TripAdvisor Promised Paradise. Climate Change Had Other Plans.
As the name Paradise Valley suggests, this “swimming destination” nestled between towering golden otter sandstone cliffs in the Moroccan High Atlas mountains is said to have once been a heavenly place. Popularized as a tourist destination in the 1960s by marauding hippies who made it their own, the site is approximately an hour’s drive from the southern coastal city of Agadir. A few hundred European and Moroccan visitors come here every day, many for the first time. But most leave disappointed—and perplexed.
Morocco’s years-long drought and a series of record-breaking heat waves reaching 122.7 degrees Fahrenheit (50.4 degrees Celsius) left the valley’s azure natural pools increasingly murky and shallow more often than not. Once a “breathtaking oasis,” according to TripAdvisor, Paradise Valley is, on most days, an arid wasteland. On two recent afternoons, only excitable young Moroccan boys dove into the stagnant, turbid water. Meanwhile, piles of burned trash sat unsubtly behind some of the trails. The vibe felt somewhat grave, even while a cluster of cafes offered sizzling chicken and beef tagines.
Business owners along the hiking route from the parking lot to the pools tried to put on a straight face, but they’re sardonically aware that visitors are typically left bemused by the gulf between photos of pristine basins on tour advertisements and the muddy reality. “We miss rain here, brother,” said Hassan, who runs a fresh juice stand, on a scorching hot late May afternoon. “There, and there, and there, [were] swimming pools, we miss water,” he added, gesticulating.
“No holy God is coming here. It’s a problem.” Hassan chuckled, regretfully, lamenting that there was again little rain this year. “People are still coming, but there is no water.”
“So this is… Paradise?” Kirti, a British tourist, asked her Moroccan guide quizzically. She cast her eye around to take in a band of dogs, cacti dotting the mountainside, and an eye-catching Palestinian flag painted on a rock. The guide shrugged. “He didn’t have any answers,” she told me. “He just wanted to end the conversation.”
“The photos are very old,” she said of the pictures on display at tour operators in nearby Agadir and Taghazout, which lure unsuspecting holiday makers for doomed day trips. Kirti is not the only tourist searching for somewhere relatively clean to swim. “I feel a little bit misled,” said Aaron, another British tourist. “The photos show a beautiful swimming pool, but it’s obviously seen better days.”