High Atlas Hiking

Today we booked another day trip, this time to do a little hiking in the High Atlas Mountains near the town of Imlil.

On our way there, we stopped at a women’s argan oil cooperative in the small village of Tahanaoute in the lovely Ourika Valley. Argan oil and the cosmetic and cooking products made from it are a big deal in Morocco. The oil comes from the seeds of the argan tree, which only grows here. Berber woman harvest the fruits and feed them to goats. Once the goats have, um, err, you know…the woman recollect the seeds and process them by hand. To make only one liter of oil takes about 15 hours of work and 30 kg of nuts. Argan oil is gaining popularity worldwide, especially in upscale restaurants. It’s full of good stuff for your body, inside and out.

We meet our hiking guide just outside Imlil, and began our hike around the valley. The weather was perfect and the scenery couldn’t have been better. We wended through small villages built right into the mountainside and in and out of apple orchards and iris fields, all with a lovely babbling brook alongside us and snow-capped peaks above us. The brook is actually part of a truly impressive irrigation system set up to take water to all the orchards and field on the hillsides. Note the immediate shift from brown to green in our pics. We learned from our guide that a large flash flood in 1995 destroyed much of the towns we were walking through and killed around 200 people. This explained all the building going on (17 yrs. later).

At the end of our glorious hike, we settled in for a tajine lunch at a local guesthouse before heading back to Marrakech.

Click here to see pics!