The Cascades

The group of three Brits have now joined forces with Daniel another Brit. And I have found another Yankee, Joe from Iraq. Joe is on vacation from Iraq where he has been deployed. He has picked to take a vacation from the deserts of Iraq to visit the deserts of Morocco. Together we all decide to go check out the Cascade Waterfalls on a hostel arranged day trip. Early in the morning, much earlier than when I should be getting up on vacation, we all walk across an empty Medina to the travel company.





There are two groups of us and we pile into a minivan and work horse of the safari world, a Landrover Defender. There was a good mix of people on the trip. In particular Joe and I notice the two Brits that joined us that were both pretty cute. Sadly they were “together”, as Ellie reported heavy petting between them, I completely missed it, but Cheri concurred, hmmmmm.



The weather is really hot and there is no AC. We just have the windows to keep us cool. There are lots of interesting things that we see from the car including the local hay transport. Just to give you an ideal these overloaded semi are all over the highways and they are almost as tall as they are long. This particular one was swaying to one side as it was cruising down the road.






Once we get to the Cascades there are lots of activities to do. The first series of waterfalls unload into a large pool area where you can swim and jump off the rocks. There is a second waterfall that is huge and much wider than the first series. At the top there is about a 15m jump. You climb up a pretty steep set of rocks just to get to the waterfall to jump off. You can even swim beneath the waterfall and into it to a hang out area.



The swimming area is cool as these are glacial waters from the Atlas Mountains. However on a day like today where it is super hot, in the mid 40’s, C of course, the cold waters are a nice clash of temperatures. When I got out of the water I was dry in 5 or 10 minutes max and again ready to jump back in. The locals also use the water chill drinks that they sell.



The last set of waterfalls is the actual Cascades and they dwarf even the second waterfall. There is no swimming here. Like the Niagara Falls there’s a boat ride to the bottom part of the waterfalls. Small wooden bridges are used to navigate across the small streams of water from the main pool and footpaths go all the way up to the top canyon surrounding the bottom. The funny part is that there was always a traffic jam of too many people on either sides of the small one way bridge to where the line of people would come to a haut as no one wanted to give way to the other. It was an amazing site to see.