Tangier, Part Three

Our little 55 euro tour included lunch at a pretty nice

restaurant, four courses; it's dead season here; we were the

only customers in the restaurant

One of many rooms

That's Moroccan Arabic for "Coca Cola"

Lentil soup and the best black olives I've ever had

Great beef shish-kabob, on killer skewers

Couscous and chicken main

And the band serenaded us; I asked them to play

"Midnight at the Oasis" but they didn't know it

OK, the dessert was forgettable.

Tangier, Part Two

Entrance to medina, old city

Another large mosque

In a market

Ditto

Spanish Morocco, French Morocco, now, just Morocco;

of course, it was Roman, Carthaginian, etc., before it

was Morocco; but I digress...

Spice store; they really do spices here

Another street scene

Store

Tangier, Part One

From the harbor

Marcus Africanus; Vicki had been to Egypt
in 1982; I am just catching up

Big mosque tower; alas,

infidels are not permitted within

the mosques

Oilibya; don't worry, the Shell station was right across

the street

Scenic vista, Spain across the Straits

One of the royal palaces; it's a constitutional monarchy

Take me to the Kasba! Vicki said

In the old city, a personal tomb

Street scene

Boulangerie, patisserie...pizza; it's a very international city,

with Moorish, Spanish, and French ancestry (most recently)

Straits of Gibraltar

I have always wanted to see Africa, especially if I could

be back home for dinner; from Tarifa, you can do just

this...the fast ferry to Tangier, a six hour day tour, and back

in Tarifa by cocktail hour; so here's our ship, the Tarifa Jet,

a catamaran ferry

Most of what was on the ferry were RVs, heading for

warm Morocco for the winter; maybe next time

Goodbye Tarifa, Spain, and Europe

The sea traffic in the Straits is impressive

Big ships

Container City

Hello Africa

And Tangier, a city of about a million

Old and new Tangier

To Tarifa

Thursday we drove from Ronda to Tarifa, on the south coast of Spain, west of Gibraltar. The highway was excellent and very scenic, incredibly rough mountainous limestone country, not very high, but scenic nonetheless. And more white towns.

Scenery en route from Ronda to Tarifa

Look kids, another white town!

And a tower

And another

First view of the Mediterranean; then on past boring

Algeciras to Tarifa

Entrance to old town, Tarifa

Nice statue in the harbor area, where we

stayed for the night, on a street under an old

tower and heading to the beach; from Tarifa,

Africa is ten miles away, across the Straits;

that's the Atlas mountains in the right

background

Cueva de la Pileta

We have seen Lascaux and Altamira, both replicas, and also Pech Merle, the real thing, but Cueva de la Pileta, about 15 miles from Ronda, high in the mountains, provides a singular opportunity to see real paleolithic cave art, ranging from 25,000 to 32,000 years old. Vicki decided not to go--poor lighting (you carry your own gas lamp) and poor, damp, slippery footing. But I did the one-hour tour with the owner/grandson of the discoverer of the cave, Sr. Bullon, mostly in Spanish, but enough English to make it a thrill. Cueva de la Pileta is a "working" cave. Water dripping everywhere, pools, rats and mice, every kind of speleological formation in process. Little improvement, no lighting effects (no lighting!), nothing cheesy, much emphasis on preservation of the "art." These artists, to my sense, were not as skilled at those later painters at Lascaux and Altamira. No use of relief in the rock itself. Much of Pileta is simply "abstract"--meaningless (to us) marks on the wall in charcoal or ochre, possibly recording celestial events, or animal kills, or whatever. But it is deeply moving to be in a place where they were, looking at their work. We camped that evening at the turn-off just outside the cave, way high up over the valley. [No pix are allowed in the cave, so I have grabbed three off the web].

It's all under this limestone mountain

The entrance; once you're you're in and the tour begins, he

locks the gate...

Sr. Bullon, guide, owner, grandson of discoverer of the

cave (in 1905)

Horse

Fish

Not sure what...

Some of the collection of artifacts, paleolithic and

neolithic, in the cave

Quiet Camping

Most all campgrounds have quiet rules, but this one, near 
Ronda, took it the extra step: no TV, no radio, no musical 
instruments, etc; "if you don't like quiet and relaxation,

go camp somewhere else"!

We had a nice site

In the olive grove, with a view of the mountains

They had other rules, at the dump-site; no shit...no shit...

But great campground sculpture

All around