We're waiting for the ferry to Tangiers in Morocco. We didn't quite make the fast catamaran ferry at 9am, so we're taking the 10am ferry which will take 2 hours instead of 1. It doesn't matter too much since the weather is vile. It's been steadily raining the past day or so, and it will likely continue for the next few. Hopefully, we'll be able to outrun it as we head into the continent…
Some of the journey from Granada seeped into the food commentary so I won't delve too deeply here. Things we saw on the train ride down -- sheep, olive groves, picturesque views of the Sierra Nevadas, windmills (the modern type sans <i>Don Quixote</i> unfortunately), and solar farms (maybe next to a nuclear plant, but I'm not completely sure). You definitely get the sense that the energy generation distribution is a bit different from the U.S., at least from the train ride.
When we took the bus on the last stage, we twisted our way through a sinuous mountainous road that had us nearly kissing the lowest of the clouds. We caught a glimpse of deer bounding on the hillside and saw rugged hill development properties clinging next to one of the hilliest golf courses I've seen. Some houses looked more like extravagant villas…
We thought of continuing onto Tafifa, a smaller town than Algeciras and closer to Africa. The views of the North Africa oast are supposed to be great; but with the weather it didn't seem worth it.
Sudha was very apprehensive about wandering about the port town (it really wasn't that bad), but we quickly found a decent hotel walking distance from the train terminal and right across from the ferry port. We braved the rain to venture into the Centro. Since it was Sunday, the already scarce subset was almost reduced to a null set. Eventually we settled on an Old Faithful -- a pizzeria.
One interesting thing to note is that police and janitorial staff are all garbed in fluoroscent green or orange outfits. Seems quite smart for safety, yet you rarely see them in the States. Maybe they're more fashion conscious in the U.S.
I'll wrap this up here. We're waiting in line to check-in but no one seems to be manning the line and we're only 10 minutes from departure. Okay, we were told that the ferry is "closed" due to weather. Stay tuned…
Turns out even the fast ferry was cancelled. We're now queued up to board, but the rain seems to have intnesified. One Moroccan woman told us that last year she was on a ferry that was stuck 7 hours in middle of the Straits of Gibraltar, unable to go to either port, rather like the stuck Eurostar trains last week. Let's keep our fingers crossed…
Final update here. We made onto the ferry and now we're cruising the Straits of Gibraltar. It's a smooth crossing but there's not much to see with the rain. We left nearly 2 hours late. We need to take a grand taxi or bus from Tangiers to Tetouan. We'll get later than we planned but with the weather, I'm not sure it matters…
Oh, no pictures here. They'd all be grey and we're!
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