Hostal Las Margaritas Tarifa

... would chuck out handfuls of crumbs, be swarmed by gray globs of pigeons like something out the "The Omen" (think ravens), yell "****" at the top of his lungs, and then follow it up by strong exclamations in Italian. Until this point, I had only heard crazy rantings performed in English. It was a whole new take to hear it done in a romance language.

LOCAL FLORA AND FAUNA: The vendor on Las Ramblas in Barcelona who was selling...get ready for it....chipmunks. I'm fairly ...

... waters. We lit a barbecue on the beach not realizing how close the tide is. Here the water races in...comparable to some of the Northern English beaches and San Malo in France where the tide is known to gallop in like horses thundering accross the beach. We manage to cook and feed about 8 people before someone spots the sea is just a few meters away..there is some frantic wall building to no avail. The next wave breaks through and smothers the barbecue...despite this ...

... just right for the tea pouring to make the "right sound". Then the cookies again.....wow...a greater assortment of the same type we had with Abdul that day. We wanted to empty the plate into a box and take them to eat for the next day. We said goodnight to Rachel and went up to our rooms to knock off quickly after a very full day. The next morning, we showered, dressed and went downstairs to a breakfast of incredibly fresh ...

... we'd have something close. The only thing as persistent as the call to prayer was the ever-present tension between voyeurism and opportunism. That is, confronted as often as we were by new and interesting sights and sounds and scents, the natural reaction was to stop and look, listen and smell. The problem with that, as I think we´ve described before, was that every time we stopped moving, a new ¨friend¨ would materialize in front of us ...

Northern Africa... coming off the ferry we forgot to get our passports stamped and had to return to the immigration office on the ship, we weren't the only ones. it was sprinkling rain as we wheeled off the ferry along with a pack of pedestrians. everyone has a passport check on the dock and then later some people are called aside for a bag x-ray. fortunately we rode past the customs unsearched and into the ...

Back to Tangier. Went back to see the folks at Kasbah.Net. I forget their names. Just faffed about really and showed Emma the glorius sights of the scene of the movie Casablanca (Yes, strangely enough it wasn't set in Casablance the city but in Tangier the international zone during the war. Going to Tarifa on the Fast-Ferry. Yummy Falefel and beer and ...

... time was 1 hour late. You have to get your passport stamped again on the way out. We met a really nice group of French Canadians on the tour and we joined them on the top deck for some craic on the way back to Spain. We arrived back to Spain 3 hours later than scheduled. It was a brilliant visit, but we left happy that we didn't include Morocco on our tour...we´ll keep that one for when we have a few more miles on the clock! Or two very big burley men to go back with!