Tarifa, Tangiers - and wizards - 7th to 12th December

People get stuck in Tarifa.  We met dozens of people from all over Europe who’d travelled south until there was nowhere else to go except Africa, and who’d just stayed on.  They don’t call this place ‘The Last Resort’ - and even Hotel California - for nothing.

But what a great place to get stuck.  The old town is a maze of narrow streets with bars and cafes everywhere, not to mention a really friendly group of people who all seem to know one another; outside you’ve got miles of sandy beach and pretty damn spectacular mountains too. 

We really came to understand why Dizzy spends his winters here, but it DID take us a while to get into the Tarifa rhythm.  We were a huge disappointment to him the first night, for instance - by 10pm we were heading back to the van.  Even on the second night we only managed to stay up till 11.30, even though everyone was telling us that nothing really got going until midnight.  The third night  Dizzy had a prior engagement and so we didn’t even go out - and a bloody good job too, as on 10^th we needed all our strength and stamina to keep up with the birthday boy, who, unbelievably, is fifteen years older than we are.  

 You’ll be pleased to hear that we rose to the occasion magnificently:  we danced till our legs went to jelly, and then we danced some more.   We finally made it back to the van at 7am, where it seemed like a marvellous idea to start on the sherry.  See, you needn’t have worried - our spannerish reputation is still very much intact, and we have been able to leave Tarifa with our (aching) heads held high.

But not before we’d been to Tangiers:  only a 35 minute ferry trip away and a whole new continent, so even though it was yet another budget-buster at 60 euros each, we really had to do it.  The ticket did include a coach tour, lunch in a ‘typical Moroccan restaurant’, and a guided visit to the souk – and even better, we persuaded Dizzy to come with us.

He was very grumpy about being herded around, and flatly refused to wear the GrupoStar sticker that identified us to our guide, but even he liked the coach tour. We were shouted at in Spanish, French and English - and the PA system was such that they were equally unintelligible - but it WAS nice to be taken to the most northerly point of Africa, especially as only the day before we’d been the three most southerly people in the whole of mainland Europe.  It was also pretty amazing to see the more wooded areas of the city where the king of Morocco and various Saudi princes have their summer palaces.  These are vast marbled things with fountains everywhere and guards with machine-guns at almost impossibly ornate gates, yet only a few miles away in the heart of Tangiers, people are hustling for a few dirhams just to stay alive.

And there WAS a lot of hustling:  our guide gave all the women in the group roses from the souk, then demanded tips – not exactly with menaces, but it wasn’t entirely un-menacing either. We also got cornered in a rug shop, and once we’d escaped from there, in a handbag and ceramics shop, where the proprietor tried to sell me a chipped bowl for 35 euros.  We then stopped at a café for mint tea, and I made the mistake of showing the owner my – or rather Dizzy’s – twenty-dirham note.  The bill for three teas?  Twenty dirhams.  That'll be 6.66667 dirhams each then.

The typical Moroccan restaurant also turned out to be quite scary, insofar as the charmless waiter and the tuneless musicians didn’t even let us finish the couscous before marching round the tables and bullying tips out of all the tourists. They clearly didn’t want to be there, and neither did we.  As a cultural exchange it felt all wrong, and really quite horrible. 

We felt much better when we’d ditched the guide (had to give him another tip, otherwise we’d have been insulting his grandmother’s grave) and were wandering by ourselves.  The colour and life of it all was extraordinary – the fruit & veg stalls, the huge fish market, the fabric-sellers, the spices in vast sacks rather than the prissy little containers we get in England (you can get a kilo for less than the price of a Schwarz bottle) and above all the absolute in-your-face clarity that chickens aren’t just food, packaged up and sanitised beyond recognition, but were once living creatures with beaks, feet and innards (all of which are for sale).

Life and death is all right there in front of you, and we were completely overwhelmed by it – shocked, horrified, and thrilled.  We also went to the Kasbah where we saw kids who can’t have been older than five chasing cars down the road.  What a different life it is here.  I didn’t even feel comfy leaving mine in a room by themselves at that age, and the weirdest thing is that I’m no longer sure if that’s better or worse. 

Back in Tarifa – and it’s amazing how safe and normal it felt to us after Africa – we talked to Dizzy about life, the universe and everything.  We mentioned that we were hoping to find work at some point to eke out our budget, and he said – and this is a direct quote – “Why put a work in the spanners?” He is such a fab and funny man, and I’m very glad that he is so loved in Tarifa.  I told one of his friends – Lily – that we have a lifesize cardboard cut-out of him which helps us miss him less at parties, and she said she wasn’t at all surprised. Here’s a lovely picture of him and Mike:

We also met – and I think this was also on Dizzy’s birthday – a German motorhomer who said “and how about your friend?  Is he wizardy?”  It took about ten minutes to realise that he was asking if Dizzy was visiting.  Well, Dizzy m’lovely, you are very definitely wizardy as far as we’re concerned.  Thank you for showing us round so beautifully, and I'm sure we’ll be back. Sticky Tarifa and all.