How do I take a petit taxi (and not get overcharged)?

Petit taxis are the little colour-coded cabs that work within a city — beige in Marrakech, red in Casablanca, blue in Rabat, and so on. They are cheap, everywhere, and the easiest way to skip a long medina walk or hop across town in the heat. They legally carry a maximum of three passengers, so a group of four needs two taxis or a larger "grand taxi." For anything inside the city, the petit taxi is your workhorse.

The whole game is the meter. The fair, legal fare is whatever the meter ("compteur") reads, and a short city hop is genuinely inexpensive. So the first words out of my mouth getting in are always "compteur, s'il vous plaît" — said pleasantly but as a statement, not a question. Most drivers simply flick it on. If a driver claims it is "broken" or quotes a flat tourist price, you have two clean options: agree a fixed fare before you sit down (ask your riad what a ride to your destination should cost so you have a number in mind), or just wave them off and take the next one. There is always another taxi thirty seconds behind.

A few details that keep things smooth. After roughly 8pm there is a legitimate night surcharge — usually around 50% on the meter — so a higher evening fare is not necessarily a scam. Carry small notes and coins, because "no change" is a classic way to round your fare up; if I am paying a 20-dirham fare I hand over a 20 or a 50, never a 200. Tipping is easy: round up to the nearest few dirhams, or leave the coins. You are not expected to tip a large percentage on a metered city ride.

For airport runs and longer trips the rules differ slightly — airport taxis often run fixed posted rates, and those are fine to accept. But inside the medina-and-city rhythm, "meter or agreed price, in advance, with small change in your pocket" covers ninety-nine percent of rides without friction. Once you have done it twice it becomes completely automatic, and you will wonder why you ever worried about it.