Ourika Valley, Oukaimeden, Sidi Fares, Asni, LallaTakerkoust Lake

This is a marvellous trip during which you will discover the most spectacular valleys of the area.

Your Arib Voyages/ Arib Travels guide will pick you up at 9 a.m, from your hotel or riad, and leaving Marrakech, east of the city through the Bab Ighli, one of the city’s 19 gates, you will travel across the Haouz plains at the foot of the Atlas mountains and up the Ourika Valley.

You’ll travel towards Khemis ait Moussa, but stopping every now and then to enjoy the spectacular scenery and to watch the Ourika River, far below, winding its way through the fruit trees and fields of the fertile Haouz plains towards the heart of the Anti Atlas.

Or you may wish to examine and admire the earth architecture of the pisé houses in the Berber villages, which seem to merge with the mountainside. The houses are similar to adobe houses found in parts of southern America and are built of bricks of rammed earth.

After Khemis, you will go through the ancient little village of Aghbalou, famous for its brick mosque with a crazy-paving style façade, and taking the road to Oukaimeden, you will continue to climb upwards until you leave the main road at an altitude of over 2650 meters.

Then you will follow an ancient, partly paved Berber track through an alternately lush or arid landscape against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains until you reach Sidi Fares, a small Berber village where you will be welcomed by a village family and treated to  a genuine Berber lunch and a taste of the celebrated Berber hospitality.

After lunch, a different track will lead you back to the main road, towards the Kik plateau, and you will drive through small villages set in a picture-book landscape, particularly in spring, when the trees are in blossom, the wheat fields strewn with poppies, and the hillsides dotted with children tending their goats.

The plateau is stunningly beautiful; as is the man-made Lalla Takerkoust lake, with its impressive hydroelectric dam and barrage. Built when Morocco was still a French protectorate, the lake is over seven miles long and its barrage, almost 60 metres high and 350 metres wide.

Your return to Marrakech via Tameslhot, a beautiful little village with a considerable religious history, is just 40 kilometres away and takes about half an hour.

Itinerary:

• Departure from Marrakech at 9 a.m. in a private vehicle or minivan.
• Scenic excursion through the Ourika Valley, and offroad to Sidi Fares village for lunch with a Berber family.
• A Berber lunch by a river in one of the picturesque villages perched on the heights of Imlil.
• Drive to the Kik plateau and the Lalla Takerkoust lake
• Return to Marrackech late afternoon.

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