Morocco in Three Houses
From the plain outside Marrakech into the High Atlas and on to the Oualidia lagoon: three houses that understand Morocco as landscape — not as souk.
Marrakech is the entrance, and many stop in the doorway. The medina, the riads, the Djemaa el-Fna — that's Morocco as it's sold, and it isn't wrong. But drive half an hour out of the city and you notice the country only begins there.
This journey has three stops and none of them is in the city.
Berber Lodge: earth, olives, silence
Oumnass is a Berber village on the Haouz plain, thirty minutes south of Marrakech. Interior designer Romain Michel-Ménière built a house here in 2017 that looks as if it had always stood there: earth bricks, eucalyptus ceilings, ten rooms around an olive garden with a pool in it.
There's no souk kitsch and no lounge music. There are fireplaces in the rooms because winter gets cold, a restaurant that cooks what grows in the garden, and a view of the Atlas that turns pink in the evening. You stay two nights and have already forgotten Marrakech.
Olinto: the valley beyond the mountains
An hour on, in the Ouirgane valley, the road climbs into the High Atlas. Olinto sits here among olive trees and red hills: nine standalone pavilions, each with its own garden and heated pool, a hammam, a restaurant cooking Moroccan-Mediterranean. Adults only.
The house is where you reach the mountains without having to climb them. Guided walks to the villages in the morning, shade at noon, tagine in the evening under stars you never see in the city. Come in January and you breakfast outside looking at snow.
La Sultana Oualidia: the lagoon
Three hours north-west the air turns salty. Oualidia is a fishing village on a lagoon separated from the Atlantic by a sandbar — waves on one side, still water with oyster beds and flamingos on the other. La Sultana stands on the hillside above: twelve stone rooms, terraces with jacuzzis, a jetty leading into the water.
It's the end of the journey and it feels like it: after earth and mountains the sea, after tagine the oysters from next door. You stay three days and do very little.
Practical
Fly to Marrakech, hire a car or a driver — the distances are short, the roads good. Order: Berber Lodge (2 nights), Olinto (2), Oualidia (3). Best time: November to April. In summer the plain is over forty degrees; the coast then has fog.
