Morocco Travel Blog | Hot Air Balloon - Marrakech
Uh yes finally got to go on a hot air balloon ride and I loved my first time. There's not many vendors for this excursion and it gets booked pretty quickly, so try to do it ahead of time. I did it 3 weeks prior to our trip.
When: Spring - Fall is best and definitely try to get the sunrise flight. They'll mention that all of them are sunrise flight, but pick the first flight so that you can see the sunrise in the air (and not on the ground)
Cost: 1990 MAD DH so about $200 a person
Who: We did it through Marrakech by Air
Duration: About 4-5 hours; they picked us up about 5:45 am from our hotel and we were back by 11 am. They actual duration in the air is about 40 minutes
Tips: It's pretty chilly early morning so pack a jacket, bring your go-pro and SLR because normal cameras will not come close to capturing any of it
My experience: It's worth getting up that early because-- my god once you get up in the air and witness the sun rising above the mountains, it is so beautiful! So let's start from the beginning, our driver picked us up with a bunch of other people along the way when it was pretty dark out and drove us to what looked like the middle of the nowhere for about a half hour. We thought we potentially were about to get killed on the way, but don't worry eventually you get to a Berber tent where they serve you tea, milk, and cafe like the most hospitable people on Earth. If you're the first flight, you'll get to watch the hot air balloon get set up too, which is pretty interesting. The fire to gas the balloon actually feels really nice in that chilly weather. It'll start to get light outside and they'll scoop you in, the basket can hold up to like 10-12 people. I suggest getting into the basket last so you can be on the outside and have an awesome view with your camera without people's heads in your way. Our guide was really nice. He may have tried a little too hard to be carefree and funny, but oh well it's better than some monotonous dude at six in the morning. Once the balloon goes up you can't believe how easy it is to just fall --haha yes that was my first thought. You're literally being held up by a balloon, 3000 ft up in the air, just floating. It's so tranquilizing and quiet up there though like you just really feel at peace. About 20 minutes in our guide pointed out the sun rising above the mountains. It's really pretty seeing a perfect round ball come up and the colors change around you, everyone pretty much complained how it was coming out fuzzy in their camera, but I think our SLR got a fairly decent picture. Once the sunrise is up, they bring you back down which is a little more fun. The workers have to pretty much tug it down with sandbags so that the next crew can hop right in. Afterwards, they drove us to a Berber home for tea and a traditional Moroccan breakfast there. The mother was extremely sweet and provided us all sorts of bread, boiled eggs, fresh fruits, tea and cafe. Then they'll drive about 15 minutes closer to the Medina to for a 5-10 minute camel ride. The camels are sweet and the Bedouin guides will offer to take pictures of you while you're on the camel. Pretty much after that they'll drop you home and you have a whole day awaiting you!