Then it was on to Chefchaouen, our final stop before taking the ferry to Spain.

Overlanding friends declared Chefchaouen to be their favorite city in Morocco. But we had another reason to visit – we were going to meet up with one of Denise’s school friends from Sydney Girls High School. We had visited them in Australia, and, amazingly, they were visiting Morocco. (https://pbase.com/diplostrat/oz_reunion) Took some back and forth, but we managed to synchronize our schedules and we set a date.

Chefchaouen has a fabled history. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chefchaouen) We camped in a lovely campground up high above the town, with fantastic views and even some shade. Great thrills as the GPS sent us up a one lane road so steep that we had to use our crawler gear. That’s steep! (There was, of course, an easier road.)

We enjoyed the ugly camper parade.

Afraid to go into town too early, as everything would be closed, we walked down the very steep hill one afternoon to explore. 

The streets of the Medina are, of course, narrow and very steep and many are just steps.  Chefchaouen is noted for its blue buildings (most Moroccan buildings are either white or cream.) 

We made our way to the Place Uta-el-Hammam where we were able to acquire the necessary ice-cream, before entering the Kasbah and museum. 

Begun in the fifteenth century, the Kasbah shows a lot of Andalusian influence. 

Fred climbed up to the ramparts to admire the views and we both admired the beautiful gardens. 

We then headed back up to our campground with a delightful taxi driver, who offered his services for the following day.

We were meeting our friends from Sydney, for dinner and needed transport into the town in the early evening and transport back to the campground afterwards. We were not going to tackle all those stairs again! With the taxi driver’s phone number in hand, we were all set. We met our friends in the delightful hotel in which they were staying. We then walked into town to a lovely restaurant. Was a bit of culture shock, as we were suddenly in a mass tourism area, a change from the more isolated campgrounds where we have been staying.

We then called for our taxi back to the camper. He showed up right on time, with his cousin, and we all had a great natter driving back up the hill.

After a very early start the next day, we made it to Tangier Med for our ferry, only to discover that it was going to be two hours late arriving. This upended all our plans for arrival in, and travel beyond, Algeciras. Fortunately, we were chatting with the young Spanish couple who parked next to us at the “Jurassic Park” hotel. They told us of a free parking lot, right next to the large Carrefour supermarket in Algeciras. So we had a solution to the problem. The ferry did finally arrive almost two and a half hours late and we successfully boarded for the short trip. The crew was clearly in a hurry as, no sooner were we out of our truck than we were off. If the ship could have left a rooster tail …

Customs and immigration in Spain were easy, but appallingly slow. But, after what felt like an eternity, we were on our way to the Carrefour. We shopped, found the parking lot, had a light dinner at the very Spanish hour of around ten PM, and collapsed into bed.

Good night all!