Oum Er-Rabia

For the past week, T and I had a visitor – an old S family friend from Alaska who is now living and working in Liberia. I'll call her MA. She's much more of an urbanite than T and I are, but she still seemed to enjoy our adventure this past Sunday which involved going to a place in the countryside that isn't even on the map. It's near the village of El Borj, about an hour and a half drive from Ifrane:


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MA, T and I went with our friends LW and JW. Their two girls rode in a separate vehicle with a couple and their three children. The couple have been staying in Ifrane temporarily while working on a documentary about the lives of Arab women (with a focus on food).

We drove to the source of Oum Er-Rabia which, according to Wikipedia, is the longest river in the country of Morocco. The views on the way to and from our destination were spectacular, reminding me of Wyoming and Montana and making me just a tiny bit homesick.

This looks like a pretty typical Berber home in the countryside.

The poppy fields are gorgeous right now.

The river itself is beautiful, at times a stunning blue that I had only before seen in the Russian River in Alaska. All along the river are open air shelters which families can rent for about 50 dirham (a little over six U.S. dollars). We rented a shelter that was practically over the river. The family next to us had brought their own charcoal grill and were making their own food. (In fact, a couple of times they brought us some of the meat they were grilling. Very generous.) We ordered our lunch, which consisted of several tagines, khobz, mint tea, and salad.

This picture gives you a sense of how close we were to the water.

After lunch, we walked up along the river towards the source itself. We stopped for quite a while to allow the kids (whose five blonde heads were fairly conspicuous in this place that is clearly much better known by Moroccans than by foreigners). Some members of our group walked on farther until they got to the bottom of the waterfall. I was content to hang out further down, watching the children play in the water and watching the adults watch them.

Kids (and some adults) playing in the water.

This gives you a view of one of the shelters available for rent along the water.

Oum Er-Rabia is a truly unique place yet, at the same time, it is very Moroccan. We went home late in the afternoon a bit tired, a bit overexposed to the sun, but happy. T and I are already plotting our return.