Three car tours with a real off-road feel

Three countries, three off-road tours: winter reveals itself at its most exciting.

The challenge is the same every year: where do you travel with your own vehicle, and where does the real off-road adventure await? For all three tours, you should allow a good three days, as the journey from Zurich to Andalusia, the Algarve or the Alentejo alone takes 30 to 40 hours. But as always, the journey is the destination – especially when landscapes and climates shift perceptibly along the way and you gradually slip into off-road mode.

Our top winter recommendation for Morocco is the Jebel Saghro massif, a spectacular volcanic mountain range. Temperatures are ideal: mild during the day, cool at night, but rarely frosty. The route leads across rocky tracks, narrow passes and barren high plateaus, where you repeatedly encounter Bedouin tents and the occasional dromedary. The Trans Morocco Trail aptly refers to this region as the ​“Saghro Badlands” – a blend of lunar landscape and weathered seas of rock.

A completely different yet equally fascinating off-road world awaits in southern Portugal. The Alentejo welcomes travellers with rolling hills, long farm tracks and cork oak forests. The routes here are less technical, but expansive and ideal for relaxed cruising. In the Algarve, the terrain becomes more dynamic: winding mountain roads, loose surfaces, small river crossings and frequent panoramic views stretching all the way to the Atlantic. Day 5 of ATC Portugal is considered, not without reason, one of the most beautiful off-road sections in Europe – diverse, demanding and yet perfectly manageable.

The third tour heads to southern Spain, into the arid ​“badlands” of Granada and Almería. The Gorafe Desert is an eldorado for 4×4 enthusiasts: deep gorges, eroded clay layers, kilometres of off-road tracks and viewpoints with seemingly endless vistas. In the Tabernas Desert – Europe’s only true desert – you feel as if you are on a film set among scree, dust and dry riverbeds; legendary Western films were shot here.

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