Lac Iriki

Lac Iriki is a dried salt lake — a sebkha — some 60 kilometres long, lying between Foum Zguid and M’hamid El Ghizlane, framed by the Jbel Bani mountains on one side and the Chegaga dunes on the other. Its bed is a perfectly flat plain of white clay deposited by centuries of floods, so smooth that it reflects the sky and manufactures mirages.

It used to be a real lake. Almost every year the floods of the Draa came down from the High Atlas, skirted Jbel Bani and died here; older people in Foum Zguid remember fishing on it. Then the El Mansour Eddahbi dam near Ouarzazate, in service since the 1970s, kept those floods back to irrigate and power the Ouarzazate region — and the lake stopped receiving its water. In wet winters a sheet of water still returns for weeks or months, and the flamingos and waterbirds follow within days.

The lake sits inside Iriqui National Park, created in 1994 to protect around 123,000 hectares of sebkha, acacia and tamarisk steppe — the region’s last habitat for dorcas gazelles, houbara bustards and fennecs. There are no gates or entrance fees, but a guide who knows the tracks is essential: there is no road, no public transport and no mobile coverage.

What you see in a day: the 20-minute crossing of the absolute white plain on the traces of the Dakar; the Colorado marocain (Jbel Madouar), a cirque of red rock at the lake’s northern exit, best in low light; a limestone plateau with ammonites and orthoceras fossils; ancient hunting scenes carved on the rocks of Jbel Bani; and, with luck at dawn, gazelles in the acacia steppe. Erg Chegaga borders the lake’s western edge, which is why every Chegaga trip from Foum Zguid crosses it.

Access: about 1 hour by track from Foum Zguid (the shortest and most varied route), 2.5–3 hours from M’hamid. Best season October to April; in summer a dawn crossing is possible but midday temperatures pass 45 °C. After heavy rain the clay is impassable and guides use the border track instead.