Guided Ourika Valley Day Trip from Marrakech

Great experience! The driver was on time and very kind. We stopped at an Argon Oil Cooperative where another young man told us about the plants they use to create all natural medicines. Then we got back into the car and drove to the mountains where we met another guide who took us up the mountain. Considering I took my aging parents with me, the guide helped us up and down the mountain, constantly holding ours hands to help us. The view was beautiful and we finished off the trip with a lunch with our young driver who then drove us back to the hotel. It was Great!

Not as described involved a 1.5 hour trekk up hill over rocks and rivers to see a waterfall. I was only wearing slip on sandals so had to stop about half way as it was to dangerous. I think we were actually sent on a different tour of the valley than this one.

On collection at 9am we found ourselves, three of us ,the only people on this tour. Our driver spoke no English so we sat in the van for one and a half hours talking to ourselves. On arrival at the Valley we were handed over to a 'guide' with 'this is your guide'. Not quite sure what to expect we went with him, a pleasant local lad who could speak English. We then climbed/hiked a 1000metres up the valley to get to the first waterfall, this included going over the river in places, climbing a ladder, up over the rocks some of which were very slippery, fortunately our guide was good and helped us a lot. We then stopped and were able to get a drink. My daughter then went on further to higher waterfalls but my husband and I couldn't cope with more climbing. None of us had appropriate shoes, mine had no grip, were ruined and ended up in the bin! After finally reaching our starting point we were taken to a restaurant but none of us felt like eating as we were too tired and hot. On the way up we saw local wild Monkeys. The 'free time to stroll around this beautiful scenery of palm and fruit trees' was none existant as we didn't see any'. On sitting in the restaurant for a rest before setting off again we tried to 'tip' the guide, but weren't quite sure of how much because the tour info just said local guide not included. However he then asked for 100 DHMAR each, ie 300. Maybe not a fortune but we weren't expecting this, no mention had been made of the amount, and we luckily just had enough money to pay. We enjoyed our trip and had to laugh about it but it no way lived up to the information given to us, we weren't prepared properly, it cost more than we expected, the drive back was in silence again, arriving back eventually at 2pm we were tired, hungry and disappointed as we felt that we had been taken for fools.