Can You Drink the Water in Morocco?

Is the Water in Morocco Safe for Travelers to Drink?

When you travel to a different country, conventional wisdom suggests that you might need to take care in drinking the water because your body isn’t used to the natural microbes present in the water there. For Americans, we’re always told not to drink the water in Mexico because it’ll cause some serious intestinal distress, which means you shouldn’t even have a drink with ice there because it can cause problems.

But what about Morocco? If you’re not from North Africa, can you drink the water in Morocco without any problems? Will your body throw a revolt if you try to introduce it to the bacteria present in Morocco that your body has never seen before? While your experience might vary depending on where you go in Morocco, for most travelers, drinking water in Morocco is safe, especially in the big cities.

When I went to Morocco, we visited Marrakech, Fez, and Casablanca, traveling between each by train, and I didn’t really make an effort to drink only bottled water or to brush my teeth with bottled water. For our first nights in Marrakech, I had a giant bottle of water available because it came with the room, so I just drank from that the entire time. I also brushed my teeth with the water that came from the faucet. I never encountered a problem with it.

You’ll also encounter a lot of tea in Morocco, and it would be a shame to have to turn down all that glorious tea because you assumed you couldn’t drink the water. Well, not only do they boil the water anyway before steeping the tea, but the water they use for drinking is fine, and you shouldn’t have any issues with it.

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What Do The Experts Say About Water in Morocco?

If you’re looking for an expert opinion on water in Morocco, most websites will caution you against drinking all the water with wild abandon, but very few will suggest you avoid it at all costs. Fortunately, bottled water is pretty cheap in Morocco, so if you do feel compelled to stick to bottled water, you shouldn’t have to take out a second mortgage on your house to do so.

Some of the more stringent recommendations even suggest avoiding ice cubes and anything washed with water (like the ingredients of a salad, for example), but I would suggest you only need to restrict the food you eat if you’re particularly vulnerable to an upset stomach. I do tend to have issues with my digestion pretty often, but I really didn’t have any problems throughout my week and a half in Morocco.

Like many recommendations regarding water while traveling, the general consensus of “exercise caution” is more than enough to keep you feeling well during your Moroccan vacation. Even if you have some digestive issues that you can trace to a meal or the water used to make it, you shouldn’t expect a severe case that will have you doubling over in pain.

Some travelers do have the occasional issue with their digestion while in Morocco, but the occurrence isn’t really any more frequent than in any other modern country.

What Was My Experience With Water in Morocco?

Although most of my meals were taken while in major cities, I did have some meals that occurred in very rural areas, and I will say that the food I ate in the sticks was some of the best I ate on the entire trip. So, if you’re worried about the food and its interaction with water during the cooking process, I think you can consider yourself safe as long as you’re sitting down at a reputable establishment.

For example, we enjoyed a meal as part of a hike we went on into the High Atlas Mountains. The food was AMAZING, just like the view, and it was cooked inside this tiny little house on the side of a big hill. Definitely a far ride up from the village down below. We didn’t have an ounce of problems with the food, much of which had to have been prepared using water.

Most of our meals were either cooked by the people in our riads or were at restaurants. However, from what I’ve read, you shouldn’t shy away from street food throughout Morocco. We bought two delicious iced fruit pops (grapefruit flavor) from a vendor, and we had zero issues eating them. We also bought a basket of strawberries from a cart while we were walking along the medina in Marrakech. Again, no issues, and we washed the berries in the sink at our riad.

Overall, I wasn’t really that cautious with my water intake, but the majority of the water I drank was bottled water, if only because it was convenient during travel. Not only were we provided with bottled water in our room, but our tours frequently offered us bottled water. We were also given coffee and tea on occasion. I highly recommend drinking as much Moroccan tea as you can, by the way. You can never go wrong with Moroccan tea!

All the Water Was Off in Marrakech

One interesting experience we had in Marrakech was that the water from the tap didn’t work for half of our stay there. On our first night, we had water running in the sink just fine for brushing our teeth, but neither of us took showers because we hadn’t done anything but fly on a plane that day. We planned on taking a tour of Marrakech the next day and then taking showers in the evening.

Strangely, the water wasn’t really working in the morning. A little bit of water came from the tap when we turned it on, but not much. When we returned to the room later that day, we found out that all the water in Marrakech was off because there was a problem somewhere with the supply. And it just happened to be over 90 degrees while we were there, which made things super comfortable for a few days.

The riad we stayed at was very apologetic and gave us a few gigantic water bottles so we could freshen up, which was fine. We were climbing mountains, hiking through ruins, and walking through ancient streets under the hot sun on our tours. We were going to get sweaty and dirty anyway. We just didn’t have an opportunity to get super clean after each day.

However, despite it being just a mild inconvenience for me and my traveling partner, it was actually quite a serious issue for the city because it was the month of Ramadan during our visit, which meant most of the city was fasting the entire day from sunup to sundown and didn’t have any water for cooking and drinking at night. Definitely not the easiest experience for practicing Muslims to endure.

While We’re Talking About Water: How About Toilets?

Since we’re talking about water, how about a few words on toilets? When you start traveling internationally, you start to realize that people in other countries have different types of toilets, and they might even have different sorts of septic systems or waste systems. In some countries, you don’t actually flush the toilet paper; you toss it in a bin that sits next to the toilet.

This isn’t the case in Morocco. Unless you’re using an outhouse (there was one on our hike up the Atlas Mountains, dug into the side of the hill), the toilets in Morocco function quite similarly to those in North America. They do tend to have bidets, which is cool if you’re used to using them, but you don’t need to do anything special with your toilet paper like you might in Southeast Asia or in areas where the plumbing is really old.

Moroccan toilets are also generally outfitted with toilet paper. There is no lack of toilet paper, even when you’re using a toilet in a place where lots of tourists are visiting. However, I do always bring some tissues and toilet wipes, just in case. It doesn’t matter where you are, you never know when you’ll encounter a toilet where the person who visited it last just happened to use all the toilet paper.

The architecture, history, and people of Morocco are all unique and amazing, but you’ll find things like drinking water, toilets, and all the regular stuff us humans use are really run-of-the-mill and ordinary. Don’t go out of your way to avoid the water, but know that if you decide to focus on bottled water that the bottles are cheap and easy to find.

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