We Got Us A Convoy!

So Saturday morning we decamp from our place on the

Avenida Juan Nunez and drive to the outskirts of Tarifa

to do a little provisioning at the Lidl; as we get back on

the highway, we see a police car coming at us, lights

flashing, following by a line of...motorhomes

The line goes on...I stop counting after a hundred

And, miles later, on...

More miles down the road we stop at a high turn-out for a

last look at Africa, so incredibly near

And the convoy keeps on coming

Vicki had read of an RV rally in Morocco last year--1,000 rigs together in the desert (Burning Man?)--and I guess this might have been something similar. Europeans are really into motorhoming; every license plate I saw in the convoy was Spanish, too.

Tangier, Part Four

Our tour was quite satisfactory, the same price as the ferry itself. We were the only members of the tour, so we had the driver and guide (superb English; and French, and Spanish; and Arabic) to ourselves. They couldn't depart from the "program," very much, so we still had to endure the visit to the rug showroom, the spice store, the leather store, etc. That's OK. We have learned how to enjoy even these. We did get to skip the camel ride/photo opp. And the lunch was really quite good. At least in low season like this, I'd certainly recommend it for anyone whose goals were as modest as ours...merely to set foot in Africa. Tangier itself seemed quite foreign and exotic at times...the old city...quite new and European elsewhere.

Another mosque

And tower

Old and new Morocco

Adieu, Tangier

So now I have been to Africa. OK, I did not penetrate very far into Africa, African cultures. No pyramids, no Tarzan, no lions/tigers/bears, no Lucy, no Kilimanjiro. But it's a start...

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