Tarifa, The Gateway to Morocco!

Written by Clara the Exploradora

Tarifa, the Wind Surfing Place. Patrick and I did not go there to wind surf, though. We went there to get to Tangier. We had to take the bus since there were no BlaBlaCars going to Tarifa from Sevilla. Once we got there we headed to our Hostal called the Melting Pot. They have a sister hostal in Tangier and can book you a room there. The Melting Pot is a super chill hostal full of windsurfers, or at least it was when we were there.

We spent our first day exploring town, but mostly the beach. Tarifa is the southern most part of Europe and you see the mountains in that picture? Yeah. That’s a continent commonly referred to as Africa. We hadn’t really planned this part of our trip yet but while we were there we made an executive decision to take the ferry to Tangier and spend a week in Morocco.

In the mean time we were sure to walk a long the beach while getting our faces blasted with sand from the extreme wind, watching the windsurfers fly over the water, doing flips and what not. Video below.

Back at the hostal we hung out with other travelers and had refreshingly open conversations about our lives; the kind of talk you can only have in a setting such as this.

Tarifa has a pretty geat coastal running path. So we woke up and went running in the morning, which turns out is really hard in the wind, but we did it and we had fun.

 

Travel Hint: Don’t abandon

We ran to the end of Europe, almost. The very end is gated and you can’t go in. I think it is an army base or something. I was bummed about that.

End of the world

Patrick made a point to tell me about the history of pirates in the area. The Strait of Gibraltar has long been a significant geographic point, the bottleneck for all seafarers in and out of the Mediterranean Sea. The perfect place for pirates to lay in wait. Throughout the 16th and 19th centuries, the Barbary nations of northern Africa served as trading hubs and resupply points for pirates. These corsairs tormented the fleets of the great empires. American vessels were pillaged so often that in the 18th century Thomas Jefferson launched America’s first foreign war in modern-day Algeria and Tunisia.  So imagine that while you are there. Maybe you are the pirate and maybe you are the sailor? Anyways, have fun in Tarifa!