UK - Gibraltar & Spain, Tarifa

Gibraltar, UK

We arrived in Algericas from Seville on July 28^th. Algericas is a port city and we were staying here as we were taking a ferry to Morocco on Friday the 29^th.  Since there isn’t a whole lot to do in Algericas, we decided to take the bus to Gibraltar for the afternoon – a one hour journey from Algericas and it only cost €2.15 – Woot!

The bus dropped us off at La Linea and we walked about 10 minutes to the border crossing for Gibraltar. It felt weird to walk through the border from Spain to a colony of the UK.  The border guard didn’t even open our passports. We just held it up to the window for him to see that we indeed did hold a passport and he waived us through.  As soon as we passed the guard, the UK presence was immediately felt.  The vending machines were in £ instead of € and all the signage was in English. There were UK stores such as Morrison’s (grocery store), Marks & Spencer, NEXT (clothing store) and English pubs!  We were now back to the 2 meals for £9.50 specials that we last saw in England.  

We then headed straight for the cable cars that would take us up the Rock of Gibraltar to see the monkeys! Once we got to the top, the view was gorgeous! I could see Spain – LOL!  After checking out the beautiful view, we then started to spot the monkeys.  What cheeky little fellows these monkeys were.   They were very entertaining to watch, especially when one lady made the mistake of putting her bag down and one monkey immediately claimed ownership of it.  The monkey would not let go despite people attempting to scare it away.   What did the trick for the monkey to leave the bag was that someone opened up a can of Fanta and gave it to the monkey. The sweet temptation of the Fanta was worth more to the monkey than the purse & its contents, so the purse became free!  Here are some photos of the monkeys:

 

 And here are some other pics from Gibraltar:

Tarifa, Spain

We left Algericas for Tarifa via bus on July 29^th.  Our ferry to Morocco was leaving out of Tarifa and not Algericas, but we couldn’t find decent priced accommodations in Tarifa, hence our overnight stay in Algericas.

We arrived in Tarifa several hours before our ferry departure as we wanted to explore this port city.  There was a beautiful beach, a castle, a fortress and a neat old town with narrow streets. Since it was a beautiful clear day, we could also see the coastline of Africa!! It was such a neat feeling to be standing in Spain and to be able to see Africa!

Here are some pics from Tarifa:

 I can see Africa!

While at the ferry port, I made a new friend – Candra!  We sat beside each other in the waiting area of the ferry terminal and quickly learned that we were doing the same Moroccan tour.  She was told by the tour company that there were 9 people on the tour – 8 were part of a couple and she was the only solo traveller. When she learned that Matt and I were just friends, she kept saying, “I’m so glad y’all aren’t a couple!” 

Just before 5pm, we boarded our ferry to Tanger, Morocco.  We sat outside on the top deck to enjoy the view and great weather.  Since we were outside though, we failed to hear the announcements informing us that we had to get our passports stamped on board the ferry.  The only announcements we heard were promotions for purchasing rum.  When we departed the ferry, the Police would not let us through the barriers as our passports were not stamped so we raced back onto the boat, thankfully found the Border guard who had already closed up but re-opened for us, got our passports stamped and entered Morocco!

Our Moroccan adventures had just begun!