Nobody named it Hawaï because it resembles the island. They named it Hawaï because when you arrive at it — after an hour and a half of following a river valley through canyon walls of ochre travertine, past oleander in flower, wading through stretches where the banks close in and the only path is the riverbed itself — the pool at the bottom of the waterfall is genuinely, improbably turquoise. The limestone geology of the Middle Atlas saturates the water with minerals as it filters through the rock above, and what comes out the other end looks like something from a different climate entirely. Someone saw it and thought: Hawaï. The name stuck.

Zaouïa d’Ifrane is a small Amazigh Berber village in the province of Ifrane, about 25 kilometers south of Azrou and roughly 100 kilometers from Fez. Most travelers to the Middle Atlas know Ifrane — the French colonial ski town sometimes called the Switzerland of Morocco — and pass the road to Zaouïa d’Ifrane without stopping. What the road leads to, if you follow it to the end, is one of the more unusual geological sites in the region: a 200-foot travertine plateau rising behind the village, honeycombed with caves, draped in hanging vegetation, and fed by several waterfalls that run year-round. Cascade d’Hawaï is the furthest and least visited of these. It is also the best one.

The name translates literally as “holy place of caves.” Zaouïa d’Ifrane was built around the shrine of the marabout Sidi Boubker Mohammed, and the zaouia — the religious sanctuary built over his tomb — remains the spiritual center of the village. The community itself is Amazigh Berber, Tachelhit-speaking, and has lived on this particular piece of Middle Atlas plateau since well before the French administration arrived in 1929 and established it as a summer retreat away from the heat of the lowlands. The French built infrastructure; the Amazigh families who already lived here were its actual inhabitants, the same as they are today.

What makes the site extraordinary is geological rather than architectural. Behind the village, a travertine limestone plateau rises to roughly 60 meters, its face perforated by caves and draped in curtains of maidenhair fern, wild oleander, and hanging moss fed by the water that seeps constantly through the rock. This is the same travertine geology that produces the waterfalls: calcium-rich spring water emerges from the plateau, deposits its mineral load on every surface it touches, and builds up over centuries into formations that look almost constructed. The caves were used for shelter long before the village existed. Some still are, in summer.

The walk to Cascade d’Hawaï begins at the far end of the village and follows the Oued Ifrane river upstream into the canyon behind the plateau. The path alternates between a narrow trail on the canyon rim and the riverbed itself, where the walls close in and there is no path to speak of — only the water and the rocks, and the choice of which side to walk on. Two pairs of shoes is the standard advice from people who’ve done it: one for the river sections, one dry pair for the rest. The route takes around an hour and a half each way at a comfortable pace, with multiple small cascades and pools along the way that most walkers stop at long before reaching the main fall.

Cascade d’Hawaï is at the end of the canyon, in a cirque of travertine walls that close in on three sides. The waterfall drops into the pool from a single ribbon of white water over red-ochre rock, and the pool itself runs a shade of blue-green that seems implausible until you know the limestone explanation. In summer, locals and visitors swim in it. In spring, the water level is higher and the color is at its most saturated. In autumn, the crowds are thinner and the oleander is still in flower. All three are good reasons to visit.

The turquoise color of the Hawaï pool is not a lighting effect or a photograph filter. It is the result of the Middle Atlas’s underlying limestone geology: water falling as rain or snow filters slowly through the rock, dissolving calcium carbonate as it goes. When that mineral-saturated water emerges at the surface as a spring or waterfall, it carries so much dissolved calcium that it precipitates out of solution on contact with air — depositing thin layers of travertine on every surface the water touches, and giving the standing pools a turquoise opacity that looks almost artificial. The same geology explains the caves, the cliff formations, and why the waterfalls seem to build their own architecture over time.

The Middle Atlas is one of Morocco’s most geologically distinctive regions precisely because of this karst limestone base, which also produces the region’s many natural lakes, the cedar forests adapted to the altitude and moisture, and the spring-fed rivers that run year-round even in the driest summers. Ifrane National Park, which covers around 125,000 hectares of the western Middle Atlas, includes Zaouïa d’Ifrane within its boundaries — which is why the forests above the canyon are dense cedar and holm oak rather than the scrub that covers lower ground.

Zaouïa d’Ifrane sits 16 kilometers from M’rirt and roughly 25 kilometers south of Azrou on the road connecting the two towns. From Azrou, a grand taxi runs to the village in under half an hour; from Ifrane, it’s a slightly longer detour. From Fez the village is around 100 kilometers, a straightforward drive of under two hours via Ifrane. The village itself has a small car park and a handful of cafés and picnic spots. The walk to Cascade d’Hawaï begins where the road ends.

Start early — the advice is consistent across everyone who’s made the walk. An hour and a half each way means three hours of walking minimum, plus time at the pool, and the canyon retains heat in the afternoon in a way that makes the return walk considerably less pleasant than the outward one. Bring two pairs of shoes if you have them, at minimum one pair that can get wet without damage. The river crossings are manageable in normal conditions but can be significant in spring, when snowmelt from the Middle Atlas peaks is still running off. Check the weather before going: the canyon has no shelter from flash floods, and rain on the plateau above can translate to a rapidly rising river below.

This site of the Zaouia of Oued Ifrane is marvelous by the ascent of the beautiful waterfall overlooking the said Zaouia, giving an extraordinary panoramic view of the locality and its surrounding region.

— Journey Beyond Travel, on the Zaouïa d’Ifrane site

1 — “Zaouïa d’Ifrane” translates roughly as “holy place of caves” in Tachelhit Amazigh. The village is also written “Zaouiat Ifrane,” “Zaouiate Oued Ifrane,” and “Zawyat Ifrane” in various sources, all referring to the same settlement.

2 — The name “Cascade d’Hawaï” (Hawaii Waterfall) appears widely in Moroccan social media and local tourism accounts. It refers specifically to the uppermost pool in the canyon, renowned for its turquoise color from dissolved limestone minerals.

3 — Ifrane National Park covers approximately 125,000 hectares of the central Middle Atlas and is among the most biodiverse protected zones in Morocco, with Barbary macaque populations, Atlantic cedar forests, and endemic bird species.

Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons)

Hero — Zaouiat Ifrane waterfall Oued Ifrane.jpg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.

Oleander & waterfalls — Nerium Oleander flowers and Zaouia d’Ifrane waterfalls.jpg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.

River in canyon — A river in Zaouia d’Ifrane.jpg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.

Cascade close-up — Cascade de Zaouia dIfrane (8177155670).jpg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.

Village panorama — Zaouia d’Ifrane Wikivoyage Banner.jpg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.