So our first day in Spain! I thought it was very strange how there is a part of Spain on the Africa continent. This part of Spain is called Ceuta. We took a taxi along the coast and said our final goodbyes to Morocco. The taxi driver took us to a cheapish hotel which was very helpful as we didn’t have the guide book to find anything ourselves. This place had free Wi-Fi which was great to be able to book for the next few nights.
We went for a walk so we could find the ferry and know where to go early in the morning. We bought our tickets and saw where we had to go.
At this time we were pretty hungry as we had barely eaten all day but we couldn’t seem to find any close restaurants that was reasonably cheap or didn’t have smoking, so we decided to go to a supermarket and get bread and some other things to make ourselves dinner. I think we spent about 13 euros for three people’s meals and breakfast which is more than one person’s meal would have cost at the restaurants we were looking at.
Next morning we had to get up around 4 am. Well not really 4 am but it was like that on our body clock. Strangely enough, all of Spain is 2 hours ahead of all of Morocco. We found that very annoying when we thought we already had to get up reasonably early.
We arrived at the Ferry station about an hour early just in case something happened. Luckily nothing did but we had to wait for a long time before we could board. We felt really bad when they seemed to put all the Anglo-Saxon or white tourists first. We were at the back of the queue but went on the boat about 4th because they leave all the Moroccans ‘til last.
We left Ceuta at 9 (which felt like 7) and arrived in Algeciras at around 10 even though the company said the boat would take 35 minutes! All the guide books had told us that Algeciras wasn’t a very nice place to stay with lots of people attempting to steal things from you. People obviously don’t steal things on Sunday as the whole place was very quiet and we only saw a few people around. We couldn’t find the train station very well. We were heading to Ronda as fast as we could because we were told Algeciras wasn’t a comfortable place. We asked for some help from an oldish woman who then turned up at the station 10 minutes after us! Dad had a good chat to her but mum and I were sort of excluded as they were speaking Spanish.
After the woman had left we met up with Teo again. He was travelling to Ronda with us so we took the train at 12:15 and saw the most beautiful scenic tour. We went through mountains, over gorges and waved to some people canyoning (people who just travel down stream anyway they can in wet suits-walking, jumping, swimming but no boats or rafts).
We got off at Ronda and went to two different hotels but the same company. We first went to Hotel Arunda 1 but they only had two single rooms left, so Teo took a room here and we went to Hotel Arunda 2 and got a double and single.
We then went walking and decided to check out the main tourist attraction of Ronda. Ronda is a small city built on two top sides of a gorge with a huge bridge connecting the each side together. We went and had some things to eat and then saw the bridge. The gorge was enormous! making of course the bridge just as tall. We went to one side of the bridge and there was a guitarist playing mush music that made me feel kind of sad and wanted to go home instead of actually enjoying where we were so we went to the other side which didn’t have a guitarist but also had a much better view I thought.
We continued walking so we could look from a different angle and went down- not quite to the bottom- but we saw the bridge by looking up. We went down to the old bridge where earlier people had built a bridge, though even the new bridge is old, it was built in the 1700s.
We saw a girl, maybe aged 12, wearing what I thought was a wedding dress. Personally I think that’s a little young to get married, especially in our culture. Mum informed me that she was probably having her first communion. I could see her mother, her father and her brother were all dressed up too, so I’m guessing it was a big day for them.
We eventually climbed our way back up again to the top of the gorge and as we were really tired from a late night and early morning, we went back to the hotel. I didn’t sleep well that night as there seemed to be gunshots or something going off.
We didn’t do much after that until the morning.
Breakfast is included at our hotel but not at Teo’s so he came earlier than what we were expecting so he could have some food too. He told us that last night was a big parade for all the children who had their communion. That’s what the gunshots were, fireworks. Last night mum and dad had been watching the news and saw the Ceuta border. Every so often they let Moroccans through with things for them to sell and then they would come back. Apparently there were so many women trying to get through, that 2 women were crushed to death. We believe this is why the tourists and “white” people were let through first at the ferry.
We left after breakfast on a walk retracing our footsteps from yesterday because mum’s camera battery ran out halfway through our walk and she really wanted those pictures. We then went on the other side of the gorge where there was another guitarist who annoyingly played similar music. From here we could go down and into the gorge, right to bottom. Well mum and I couldn’t really be bothered to go down because then we would have to come all the way back up again, plus dads legs were still really sore from his climb in Chefchaouen. So we went down halfway and still got a great view of the bridge. It looked incredible because the light was only just creeping onto the bridge and only some areas were lit up from the shadows made from the surrounding buildings.
I had to piggy back dad all the way back up again because of his legs!!! Well not really but we made it look that way to mum… shhh
When we made it to the top again dad decided to get rid of some of his useless dirham from Morocco that he couldn’t change anywhere. So we gave it to the man busking with his guitar who looked quite pleased getting 5 silver coins from us…
Mum then wanted to buy a decorative plate she saw yesterday. I helped her choose, its really nice with gold, blue and white patterning. Teo bought a thimble with different coloured flamenco dancers on it.
We then needed to go back to the hotel to pick up our luggage to take on the train with us.
We caught the Ronda to Granada train at 2:11pm.
The train trip was really good but I couldn’t see much as I was facing backwards. We saw fields of red and snow topped mountains. Also huge wind turbines really close up.
We arrived in Granada at around 4:30.
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