It starts as a distant rumble, a low vibration you feel in your chest before your ears fully register it. But with every step toward the village, that sound swells into something overwhelming, a roaring wall of noise that pulls you forward against your will. Long before we see them, the Cascades d’Ouzoud announce themselves.
The day begins gently. The sun rises over the valley in long, amber strips, the same valley we reached yesterday after a breathtaking drive through the High Atlas. We hand our laundry to the campsite manager and spend the morning doing exactly nothing: coffee, maps, and conversation. A deliberate pause before the afternoon’s main event. This afternoon, we’re going to the waterfalls
Through the village, past the stalls
It’s about a kilometre and a half from the campsite to the centre of Ouzoud, where the path to the falls begins. The road takes you through a village that has made peace with its tourists. Stalls line the route with scarves, ceramics, argan oil, and souvenirs in every colour. “Come in and look. Good price. Where are you from?” The chorus is warm, persistent, and entirely good-natured.
The restaurant owners are no less persuasive. “Lovely tajine. Good price.” We smile and wave them off politely; we’ve already ordered tajines for tonight back at the campsite. Worth noting: despite Ramadan, every restaurant in Ouzoud is open and doing brisk business.
Seven hundred steps down
Then the descent begins: seven hundred stone steps that carry you down to the base of the falls. With each level, the roar grows louder. The Oued El Abid hurls itself over the cliff in three cascading curtains, dropping more than a hundred metres, and the sound and spray together create something that stops you mid-step.
Partway down, the stones get slippery. Watch your footing. A man with a mule offers rides to tourists going up or down. “Take a ride,” he says with an easy grin. We decline. Our legs are holding up fine, for now.
The view never gets old. Every switchback reveals a new angle on the water, a new way the afternoon light fractures through the mist. And then: a rainbow, vivid and precise, arching above the pool at the bottom of the falls. We photograph it from every possible angle, knowing we’ll never quite capture what it actually feels like to stand here.
Along the steps, Barbary macaques pick their way between tourists with the nonchalant confidence of animals who know they’ve got the upper hand. They’re used to all of this.
Seven hundred steps up
Going down was hard work. Going up is harder. We stop every few dozen steps, hands on knees, catching our breath and still can’t stop ourselves from turning back to look at the falls. Even while gasping at the halfway point, we have no regrets whatsoever.
The walk back to the campsite is warm and uphill. We stop at a small shop for fresh bread, which feels like a reward entirely out of proportion to what we’ve done to earn it.
Tajine and a quiet evening
Back at the campsite, we recover from this exciting day. And then… an unexpected encounter: we spot Myran and Peter of Endless on Wheels, the travel YouTubers whose videos first convinced us to take our campervan to Morocco at all. They’re wrapping up a group tour through the country. We exchange a few words, laugh about the coincidence, and walk away with a keychain as a souvenir of the meeting. A small thing that somehow feels significant.
The tajines we ordered yesterday arrive at the table with tender meat, olives, dried fruit, and the slow warmth of cumin and cinnamon in the evening air. We eat with our German campervan neighbours, and somewhere over dinner we make a collective decision: tomorrow, we stay. A rest day at Camping Auberge Zebra. No driving, no climbing, no agenda.
We update our travel journal because without notes, Morocco blurs into a beautiful haze of impressions, and you lose the thread. The campsite has reliable wifi, so we catch up with our daughter and family back in the Netherlands and with our son on his ship in Denmark. The world shrinks to fit the screen.
Outside, night settles over the valley. Somewhere in the distance, or maybe just still in our heads, the water keeps falling.
Practical info
- Cascades d’Ouzoud: Morocco’s largest waterfalls, located in the Azilal province of the High Atlas. Free entry. The path from the village to the base involves roughly 700 steps; surfaces can be slippery after rain.
- Camping Auberge Zebra: a quiet campsite with good facilities, reliable wifi, and the option to pre-order traditional tagines. Highly recommended. Price per night: 120 dirham.
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