Ouzoud Falls – Morocco

About 100 miles (150KM) northwest of Marrakesh is one of the most popular attractions in the area, and possibly in Morocco  — Ouzoud Falls.

Many tours are available on TripAdvisor, Viator, etc to take you from Marrakesh, give you a tour, and take you home if you want to go.

The Ouzoud Falls name encompasses several waterfalls which allow the water running off the High Atlas mountains via the El Abid River (“Slave’s River” in Arabic), to drop about 330ft (110m) in a string of cascades.

There is an easy tourist viewing path near the top, although people broke or found ways around many of the security bars here to get better pictures. It is a bit nausea-inducing to go near the edge of a cliff with nothing between you and a several-hundred-foot fall, but nearly everyone was doing it.

There were many mills here in the past, which is how the waterfalls got their name. In Berber, Ouzoud means “the act of grinding grain” and there are still some small mills along the falls according to what I heard (I didn’t see any, but I didn’t hike the whole falls).

When you get to the area with a big pool, you can ride a boat to the falls’ base and get splashed by the falls directly.  You can see some of the pole-maneuvered boats in the bottom picture.

If you are in the area, it is well worth the day trip to see these.

Our trip was made especially interesting by the fact that a chunk of road along the river washed out so no vehicles could pass.  Our driver swapped passengers with a van on the other side and somehow it worked out!

Happy travels!