Well that felt exciting just writing it! Africa is a vague concept to the average American. To most of us geographers it’s at least of some academic interest, and in my case great interest since I was in elementary school. However.. even among geographers most don’t actually go to Africa. I’ve wanted to for many years, and generally had the usual “safer” areas in mind- Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Egypt. Due to my specific interests some others have also come to mind- Rwanda because I studied it in college, Madagascar from when I first saw an image of a lemur, Congo due to their beautiful stamps, and Mali since our good friends spent time their revitalizing Araouane. Morocco has caught my eye thanks to the Atlas Mountains, which are on a short list of snow-capped peaks surrounded by vegetation above a desert (The Great Sand Dunes in Colorado are an unexpected member of that list!). Well.. today was the day we first set foot in Africa. Silly by African or even European standards I’m sure but meaningful to us.

We woke of up in our beautiful hotel room in idyllic Estepona, Spain. We opened the three sets of wooden shuttered windows to let in fresh air and stream sunlight in. We had a fresh breakfast at a little cafe at the corner. Fresh orange juice, fresh bread, great coffee..

We wandered around the cute little old town area checking out the buildings and people-watching. Like so many old European downtown areas, it has distinct paving stones. These ones are big rectangular slabs of what I suspect is marble.

We all packed up and drove south to Algeciras, the main Spanish port city providing ferry service to Morocco. Algeciras is due west of Gibraltar so south along the coast, so we drove around Gibraltar to get there (look at the map!). It really rises rapidly and has a presence even from many miles away.

We dropped off our cursed electric car at the train station Hertz and took a short taxi ride to the ferry terminal. It was ghostly empty so we cruised through easily. It felt like we must have done something wrong it was so empty in the waiting area.

When we were finally let onto the ferry itself we were the only people inside. We climbed up to the top floor and explored.. alone. We’re still not if our experience was typical, but eventually people started to flood in and fill most of the open areas (the mid-ship rows of seats were still mostly vacant). The biggest factor (we realized when we off boarded), was that there were only 5-6 of us who didn’t have a vehicle in the hold.

We finally launched about 1.5 hours after boarding. As soon as we were exiting the port we could see the looming Moroccan mountains in the distance. In fact.. you can clearly see each continent’s mountains from the other. This is famously the narrowest section of the Mediterranean, but somehow sitting on a ship in between the two made it feel surreal and.. small.

At 5:17pm we stepped onto African soil.. or err.. asphalt.

Unintuitively, the ferry lands at Tangier Med, a shipping hub ~45 min NE of the city of Tangier. We took a free shuttle to the train station, learned that the trains only run in the mornings, learned that Uber and Bolt don’t work in Morocco, learned that rideshare services are technically illegal in Morocco, and.. took a taxi to our hotel in Tangier.

We are staying in a nice, modern hotel next to the train station (in preparation for the next leg of our trip!). It’s a 15 min drive in to downtown Tangier. We took a taxi, and between the tangled layout of the city and our first choice being closed, we got a quick tour of Tangier. It reminded Steve and me of Hyderabad in many ways. Ultra-modern on one block then people sitting in the dirt on the next. Traffic was maybe 80% as bad as I India’s. They do use the traffic ,lights and signs, but it’s mostly merges and roundabouts so there’s a lot of chaos. Pedestrians flow across traffic within inches and street width varies from large multi-lane avenues to just barely wider than the car.

Our taxi driver, Mohamed, was energetic and excitedly talking in a mixture of Arabic, French, Spanish, English, and.. maybe more?

Since our first choice was closed, we went to a place recommended by Mohamed, El Tangerino. It turned out to be a very tourist-oriented restaurant, in fact the menu only had one Moroccan item. The prices were Western and the food was.. adequate. We were hungry by then though and they are one of the only restaurants in Tangier to serve alcohol so we were happy.

We then went next door to La Gelateria and got some desserts there. It’s a gelato shop of course but I was unimpressed by the selection. We got raspberry cheesecake and carrot cake. We WERE impressed by the young men that worked the counter and spoke perfect English. They said it was mostly from movies and TV, and they sounded native.

What a day!