Morocco · tied for the second smallest premium
Chefchaouen
The verdict
measured — Geometry, sky, bed and the last leg from Tangier are all read. Read 18 September 2026.
Go here if the eclipse is a reason and not the reason. 4m13s in the blue medina, an early-morning event with the Sun low over the rooftops, and an eclipse week that costs ×1.2 an ordinary one. CTM runs four buses a day from Tangier for 55 dh — the last leg is proven, not just mapped.
- €46bed, per person, the four eclipse nightsBooking.com · read 24 September 2026
- 4m13stotality08:47 Morocco time (10:47 on Spanish clocks), Sun 38.5° up, almost due east
- 16.3 % to 20.9 %cloud in August, over the whole day15.9 % at totality, 50th clearest of 88
- Public transport confirmedgetting around without a carCTM, 4 buses a day from Tangier, 55 dh
What it costs
measured — Two windows on one platform: the eclipse week, and the same search a week later. Read 24 September 2026.
€92 for four nights, two adults, one room, 31 July 2027 to 4 August 2027 — against €79 for the same query a week later, same weekdays, same length. That is ×1.2, tied with Djerba and Tétouan for the second smallest premium we have measured; only Jeddah's is smaller. Read on Booking.com, 24 September 2026.
Getting here There is no airport. Whoever flies in lands at Tangier or Tétouan and covers the rest by road: CTM publishes four departures a day from Tangier, and we have not measured the leg from Tétouan.
The flight is the half that depends on where you start — see what it costs from your city →
The bed: Booking.com, read 24 September 2026. How we measure
What to do next
measured — Follows from the readings above. Read 18 September 2026.
- Book the room for the room, not for fear of the price. On this reading it costs ×1.2 an ordinary week, but availability can tighten even when the price moves little.
- CTM from Tangier, not a taxi you have to negotiate. Four buses a day, 08:15 to 20:15, from 55 dh, 2h30 for 112 km. Tétouan to Chefchaouen is still unmeasured.
- Stay in town, not up the mountain. The summit above the medina buys four more seconds. That is not a reason to move.
Getting there and getting aroundmeasured
CTM publishes a route page with a real grid for Tangier–Chefchaouen. Supratours, asked the same day as CTM's first, unread try, still answers with nothing. Read 18 September 2026.
By air
Chefchaouen has no airport of its own — OpenStreetMap shows none in the town or its immediate area. The nearest are Tanger Ibn Battouta and Tétouan Saniat R'mel, and neither has a page on this site yet. What either sells for August 2027 is not published here: a partial reading exists from 29 August 2026 (Royal Air Maroc's own schedule surface, Air Arabia Maroc's airport catalogue), it names no route for either date, and the pass itself says it is incomplete.
On the ground
OpenStreetMap around Chefchaouen shows one bus stop and one bus station, named simply "Gare Routière" — no rail, no named route relation. That is markedly thinner than the OSM coverage of the other Moroccan towns on this catalogue, but the station is where the service below actually leaves from.
CTM runs the Tangier–Chefchaouen line: 4 departures a day, first at 08:15, last at 20:15, 112 km, from 55 dh. Read on the operator's own dedicated route page — not its homepage, and not the marketing prose lower on that same page, which restates a different, older set of figures and is never the source for the numbers above.
⚠️ This is the grid in force today, not a 2027 grid. No operator on this path has published a timetable for 2 August 2027, and none will for months — summer schedules follow the season, and the season is not filed yet. What a published grid proves is that the service exists, is operated and is documented by its own authority.
2 operators asked, most recently on 18 September 2026 — 1 publishing a timetable, 1 where we never got through the door. What each one returned:
| Operator | What came back | Asked |
|---|---|---|
| CTMctm.ma/tanger-chefchaouen-autocar/ | publishes a timetableA plain `fetch` to ctm.ma fails on a certificate anomaly (a Plesk default host name in the certificate) — that reading, from 2026-09-12, is left below. Read instead in a real browser on 2026-09-18, the operator's dedicated route page for Tangier–Chefchaouen carries a structured info card: 4 departures a day, first at 08:15 and last at 20:15, 112 km, from 55 dh. ⚠️ The prose below that card on the same page restates different, contradictory figures ("2 trips available", a Covid-19-era mention) — dated SEO filler, not the same source as the card, and never the figure this site quotes. | 18 September 2026 |
| SupratoursSupratours' own site | answered, carrying nothingAnswers with HTTP 200 and 1,516 bytes of markup — 10 bytes of text once the tags are stripped. | 12 September 2026 |
What is still unmeasured: the return leg's exact stop inside Chefchaouen, whether the 08:15 and 20:15 departures hold on eclipse morning itself, and any route besides Tangier — Supratours has published nothing here since it was last asked on 2026-09-12.
With a car
A French licence is enough for a mission of a few days. France Diplomatie's advice for Morocco states that a foreign national may drive on a valid licence issued in their own country for up to one year from the start of their stay; only past that year does the visitor need to sit the Moroccan test or exchange the licence. An international driving permit is "vivement encouragée" — strongly encouraged — and not required for that first year.
GOV.UK's equivalent notice, written for a British licence, requires the 1968 version of the international driving permit alongside the UK licence and states plainly that "Morocco no longer accepts the 1949 version of the IDP". The two notices answer different holders and this page does not merge them into one rule.
No car hire firm at Tanger or Tétouan airport has been checked for a cross-border clause, a one-way restriction, or any condition at all: that survey covers Jerez and Gibraltar so far and has not reached Morocco. Nothing here should be read as those restrictions being absent — only as not yet read. ⛔ And no rental price appears on this page or any other on this site.
How we measured thismeasured
Where every figure above comes from. Read 13 September 2026.
When and where
Mid-totality is at 08:47:31 Morocco time (UTC+0), the Sun 38.5° above the horizon on a bearing of 095°, almost due east over the medina's rooftops.
| Where | Totality | Mid-totality, local | Distance from the axis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chefchaouen (medina) | 4m13s | 08:47:31 | 0.51 |
| Jbel el-Kelaa, the summit above town | 4m16s | 08:47:31 | 0.49 |
The last column is the fraction of the way from the axis of the shadow to its edge, so 0 is the centre line and 1 the boundary: Chefchaouen sits almost exactly halfway across the path.
The sky
- Cloud at the hour of totality
- 15.9 %average cover, Copernicus ERA5
- Cloud over the whole day
- 16.3 % to 20.9 %Copernicus ERA5 16.3 % · NASA POWER 20.9 %
- Days under 30 % cover
- 78.0 % to 81.1 %of the 264 days measured, same two sources
Chefchaouen · 28 July - 7 August, 2001-2024 (264 days) · averages of past years, not a forecast. The two reanalyses agree to within 4.6 points, which is why the range is published as it stands rather than arbitrated.
Climatology: NASA POWER · Copernicus ERA5 · EUMETSAT CM SAF. How we measure cloud
At the hour totality falls, mean cloud over Chefchaouen is 15.9 %, the two sources agreeing to 4.6 points. Of the 88 sites along this path we publish a figure for, that makes it the 50th clearest at that hour.
A reanalysis cell of this size averages over the whole town and the ridge above it. The Rif is steep terrain at a scale finer than either source resolves, and this page claims no local effect either way — not that the medina is clearer than its surroundings, and not that it is cloudier.
The bed
| Four nights, 2 adults | Average of the ten cheapest | Properties offered for those dates |
|---|---|---|
| Eclipse window, 31 July 2027 | €92 | 65 |
| Control week, 7 August 2027 | €79 | 278 |
We publish the average of the ten cheapest listings rather than the cheapest one: a single odd listing moves a floor anywhere it likes, and a floor alone hides how fast prices climb after it.
Booking.com also states this itself. On the day we looked it reported that 88% of the places to stay in Chefchaouen were unavailable for the mission dates — a share of the 572 properties its dateless town page announces, not of the 10 listings we sampled. Availability tightens here even though the price moves little: "unavailable" is not "booked", and it is not the same measurement as the price line.
What this does not say. One platform, one reading, one day. It says nothing about whether the price stays this close to an ordinary week as August 2027 nears, and the query is re-run on a schedule so a curve exists rather than an anecdote.
One line per source
- Geometry — NASA GSFC Besselian elements for SE2027Aug02T, reduced by this site's own oracle (`sites2027.json`, computed 24 August 2026). How we measure.
- The sky — NASA POWER (MERRA-2) and Copernicus ERA5, daily means 2001-2024 over 28 July to 7 August; exported 31 August 2026.
- By air — OpenStreetMap/Overpass for the absence of a local aerodrome. Partial reading of Royal Air Maroc and Air Arabia Maroc, 29 August 2026, explicitly incomplete.
- On the ground — OpenStreetMap/Overpass, 1 September 2026. CTM's dedicated route page (ctm.ma/tanger-chefchaouen-autocar/), read in a real browser 18 September 2026 after a plain `fetch` failed on a certificate anomaly 12 September 2026. Supratours, asked 1 and 12 September 2026, not re-read since.
- With a car — France Diplomatie, "Conseils aux voyageurs — Maroc", and GOV.UK "Foreign travel advice — Morocco", both read 12 September 2026. No rental firm has been read, and no aggregator was used.