Cascades D'Ouzoud

With our first REAL free weekend approaching, I wanted to do something adventurous and in the hills. I wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle that comes with visiting cities and just hike around with friend or alone and breath clean air.

My new American friends Mike, Henry, Brittany, Asia and Maggie were all on board to visiting the Cascades of Ouzoud, the biggest falls in Morocco, and although a very popular destination at peak season, we would be able to enjoy it without the crowds of August. The falls are around three hundred feet high and funnel into a river at the bottom that creates swimming pools and smaller falls for miles down stream.

One big problem for students is figuring out how to get places with both convenience and budget in mind. I had been pushing the idea of renting a small car and packing all six of us in because of the ability to go at our own pace. As it turned out, it was the cheapest of three options we had which were rental, Grand Taxi, and a bus / Grand Taxi combo. So, with the rental we got what we were looking for, convenience and budget. The entire weekend ended up costing us 61 bucks US for transportation, gas, food, lodging, not bad at all and totally worth every penny. We understood the added risk of traveling on the road in a country we did not know, but the pros outweighed the cons. We left Rabat late Friday afternoon and immediately upon leaving the city and getting on the auto route we got pulled over for no other reason than for a cop to just hassle a group of six American students. We talked ourselves out of a 400 MDH ticket (around 50 bucks) and continued on our way. Police stops were pretty commonplace throughout the weekend and we became comfortable with them realizing the cops weren’t going to do anything to us.

We had a small four door sedan with two up front and three in the back with Maggie, the smallest, laying over the three or wedged in the middle between Asia or Brittany’s legs. The ride there took 6 hours. She was a trooper. The drive there took us through the outskirts of Casablanca through flat, rolling, dry hills and many small towns. At one point we were navigating through a bigger town Khouribga and the signs ran out leading us to our next checkpoint when I spotted a white sign (white signs are the ones that point out towns) with Arabic and read the name of the city we were looking for! It was an exciting step forward in starting to understand the language. The whole car confirmed the sighting and the spelling, cheered and we headed on.

The drove soon changed as the sun set and we entered the mountains of the Middle Atlas. Hairpin turns; dodging cows and boar, passing slower cars led us to an amazing overlook where the moon illuminated a reservoir. Dams are very important to the countries water supply so reservoirs have popped up all over the country. The sight was beautiful but we all wanted to get to Ouzoud and still had more driving to do so we pressed on.

Arriving in Ouzoud, we found a humble camping spot with two straw shacks in the back with a mat over the dirt floor. It was perfect. The owner of the campsite generously made us a tangine of tomatoes, onions and egg. It was perfect. We took one shack for all six of us to conserve heat and money. We had all brought heavy blankets from our families in Rabat and thankfully because the nights were chilly.





We woke up, took breakfast of bread, cheese and jam that we had packed and made our way to the falls. Basically the day unfolded into making our way down to the main falls, sitting playing cards at the base for a bit while we waiting for the girls to join us, and then heading off down stream in search of the perfect swimming hole. We hiked for a half an hour and found a nice hole all to ourselves were we hung out, ate, and even swam under a waterfall into a cave. We decided to move on further downstream and see what else we could find.







About thirty more minutes hiking later, we stumbled upon THE perfect swimming hole. It was cleaner water (not as muddy), deeper and had a thirty-five foot cliff. We spent the remainder of the afternoon jumping, flipping and swimming around in that water hole. It’s hard to go into more detail because it was just a great afternoon swimming around in the mountains of Morocco. The water was cold, but refreshing because of the heat.









That night we had a delicious meal in a restaurant with an amazingly genuine atmosphere. All the men were eating Fetor (breaking the fast) when we walked in; the owner kindly stopped his eating, insisted on seating us and having food prepared. We told him we wanted to wait until he had finished his meal, but he was very persistent and even offered us some of their meal. We generously declined, but sat and waited more the soup, couscous, chicken tangine and lamb tangine that was served. It was a feast and after the men started to play music and dance. Everyone joined in as Mike, Henry, and I enjoyed music while playing cards again.

We made our way back to our shack and fell asleep. The morning came slowly and we packed up for the drive home. On the drive home we passed a small village and realized it was Sunday (market day) on our right was a huge market set up, so we parked the car and walked through it briefly. The parked mules and donkeys outnumbered the parked cars about 10 to 1. By parked mule, I mean a mule with his foot tied to a spike hammered into the ground. We took a different, more scenic way home and made back in time to break fast with the family.