What is Six Times Seven? Nope, Not There Yet.

Distance Traveled:   33,275 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF)

Time Difference: -9 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: I have enjoying some of the grunge stuff I loved so much in high school, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains etc.

Currently Inspired by: Atticus: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what"

Stacks: Nada!
Words written: 47,935. (Yay!)

I am sitting here, with the heating on high, layers and a scarf, and I’m still cold.  Having said that, I think where I am, right down on the most southern tip of Spain, is probably the warmest spot in Europe right now.  Have you seen the news about this crazy European cold snap?  Something like 220 people dead as of yesterday.  Here it’s been between 3 (at night) and 15 during the day, although during the day there is a constant freezing wind that makes it seem much colder.  Friday was the worst so far.  I actually got dressed, went outside for my daily meander, turned around straight away and came back inside!  Needless to say I am bored out of my brain.  You would think that inactivity would be good for the book, but instead my brain shuts down without stimulation and I have trouble accessing  my creativity or my motivation.  It doesn’t help that I haven’t had a non-transactional face to face conversation since those three days in Marrakech with Nadim, and before that London over Xmas and New Year.  I think the lack of company and activity is making me slightly insane, particularly after so many years of being the busiest person in the world.  As I have almost another month in Spain before I get back to London and my friends, I had better find a way to meet some people quick smart, lest I become a full blown lunatic and begin walking around unshowered, with hair hanging down in my face, gibbering and shouting at the trees.

I have been in Tarifa since I left Seville on Monday, and really I had done and seen everything that there was to do and see here by the end of my second day.  It’s a very small, very cute place, that clearly bustles with activity in summer but is a virtual ghost town in the low season, which is now.  I would say that you can walk pretty much the entire town in somewhere between 2 – 3 hours, and that I have seen in excess of 50 cafes and restaurants in that small area.  Unfortunately, 98% of them are closed and locked up, and the few that are open don’t have chefs, so you can’t eat at them, only drink tea, coffee and alcohol.  The residents appear happy with this arrangement and spend huge chunks of their days sitting at these cafes, drinking and smoking their heads off.  However for a tourist who is staying in a room without breakfast, restaurant or cooking facilities, it has proved troublesome.  My diet since I have been here has consisted of fruit, homemade ham and cream cheese sandwiches made with increasingly stale bread (my fridge is my balcony), wine and a couple of pizzas from the kebab and pizza shop, the only food establishment I can find that is open regularly (except Tuesdays and Wednesdays!)  When I realised that I wasn’t getting enough veggies and went to buy some salads, there was nothing appropriate at the grocer so I came back with a can of green beans, a jar of roasted capsicums and a jar of olives, which I have been eating straight from the containers with my chopsticks from Thailand, the only cutlery I have.  Talk about improvising!  I feel like a 17 year old student again.

Los Lances Beach

An insane gentleman

The positives about this place are many.  It has one of the most gorgeous (and hugest) beaches I’ve ever seen.  Second only in beauty to some of the island beaches I saw in Fiji a couple of years ago.  This beach is absolutely massive, the sand is really clean and the water is a mix of that really glistening turquoise, clear light green and darker blue.  It is so stunning, and very calm.  I have been for a long walk on the beach every day except yesterday, and it is a fabulous place to walk, or just sit and meditate.  Completely unspoiled and mercifully free of tourists.  I can just imagine how packed it gets in summer with eleventy million pale English tourists baking themselves a pleasant crimson.  There are usually at least a handful of other people walking their dogs at the same time.  I was fortunate to catch that snap in such a way as though it looked like I had the entire stretch to myself!  One day I started at the far end and walked, fairly quickly for two straight hours and got about halfway down it.  It's BIG.  A few mads hang out in the water, windsurfing or paddleboarding, which the conditions are both windy and calm enough to facilitate, albeit freezing.

Africa is behind me

Sunset on the buildings

You can see the mountains of Northern Africa clearly from the ferry docks, and they look pretty impressive from that distance and over the water.  As for the town itself, the streets are paved with cobblestones, there is no nasty CBD or city centre with skyscrapers, and the residential architecture is made up of those typically Spanish, elongated, flat topped buildings, mostly painted white and with those ornate black railings on the balconies. The white of the buildings makes sunset particularly spectacular. People have a lot of flowerboxes in their windows too, which is just gorgeous and adds nice a splash of colour to the surroundings.  It's a quaint little town.  Here and there are locals working on sprucing the place up, no doubt in preparation for high season.  There are people everywhere up on scaffolding refreshing signage, repairing roads and pavements, painting railings and balconies.  They are all pleasant and will greet you when you walk past, not in a "please buy something" or "you're hot, let's get it on" kind of way.  Just a polite, courteous, "hello" kind of way. The people are friendly as far as I can tell, and seem to enjoy the good life, lots of friends and socialising (am jealous!) and not a huge amount of work. I must look Spanish because as soon as I say "Hola" to anyone they begin jibberjabbering away at me at a million miles an hour.  This is my face when that happens O.O 

Some residence, not sure

From the top of Castillo de Guzman

There are a few ancient ruins here, just sitting around.  A residence, a fort, a few others I don’t know anything about.  I have only been around most of them, not into them, because I haven’t seen anyone going into them and there isn’t any information about them and I’m not actually sure if you’re allowed to. The only place I have been actually into was the Castillo de Guzman, a large castle at the end of my street that has been closed since I arrived but for some reason was open for a couple of hours this morning, enabling me to go through. Even though I have previously said that I am tired of castles, churches, mosques, palaces and cathedrals, I have discovered that extreme boredom can override this feeling.  Once again I was excited to be in a place that had been built so long ago (in 960 to be precise) and was still standing, and incredibly well preserved.  I stood on the walkway at the top, peering over the wall at the town below and imagining myself with an arrow trained on my advancing enemy who were disembarking from their boats and clambering up the hillside.  It was fun, although as I was standing there in full battle stance giving the evil eye to an army of imaginary Moroccans, a foursome of Spanish tourists came up onto the walkway with me, which was rather embarrassing.  I told you I was going nuts. Overall, Tarifa is a very attractive, friendly, sunny and fun place to be (I have to imagine the fun part).  I would definitely come back here, in summer, and with friends. To see the pics of Tarifa, click here.

I am very very very excited about the plans I have once I leave here.  Monday I am checking out and then spending two nights in a port town to the east called Algeciras which according to Lonely Planet is a major drug smuggling centre, which strikes me as a rather strange thing for Lonely Planet to say, and then I am trying to pop over to Gibraltar for three nights.  I really really really want to see a Barbary Ape!!  The reason I say I am trying is because just about all the accommodation in Gibraltar appears to be closed in January, which doesn't bode well.  I have heard that the weather there in December and January is really terrible.  There is another town nearby called La Linea de Concepcion or something like that, from where you can walk into Gibraltar, so I will make a decision when I get to Algeciras.  I couldn't bear to be so close to it and not actually go there!  From Gibraltar-ish I am going to Malaga for two or three nights, and then from Malaga I am catching a bus back this way and a little further west to another port town called Cadiz, where I shall spend one night before getting the ferry to Tenerife, for the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, second largest carnival in the world (Rio is the largest).  I am spending 8 exotic and festival filled days in Tenerife (Canary Islands) and then will come back to Cadiz, where I will decide what to do with my last 8 days or so in Spain.  Interesting fact: the ferry to Tenerife takes 50 hours!! (and also back obviously).  I don’t think I’ve ever been on a boat for that long, and I’m looking forward to it.  You can click here to read about the SantaCruz de Tenerife Festival.  Nice short blog for you!

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N