Marrakech & Atlas
The plain outside the city and the valleys beyond.
Marrakech is a city you take in stages: into the medina in the morning, behind a wall at noon, out again in the evening. Stay longer and you notice the interesting part is now outside.
South of the city begins the Haouz plain — olive groves, adobe Berber villages, and on the horizon the High Atlas, snow-capped in winter while oranges ripen in Marrakech. Half an hour from the city the noise stops. An hour further, in the Ouirgane valley, you're in the mountains, among villages where little has changed in centuries.
Here, in recent years, houses have appeared that aren't riads: built of earth brick, set in gardens, with pools in the olive grove. They understand Morocco as landscape, not as souk.
Marrakech remains the entrance. The Atlas is the destination.
We send people to Marrakech with the advice not to sleep there. Berber Lodge in Oumnass, half an hour south: ten rooms of earth and eucalyptus wood, a pool among olives, fireplaces in the rooms. Olinto in the Ouirgane valley, an hour further: nine pavilions with private gardens and pools, a hammam, cooking from the valley — adults only. Come between November and April. Summer on the plain is unbearable; in January there's snow in the Atlas and you breakfast outside.
