Ourika Valley
10.00 we met the Spanish group at the café and headed to the taxi stand. We were 8 people, so we had to get two taxis. They agreed to 500DH a piece, round trip, including waiting for us for a couple hours while we enjoyed the mountains. Split between the 6 of us (naturally, Zak and Mohamed wouldn’t pay for being our guides), it was a good deal. It took about an hour to get out there, and along the way there was a stop we could take some pictures of some castle-looking thing that I don’t know for sure what it was, and also sit on a camel. Very touristy, of course, but one of my goals was to ride a camel on this trip, and since I wasn’t going to have enough time to do a 3 day desert excursion, this 10DH faux-camel ride was going to have to do.
We got back in the cab and continued to our stopping point before climbing into the mountains. Along the way, it reminded me a lot of Perú. The landscape and texture of the mountains was similar, and in some areas there were also the stepped agricultural plateaus that were iconographic of the Andean civilizations. Once at our destination, we headed into the mountains, sometimes which involved crossing log bridges and scaling rock ledges. It got rough in some spots, but all was well. And worth it, because there were some great views. At the top of the “main” route was a small cafe next to a waterfall that you could sit and chill at. Most of us decided to scale more rocks to get higher, but two of the Spanish girls didn’t think they could handle that, so they found elsewhere to chill while the rest of us continued. We ended higher up, near another waterfall, though Mohamed, the Spanish guy Alex, and myself went slightly higher to get to some snow. Now, being from Michigan, snow doesn’t really impress me. I’ve seen plenty. But, there was some novelty in seeing snow in Africa. And, it was also the first snow I’d seen this winter, since the only day it snowed in Holland was while I was in the airport a couple weeks prior en route to Ireland. Normally by the end of February, I’d have seen quite my fill of snow. But, I built a Moroccan snowman anyway. After returning back down, we met back with the other two Spanish girls and all had some food at a very chill café, and then moved to the riverside for some tea before heading back to the cabs and back to Marrakech.
Tags: Africa, Camels, Morocco, Travel
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