A farewell to Africa! Last view of Tangier as the ferry departed.
We think we woke up before the alarm, which went off at 7am. We left the hotel, having given the key to a different receptionist, which suited us fine! It was a very nice and clear morning.
We wanted to get the 8:15am bus to Tangier, and we arrived early enough to have caught the 7:45am, but it was full. The guy at the station the day before had told us we could just turn up; we didn't have to buy tickets beforehand. Hmmm. Anyway since we now had time we decided to have a quick breakfast at a nearby cafe - 2 croissants, coffee and another mint tea (with mint leaves in the glass like in Oujda). Laure went back to the bus station to try to buy the tickets; she had been told that you couldn't buy tickets before the bus arrived - all a little strange! Ian saw a bus go past him with "Tangier" on the front, but it turns out that was a bus going elsewhere and not an early departure for the one we wanted. In actual fact the 8:15 never came ..
At 8:30 an old blue van turned up, a "grand taxi". Quite a few people got on it and Laure didn't think there would be enough room for us both. But this being Morocco they found a way, and everyone squeezed up on the nicely organised seats. It was a bit squashed; our backpacks were on our knees and we sat right at the back and still people came on after us! The journey itself wasn't too bad, we thought it was probably quicker than a real bus. We didn't have tickets, everyone just paid 20Dh to a small kid that was sitting near us. He didn't speak French so he wasn't any help to us to know when we had to get off; thus we tried the first principle of travel in a foreign country and got off when everyone else did, which bizarrely was at some petrol station near a roundabout somewhere in the southern suburbs of the city. Laure asked the driver where the ferryport was - he pointed to a road and said "one minute".
It turned out that he obviously meant one minute by Concorde. It was a long uphill road to the seafront and then a further long road round the harbour to the ferryport itself. It was also getting pretty hot, which didn't help. Along the way we bought our ferry tickets for the journey over to Spain; we were originally going direct to Gibraltar but that ferry left just too late in the day and we thought we might as well go through Spain. The people at the agency said "bien sur" when we asked if they took plastic which was quite funny given that they were the first and they actually didn't accept Maestro. We did forget to show the Inter-Rail tickets which may well have entitled us to 25% off, but the fare was only around 450Dh so we didn't mind too much. They also gave us our exit forms, which we'd need to fill in to leave the country. There weren't any hustlers, which was a surprise given what we'd heard of Tangier; we only encountered one bloke who wanted to know if we wanted any Spanish money.
It was a bit of a hassle in the ferryport itself trying to find the right way, there were so many different administrative buildings and police offices. The terminal itself was right at the very end of the complex, and we checked in. Another youthful couple nearby asked us if we had a pen, it turned out they were backpacking too but they were heading to Malaga. They'd come in to Morocco via Tangier as well and they'd been hassled and ripped off upon arrival, so I guess we travelled the right way through Morocco.
The ferry was a lot nicer than the one we'd got the other way, although it left 30 mins late for no apparent reason. Things were actually open onboard, and the prices (which bizarrely were quoted in French Francs!) weren't terribly high (6FF for a drink). Laure finally put on a short skirt without worry! We stayed in the restaurant/bar for most of the journey, though en route we did take turns to go onto the deck and take in the view of three countries on two different continents from the same point.
We arrived in Algeciras in Spain after a journey of 2 and a half hours, and were directed to the bus station by ferryport staff. The town wasn't particularly nice, and we were happy to note that the buses went every half hour. We chose to take the one at 4:00pm, this gave us time to go to the main railway station and try to change our tickets for our future journeys through Spain. We wanted to cancel our reservation and make another one for the Madrid-Irun service. To the ticketing clerk there seemed to be a difference between "exchanging one ticket for another" and "cancelling one ticket and reissuing". In the end we had a sort of cancelled ticket that we had no idea what it was for, and no money back, and the clerk didn't seem interested in booking our preferred journey, so we gave up.
We wandered back to the bus station, and wondered if the bus driver would accept a 2000 pta note, which fortunately he did. We got the bus to the small town of La Linea de la Conception, which was bigger than we thought it would be (we expected a small village). Even so it was not a very long walk from the bus station to a main road where we saw a large traffic jam. Ahead of us was the large rock of Gibraltar, a pretty imposing natural structure that we noticed even in the hot Spanish sun had a rather large dark cloud on top of it. Welcome to Britain!
We walked down the road and through border control, which may well have been the first time either of us had crossed an international boundary on foot, in amongst a group of Japanese tourists. We had a little "discussion" just after we showed our passports and it ended up that Laure asked the border guard if he could kindly stamp our passports, which he did without making any problem at all. The stamp didn't look particularly official, being GIB in big letters and a sun behind.
We had to walk over the runway (!) of Gibraltar Airport, and down quite a long main street to reach our hotel. All the way we thought that the town looked not a little like a quaint English country town, with the exception that most people we heard spoke either Spanish, or with a Scottish accent (?). It was very pleasant, quite busy, and larger than we thought.
We eventually found the hotel, with a nice receptionist/barmaid/cook/manager with an unusual accent (Laure thought she was Irish, Ian thought Gibraltan). After a slight mix-up over reservations (they had us booked down for another day!) we got a room anyway, twin beds, no TV, shared bathroom with the neighbouring bedroom, but very pleasant. The walls were lined with paintings by Monet. We went out and looked around for postcards and stamps, and to take a look for souvenirs. We noticed that perfumes and alcohol and the like were actually pretty cheap, you can tell it's a tax-free haven! The stamps were 30 pence to everywhere in Europe and had a picture of a young Queen on it (maybe celebrating the last time she was there?).
Had a problem looking for restaurants as most of them seemed to close around 6-7pm, including the one in our own hotel. The receptionist recommended 'The Clipper', a pub in a street known as "Irish town", and that's where we ended up! On the way we passed a series of new bins, still wrapped in bubble-wrap, so we just had to have a go at popping the bubbles on them!! The Clipper was your typical English pub, nice and big and homely, complete with a large menu too - Laure had cod and prawn lasagne, chips, salad, and Ian had pork with honey/ginger, rice, salad. We also ordered a glass of white wine each, but in fact we ended up with two; they were late in arriving so they offered us a free glass in compensation which of course we gladly accepted! The waiter was French, oddly, though he was too busy to chat to us; it certainly was a popular place. The pub had TVs that were showing VH-1, and after so long on the move it felt strange to be watching a UK TV channel. We stayed in the pub for quite a while, chatting about politics and stuff.
We went back to the hotel, took a shower (in *hot water!), then took some postcards and books and went into the hotel bar to chill out. The TV was showing Sky News, then Sky One; we felt as if we would soon be home! We chatted with the barmaid (and a couple of other guests), turns out she was actually Norwegian and had an Italian boyfriend! We chatted about Gibraltar, travel, languages, and were informed that the cloud over Gibraltar was known as the "Levante" and was pretty much a permanent fixture. Typical that even on the Med, a British colony has to have British weather!! We finally went to bed at 12.15am.