other travelers, which was much more comfortable. The indication of "lunch on your own" was a bit deceiving, since most of those days, either there was only one restaurant available where we were, or we were taken to a specific restaurant in the city instead of being able to chose. Maybe a private arrangement between the restaurant and the tour company? These restaurants were generally much more expensive than what we would have chosen on our own. In one of these instances, we were dropped off at the end of the tour at a restaurant and, when we told our guide we were going to go somewhere else (the tour had finished and we were parting ways with the guide), he was angry at us for making him take us there if we weren't going to eat there. This seemed unnecessary. Overall it was a great experience. Just a few ways expectations could have been set more clearly and better follow-through with what was on the itinerary.
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  Bamba Travel commented on this review

  Dear Wendy, Thank you for sending us your comments and I want to extend our sincerest apologies for the experience that you had. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention so we can continue to improve our... Show more
  Trip date: February 2018
• PK

  Paul

  · July 4th, 2016
  The trip was very good enabling us to see many fantastic sights throughout Morocco. The camel ride and sleep out in the desert was a highlight. The only negative I can find is the fact that they continually took you to restaurants that tried to sell you three course meals at inflated prices. Obviously someone was getting a cut out of the profits. We just wanted to try typical Moroccan food.
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  Bamba Travel commented on this review

  Hi Paul, Thank you for choosing to travel with us and for posting such a positive review on TourRadar. We are so glad you enjoyed your trip to Morocco and seeing the fantastic sights, riding a camel, and sleeping out in the desert. Morocco is such a... Show more
  Trip date: June 2016