Waterfalls, Shopping, and More Waterfalls

One of the sites that we knew from the get go that we wanted to visit were the Ouzoud Waterfalls. There were many day trips that leave from Marrakesh and head there, but the three hours each direction drive is made longer by the requirement to visit a local Argan shop or rug factory. Since all five of our group was interested in visiting the Falls, we decided to hire a private van to take us there. This was nice as we had it all to ourselves and didn’t have to stop along the way. The layout was a bit weird though with the two rows of seats facing each other. As such we spent a few hours staring at one another (when not all passed out from the languid heat).

Upon arrival at the falls, we spurned the unofficial guides begging us to take them on, and set upon the upper path. There were two paths, an upper and a lower and safety wasn’t the biggest concern with either. At the top of the falls (about 600 meters up ) there are signs telling visitors to beware of potential death, but no one stops you from walking to the edge for a peak or photograph. When you get to the bottom of the falls and realize how undermined the cliff ledges are by erosion, venturing out to the edge seems like even less of an intelligent idea; but by that point you’ve already defied death.

We were lucky in that our private transport beat the tourist buses by about 20 minutes, so we were able to get a few nice shots before the crowds became suffocating and potentially hazardous (they didn’t really pay attention and could easily have pushed someone over the edge…not really the way I would recommend seeing the Falls).

In an attempt to stay ahead of the crowds, we didn’t follow the traditional way down from the top to the bottom, but instead back tracked a bit and used the way people normally come up, to go down. This path takes you down a series of hundreds of tiny stairs, lined on either side by souvenir shops and restaurants that increased in price the closer to the bottom you go. 

At the base of the Falls, you can hop on a small barge (about 10 seats), and a local will row you as close to the deluge as you want. In keeping with our luck, we stayed ahead of the large crowds just long enough to get some choice shots of all of us near the point where the waterfalls meet the pools at their base, before the small pond was inundated with tiny barges. 

The whole area was picturesque with the verdant foliage, red cliffs, the white wash of the falls. The only ugly part was the water at the base; a grody brown that people were willingly swimming in. 

Even with our hired car, the trip took up the whole day.

Thursday was dedicated to more fully exploring the Medina and lightening our wallets in the souk. We visited the Bahia Palace and the Jewish Cemetery, avoided a few other “Berber markets..today only” scams to the detriment of the touts attempting to lead us merrily in the wrong direction, and purchased way too many souvenirs. 

The Bahia Palace is a large historical site built in 1866 by Sidi Moussa, the Grand Vizir (head of the government) of Hassan I, the Sultan Alaouite of Morocco. Visitors can wander through the small riad, large riad, and the small and large courtyards. Within these areas are small gardens, a hamman, the wives apartments, the harem, a small mosque/school, and a few other choice sites. A nice thing about this Palace was that there were actual informative signs in English (a rarity in Morocco).

We also picked up another American for a bit on our way to the Palace, as the maps.me app took all of us to the back side of the palace, which turned out to be someone’s private home. Steve, a biology professor from Missouri, got to hear about all the great sites to visit and scams to look out for across the country as we walked the half mile back around and to the correct entrance. 

With the foresight of knowing that we’d spend more money on trinkets that people probably don’t want, we decided to book ourselves on another day trip for our last full day in the city and the country as a whole. We and Mary headed to Ourika Valley and a small cascade.

Our day trip group consisted of us, Mary, a Canadian named Michael, an Israeli photographer named Shahar, and a young German (Lauren) and French (Simon) couple. Because we went the cheap route with an organized tour that gathers people from many different hotels, hostels, and Riads in the area and combines them all into one van for a very reasonable price, you pay in other ways. As such, our 45 minute drive to the Ourika Valley became a three hour ride with plenty of time to stop at a Berber village (where our driver got lost taking us to the tourist trap) and tour a home, have a cup of tea, and take some pictures (mandatory tips are greatly appreciated). Then it was on to an Argan oil cooperative where the manager seemed pretty upset when everyone in the group already knew about the products and no one appeared ripe for shelling out dough on things we didn’t need.

Eventually we made it to our true destination, Setti-Fatima, the last town on the paved road and the closest to the waterfall. Here we acquired a local guide to help lead us through the town (with many souvenir shops and spots to pay to take photos with traditional garb if you so chose) and to the small waterfall at the top. The path was a little on the challenging side with a mix of stairs and some slight bouldering up rocks and across springs. Our guide was good in cajoling Mary up the slope (as she had originally wanted to stay behind at the bottom and wait for our return), but he misjudged our group’s ability to digest bullshit when we arrived at the foot of the Falls. 

The waterfall wasn’t very big (maybe 20 ft, but it was still very pretty and had the cleanest water we’ve seen (clear run off). After allowing us 15 minutes to wander a bit and take photographs, the guide told us that we could continue up the path to a higher vista point that looked out over the entire valley and then take an easier route back down. 

Here is where he screwed up. Instead of just convincing people to go higher, he told us that this extra part and easier trail weren’t included in the tour we had all purchased and we’d have to pay him extra to guide us. Michael and I were looking at the path and remarking that we could just go without a guide as there really wasn’t a need regardless of the guide’s insistence that we’d get lost and wander for hours without him. As we watched numerous other groups head up the path (sans extra charge…we asked), we figured our chances were pretty good on our own. But, since it appeared to be an all or nothing type of excursion (no one else in the group wanted to go higher), we reluctantly followed everyone back down the “hard way.”

Even though the guide was visibly upset with us, he tried to rectify the situation by bringing us to a “good, cheap” restaurant for lunch, but again misread the group. Instead of pointing us to one of the restaurants that had lovely seating areas lining the side of the waterfall run off, he walked us through most of the town to the lower portion before leading us into a larger restaurant that he was probably contracted with. While the restaurant was nice and we were seated at a table near the water’s edge, the prix fix menu was way more than many of the other advertised menus we’d seen on our walk there and the restaurant refused to let anyone order al la carte . 

In keeping with being the bane of this guy’s existence, all of us, except the couple (who’d paid more when they’d originally booked to have lunch included) got up to leave and search out a better, cheaper, lunch. The waiter tried arguing with us to stay and even cut the price in half (what it should have been to start with), but we were all a little annoyed at that point and left to the waiter yelling at us in French “fine go eat shit elsewhere in town.”

“Shit elsewhere in town” turned out to be about 200 meters up the road at a small family owned restaurant and it was fantastic. I convinced Em to try a tangine with eight different types of fruits and we had some decent hot chocolate for dessert. The family was super nice, and the five of us thoroughly enjoyed our meal. When we meet back up with the couple they told us their food had been terrible; so much for the best place in town.

Our drive home thankfully didn’t include anymore cooperatives, but it did involve quite a few close calls with other drivers and an almost fight. Our driver almost smashed a cab into a wall when cutting across two lanes to make a right turn from the left lane (something that seems to be the norm here) and the taxi took offense and chased after us. At a stop light, the cabbie got out and started yelling at our driver, who tried to get out and fight him, but got tangled in his seatbelt and missed his opportunity. The drivers in Morocco are a mix of great (cause they don’t hit everything) and absolutely horrifying (because they follow zero rules or regulations, or drive without any common sense or awareness of what others are doing).

Mary, Em, and I rounded out our adventure with one last picnic dinner on the roof of our hotel. We wandered the aisles of Carrefour, gathered tasty supplies, and fortified with a bottle of red wine (Em and I) and a mug of beer (Mary), we watched the sunset literally and figuratively on another adventure.

Until next time…