Cascades d'Ouzoud

In a typical move, the University announced just last week that it would be canceling classes on Monday, April 30 since Tuesday, May 1 was (and had always been scheduled to be) Labor Day. (This is the sort of thing that I don't think I will ever get used to.) There was a mad scramble to schedule last minute vacations over the four-day weekend, and T and I, never at our best when required to make a decision quickly, were relieved when a friend offered to plan a trip to Beni-Mellal. Unfortunately, that trip centered around skydiving, and when the skydiving wasn't an option, everyone but us backed out.

In the process, though, T and I eventually (after several failed attempts at planning a desert vacation for the weekend) realized that the town of Beni-Mellal is not far from the Cascades d'Ouzoud, which the Rough Guide to Morocco calls "the most spectacular in Morocco." Feeling in desperate need of some time in nature, we booked two nights at a beautiful riad just yards away from the waterfalls, and T arranged to rent a car.


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The Bin el Ouidane reservoir, along the drive

The gorgeous blue river behind me comes from the reservoir.

 We headed out for Ouzoud on Sunday morning. We didn't get as early of a start as we had intended because another last minute decision that had recently been made in Morocco was to enter daylight saving time that day!

After a beautiful and fairly relaxing drive, we arrived in the tiny village of Ouzoud. It was raining hard there the day that we arrived, but Monday was a beautiful day. We spent part of that day exploring the area and another part sitting on the rooftop terrace reading our books.

We got the usual questions about whether or not we wanted to hire a guide, and men at every restaurant that we walked by showed us their lovely tagines and bragged about their great prices, but overall everything was fairly low-key, and people were quite friendly. It seemed like everyone spoke English, so for once, communication wasn't really a problem.

It was a wonderful place to spend a couple of days, and I think you'll agree as you look at the photographs.

First, the waterfalls themselves: I think we succeeded in viewing them from every possible angle. Even though there is some garbage at the bottom, and several rather ugly, makeshift structures have been set up around the area by men desperate to sell their crafts or tagines or tea, this was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in Morocco.

This was the view from the rooftop terrace of our riad. The top of the waterfalls is right behind those trees.

View from the top

The falling water made multiple rainbows, viewable from a variety of angles.

View from the bottom

The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Barbary apes can occasionally be viewed near the falls. Sadly, It seems that, since the book was written, people have been feeding the apes. This results in good photo opportunities for humans, and happy apes, but it won't be good for them in the long run.

There was a large crowd of people trying to snap photos of this little guy.

I don't know exactly what's in that wrapper, but I know it isn't their natural food.

We also saw a lot of interesting birds, many of which I have been unable to identify. But even a bird without a name sings sweetly…or something like that…

Our riad had a full-sized orange tree growing in the middle of the central patio garden on the ground floor. At night, sparrows came into the building to nest in the tree, and these little guys lived happily nearby (I think they are house martins, but I'm not sure). Their parents had no problem navigating the stairway from the rooftop terrace down to their nest.

I didn't capture its colors very well, but this is a Eurasian roller. They are large birds with feathers that are brown and spectacularly bright blue.

I saw several of these birds but had trouble getting a good picture. I've never seen them in Ifrane, and I haven't been able to identify them.

I think these are black wheatears. We saw them on a hillside near the waterfall.

This might be a female black wheatear, but I'm not sure.

The long drive back to Ifrane threatened to undo the relaxation T had attained on our mini-vacation, but we both agreed that spending the time and money to visit the Cascades d'Ouzoud was well worth it.