Our road from Chefchaouen to the Southern Spain wasn´t an easy one. That´s part of the fun of traveling, right?!
While waiting for the bus in Chefchaouen we met some English speaking students: Scott(from Pennsyvania), Denny(Whistler), and Nafalie(Oregon). There were in the middle of a year long traveling course for international relations & photography which took them to several 2nd & 3rd world countries across the globe.
The bus arrived late and was packed. We were fortunate to get two seats together although they were in the very back of the bus. Those were the worst seats to have on the 3 1/2 hour journey through windy mountainous roads.
We arrived in Tangier at 6:30pm on Sunday night (5/25) and our student friends were staying in Morocco for the night while Russ was determined to get to Southern Spain so he could spend the day in Gibraltar. Knowing we had more money than time; we ran to try and catch a 7pm fast ferry to Tangier with a bus ride to Algeciras. Things were going smooth until we hit the ferry building.
Strangly the passport control appeared unmanned and no one stopped us as we hurried past. Next we hit a security check where the attendant was standing 10 ft away talking to a friend. We put our bags through the machine and he didn´t even care to view the bags. Running down the ramp to the ferry boat I told Lee-Anne how I didn´t feel good about not having our exit stamp from Morocco. But maybe they were going to stamp them as we got on the boat. Nope. As we tried to enter the boat, the employee told us to go back and get our exit stamp. So we ran back to the passport control booth in the ferry building and noticed only one of the 3 booths were manned; by a short lady who´s top of her head barely reached the counter. She needed us to fill out an exit form which we had to get in the direction she pointed. I ran there and asked a guy for the forms he pulled two out and gave them to me. Lee-Anne and I filled out the forms and he then asked for money and was telling us to slow down and the ferry would wait for us. In fact, he said he´d call the ferry and have them wait. He kept pestering us and Lee-Anne finally gave him a $1 so he´d go away. Oh man he was annoying and we can´t believe how everyone wants money from tourists traveling in Morocco. As we approached the ferry we saw the ramp rising and several employees yelled at us to stop saying "No, No. Short wait, only 30 minutes". That was a bunch of BS, we had to wait 2 hours.
Once on the boat, the first order of business was getting food and WINE. We hadn´t eaten for hours and Russ bought the best-worst soggy, doughy, frankfurt pizza with sliced hot dogs on top. The ferry also left over 40 minutes late...how come the other ferry could not have been late?!
Once in Spain everything went smoothly. The bus was there and dropped us off across from a hotel in the center of Algeciras near the bus and train stations. Excelente!
Right now its Saturday evening in Seville and we´ve had 5 wonderful days in Gibraltar, Granada, Cordoba, and Seville. We will eventually blog our adventures but we´re having too much fun to sit in front of a computer.
Hasta Luego!
Russ and Lee-Anne
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