Journey to Chefchaouen and Hike to Akchour Waterfalls - Third Day in Morocco

19. September 2020

The early worm gets the bird. We woke up super early. (I know that the saying is twisted)

Expectations for the day were relatively low. Namely, a trip to Chefchaouen was planned, which meant a 199km journey north, a 4+ hour bus ride.

Thankfully, we easily solved what we thought would be the problem. We didn't think much about how we would get from our Airbnb to the CTM bus station. The station was in New Fes. Quite far. This is where our host Akram proved himself again. We happened to meet him in Fes, a few minutes away from our palace.

We had already discussed this among ourselves, but now we could ask him too. Could he call the company that took us from the airport to Fes? Yes. Perfect. For 150 dirhams - about 15 euros, we arranged a van for all 7, for a ten-minute drive.

After waking up, washing and packing, we of course left the Airbnb a bit late. Nevertheless, at 7:15 we were all in the van and headed to the bus station. The city was quiet - the hour was very early. The driver drove us (shocker) to the CTM station and on the way, we made a deal.

To pick us up the next day when we return from Chefchaouen and drive us from Fes to Meknes, our next destination. For 500 dirhams. About 50 euros. For 7 people and their luggage, for 64 kilometres. That's about 7 euros per person. At this point, we didn't know how much the train would cost - our primary idea, but the driver would pick us up right away and drop us off at our Airbnb in Meknes. No guessing and running across cities to the train station.

Once that was arranged and taken care of, we got off at the CTM station.

After a short wait (we had already bought the tickets online and we only had to buy luggage tickets), we got on the bus and so began the 4h+ ride to the Blue City.

Huh, Blue Gate, Blue City. A bunch of blue stuff in Morocco.

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During the ride, we sat at the front of the bus. The very front. So we had a somewhat panoramic view of the landscape. I was surprised at how good the roads are in Morocco. I'm no road engineer, but they seemed to be very well taken care of.

There weren't always white lines in the middle, or fences or anything on the sides, but the asphalt itself was without cracks or holes. There were just a few rough patches every few miles.

The bus was very modern though, with more than enough space and comfort.

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Wild terrain. Not wild as in untamed. But there were trees all around. There were only a few buildings, most more like shacks than what you would call a house back home. There was practically no grass either. Only the green crowns of the trees, sitting on their brown trunks, standing on yellow soil.

It was a scorched desert with trees.

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Further from Fes, the road had occasional cracks, but still no potholes. It would be strange if the asphalt didn't crack at all in this heat. I noticed the check engine light was on on the driver's dash. I hoped it was nothing special, hehe.

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The trees disappeared. Now we saw only dry fields, yellow grass on the brown soil. This had to be a desert. It all looked dead!

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The trees were back.

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And gone. You get the idea.

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Again, just a moment, a second for you, but hours and hours for me.

Unlike the plane, we sat together this time, so the ride went by quickly. Of course, I've slept through some of it. But it had been quite more eventful than the plane ride. We swerved around road turns and drove up hills until we turned around some houses.

And bam! On the slope opposite the hill we were driving at that moment, the city of Chefchaouen appeared. It was. Not blue? It was white and blue, kind of half and half? What a scam!

We could see the state of the city from the bus as we drove through. Some buildings were painted blue, but many were not. Many were simply built of red brick and without any paint. One of them was even painted red!

It took us a few more minutes to reach the bus station in Chefchaouen. We got out there, went to the bathroom and some of the group started eating. We couldn't wait to go to the Airbnb and chill. That's when we realized our negligence. We couldn't go to the Airbnb until 15.00.

It was 12:39. Oh no.

Then we all sat down next to the bus stop and started eating. Leon quickly texted the host if they could let us into the Airbnb before 15:00 and we waited for a reply.

We were just eating, throwing bread to a cat, who was meowing silently at us. Strange that a cat would eat bread. They're supposedly completely carnivorous. Still, she ate. Or he.

The answer came. We can come to the Airbnb earlier! Yes! But the Airbnb was a 20-minute walk away.

Okay, that wasn't impossibly far. We started.

Leon wanted to go the other way, but I'm a law student, so I led us another way. Why? Follow the gas. No, I don't know why.

As soon as we left the bus station, we saw what lay ahead. Ouch. The city was built on a hillside. We were in the mountains of Ref.

A huge hill stared at us and laughed at our suitcases. Oh fuck. And so we went up. Up, up and up again. It turned out to be a real hike. The sidewalks had steps, which meant we couldn't drag our suitcases up. That meant walking up the road. With cars.

Wow, wow. The city was a little blue, a little white. The closer we got to the older part, the medina, the bluer the buildings. Maybe? Maybe the city wasn't such a scam? After all, the city had 40,000 people, of course, it couldn't be all blue.

I was surprised at how much more open the city was compared to Fes. In a physical and cultural sense. It's true, we walked in the new part and not in the medina. But still, I was used to the claustrophobic streets of Fes and now we had streets wide enough for two cars.

And people were more liberal. Much more! In Fes, the girls and women were completely covered, but here, they wore European summer clothes. Wild.

You can't understand. We came from old Fes, where the girls in our group were stared at because they had a little exposed skin. Here in Chefchaouen, there were local women with crop tops!

Fine. After meeting the host's father, we got to the Airbnb. He didn't speak English, but we got along. The apartment was cool. It was quite red. Hehe, just like the pictures. There were two rooms. One bedroom and one really big room divided into smaller rooms by Arabic arches.

In this one large oval room, there was a table and a place to sit in the middle, and seven beds at both side ends. Tired from driving and hiking, we rested for about two hours.

Was it a waste of time? No, we needed it. We also decided what we would do during the day. It was already 16:00.

We went into town to find a taxi. We would go to Akchaour Falls and swim in the river there. It was a 45-minute drive, into the mountains. We wanted one big taxi, but we had to take two small ones. Each was 150 dirhams one way.

We went. And wow, the drive was interesting. It was a ride into the mountains. With many turns, up and down, into the heart of the hills. I won't lie, I was a little worried. We didn't know where they were actually taking us. All around us, there were only hills and valleys and more hills.

And on these hills. Farms upon farms of marijuana. Ganđa. With idle groups of men watching over them.

It all looked sketchy as fuck. To top it all off, the sky was smothered with grey clouds, so there wasn't even much real sunlight.

Still, the views were amazing. The mountains were beautiful. At one point there were several slopes of different colours, yellow, blue and red. I don't know the reason for this, I guess because of the different types of stones and soil.

Ironically, the further we went into the mountains, the more greenery there was around us. Sure enough, when we stopped, there was a valley below us with a river running through it, and bushes and trees were filling the sides of the valley.

After a quick chat with the driver about when he would pick us up - at 20:00, we set off on the road leading to the falls. It wasn't just some random path. No, it was made for hiking and even cars up to a point. There were restaurants along the way, all the way to the falls.

So we went. I passed dozens of small waterfalls, got lost for a good half hour because the main path was not clearly marked, and then passed dozens more small waterfalls.

As I said, there were restaurants and bars along the river/stream. These were not modern bars, but something for tourists. They were plenty interesting though.

Hidden in the trees, some with stone tables and benches, others with simple plastic chairs – some of those even in the water! It was strangely satisfying how the many coloured plastic chairs interacted with the untamed nature around them. They simply fit in with the environment.

I wish I could add pictures to this text, but unfortunately, the website doesn't work like that.

While walking, we looked for possible places where we could go into the water, and take a quick swim. At one point we thought we had found it. There was a pool just below a small waterfall, with rocks leading across the stream to a small flat patch of land. But we haven't reached the famous waterfalls yet. So we moved on to see if we could find a better spot. We would pass by this spot on the way back anyways.

When we started our journey again, we realized that someone was following us. Nah, man, that's not cool.

We passed this guy just before we got to the nice pool and saw him stop and look at us. We just thought he was the owner of a nearby restaurant.

But no. As we passed him, he was going in a different direction, away from the falls. However, when we got back on the way to the falls, he followed us. Bruh.

He didn't seem to be holding anything but swimming trunks, but the fact that he changed direction after seeing us creeped us the fuck out. So after a while, we stopped to "take" some photos and he passed us.

Fine. Fine. We started walking again.

He was waiting for us just around the corner. Oh hell no, man. What the fuck!?

We stopped again and two of us walked up to the guy to ask him what he wanted. Of course, he just smiled at us. He didn't speak English. Of course. How convenient.

We walked past him hoping he would take the hint. It didn't. He started following us again. Dude, what the hell.

We moved on. I stood at the back so that none of the girls would be there and we continued on our way. The situation described above happened again.

We let him pass and then found him again "chatting with someone who works at the bar". As we passed him, he followed. At this point, we simply marched on. Fortunately, from then on, reaching one of the famous waterfalls didn't take long. Here we turned right to the river and the stalker went straight on, seemingly to speak to one of his friends there (?)

We started debating what to do now. How much time did we have to do anything? What did we want more? Swim? To eat? Hmmm.

We decided to go back to the pool for a quick swim and then go to the restaurant at the very beginning of the hiking trail and eat dinner. We sped away and the stalker didn't seem to be following us anymore. Good.

We walked on, looking forward to a swim and then food, walking with a tourist couple in between - we accidentally split into two smaller groups.

All good.

At one point I turned and looked behind us. And there he was. The stalker. He was walking about ten meters behind us.

Nah, man. I told the others and we moved so that I was back again. I began scanning the area for any possible weapons.

I'm not kidding. The situation didn't seem one for jokes to me. Someone following you for a good half-hour or more is not something you ignore. There were some rocks, but I didn't like them. No. And I hoped I wouldn't need them.

We slowed down a bit to let the stalker pass. He passed us but now he was between our two teams. But hey, we could see him.

It was obvious that he was walking slowly on purpose. Really slowly. Like when you're stopping yourself. So we slowed down as well. The first two of our entire group slipped out of sight.

Leon, check your six now and then, for fucks sake.

Suddenly the stalker stopped and went into the bushes as if searching for something. Nah, man. We stopped too. It was clear there was nothing in those bushes that required his attention.

He returned to the road and went on. I quickly checked what the stalker was checking out in the bushes. There was absolutely nothing. Soon we were reunited with our vanguard (Leon and another girl) who finally realized we were gone.

The stalker passed them and moved on. We last saw him just a few meters from the pool we wanted to swim in. We stopped and tried to see if he was waiting anywhere close by. Not seeing him, we went down to the river.

We decided to go over the stones to the other side of the river. That way there would be water between us and anyone who would also come down. If the stalker came back and maybe wanted to take our things while we were in the water, we would have seen him clearly and reacted in time.

Let me just say the stalker didn't come back. But bruh, why the hell did he follow us?

The pool itself was amazing! We took loads of pictures of it and of the small waterfall behind it and found that the water wasn't too cold to swim in. We changed into bathing suits.

Two of the group immediately stepped into the water. Leon followed them.

Two other girls, however, hesitated. Their anxiety spread and then I was anxious too! Damn it. I walked around them and went into the water.

Ah! Cold! What the hell was wrong with two other girls who were already swimming!? Wow, that was cold!

Eyo! No, I went out.

The two hesitating girls went inside then, but there was no way I was going back. I had no such desire to swim. Instead, I took pictures of the whole group in the water from the stepstones.

(Psst, I'm apparently a bad photographer as they weren't very good 😢)

After a while, we all got out of the water and started getting dressed. That's when I had a brilliant idea. I placed a chair (some were there) right next to the pool and sat on it. I reached my feet into the water and washed them. Then I dried them, then put on socks and shoes as well. Bam. Clean dry feet. Perfect.

We took a few more photos and headed back to the restaurant at the start of the trail. Would we arrive in time to eat and then get a taxi by 20:00? No, haha.

On the way, we noticed something on the cliff above the river. Monkeys. Monkeys on trees and rocks. One? No, two. No, how much? Ten?? And they weren't happy with people watching them from below. Rocks were hurled at the path below them, some of the projectiles shattering on impact.

Come on, this is dangerous!

They were probably brought to the area by the Spanish when they controlled Morocco. We gave up the idea of eating in the mountains in exchange for monkey watching. We just couldn't make it in time.

So we went on. To have a quick cigarette (no, Mom, not me), then to the taxi to drive back to Chefchaouen. We chatted the whole drive. I hope the driver didn't find us talking in a language he didn't understand for 45 minutes annoying, heh.

The other taxi? Bah, I couldn't care less about them (Nah, I love you all).

When we arrived in the city of 'Yes, Chef' (Blue City), we Googled for a restaurant. We found the "Assaada". In the medina (oops – the medina in Chefchaouen is actually mostly blue!). The food was great. Starving, we ate everything. Hunger really is the best spice.

Here, a question arose. So we googled the answer.

What. Couscous is pasta. Pasta originating from North Africa, from the Berbers.

What. Hell no, how is couscous pate!? Come on! Fine. Sheesh. What. Don't you dare judge me for not knowing. After dinner, we dragged ourselves to the Airbnb.

The next challenge? Bathroom. There was a single one for the 7 of us. Ahhh. The ladies went first.

I fell asleep in the meantime. Good night? Around midnight. Tomorrow? Chefchaouen.