Gibraltar and Morocco Part 1

Two weekends ago we went on a trip to Morocco. It was a trip organized through a company called We Love Spain. My apologies in advance because this post is going to be quite long...

The trip started out way too early on a Friday morning. We woke up at 6 so that we could catch the 7am bus to Seville. When we arrived in Seville we walked to meet up with the tour group. I expected maybe 15 people to be in our group. We ended up have nearly 50. We loaded up into a big commercial bus and headed to Gibraltar.

Gibraltar was incredibly interesting. Being owned by the United Kingdom still, its official languages are both English and Spanish. Our tour guide says the people of Gibraltar literally speak Spanglish. It was like entering the twilight zone. One second we were in Spain...and then we walked a few steps and we were in the UK. It looked like the UK (or what I imagine it would look like). As soon as we arrived we divided into two small tour buses. Our tour guide drove us through the narrow roads of Gibraltar past all of its most important buildings. Then we stopped at Europa point to take pictures of the Southernmost point of Europe. After that, we drove up the rock of Gibraltar to visit a cave. Driving up the side of Gibraltar was both terrifying (as there is nothing stopping you from tumbling down the side) and beautiful. Looking down over the town of Gibraltar you can also see Spain and Africa. Three different countries all at once! The visit into the cave was amazing. I had never walked into a cave like that. The cave is still alive and growing however Gibraltar has built a stage for concerts in there due to the great natural acoustics. Very interesting. Outside of the cave there were many monkeys. The monkeys are wild but are very used to seeing humans there visiting the caves so we were able to stand next to them for pictures. The people of Gibraltar actually feed the monkeys, as would a zoo, in order to keep the monkeys out of the town below. The monkeys, if left unfed, will go down into the town and enter into people's houses to take food. After our tour we went to the town center where we were set free to shop and eat. First priority was food. We saw many signs for fish and chips and went for the restaurant that was closest to us. Being a tourist town, the fish and chips were over priced but delicious nonetheless. After eating we walked around souvenir hunting. It was so strange walking down the streets hearing people speak English. And it was strange being able to order food in English. I don't know if this is good or bad...but I didn't like it. Sometimes I like being in Spain where I can blab in English and take a strange comfort in knowing that nobody around me can understand what I'm saying.

After Gibraltar we got back on the bus to head to Algeciras where we were to board the ferry. I've never been on a ferry. I had pictured it being rather small...a small ship where everybody stands outside and over looks the water. Our ferry was not small. It was rather large. It had three levels. The middle level, which we had entered on, was for regular passengers. The lower level was for cars and the upper level was for "first class" passengers I assume. I assume this because a lady was guarding the entrance to the upstairs level and looking up the stairs I saw many business-y type men with laptops. Below the forbidden area, and on the main level, was also an eating area and small bar. I should mention that the ferry was a "speed ferry". I'm not sure what that means or how fast it goes, but that did give it a closed front end with no windows and it resembled a torpedo. After realizing where we could and couldn't roam, we found our way out onto the deck. The inside had some plastic public bus type seats and it seemed more wobble-y in there, so we opted to stay outside for the duration of the ride. The view was amazing. As we left Spain we could see the mountains in Spain as well as Gibraltar. Not to mention I love boats in general. The trip took about 1 hour.

After arriving in Ceuta the group stopped momentarily to purchase liquor for the weekend before getting onto another bus. At this point we were entering our (1hr to seville, 2 hrs to Gibraltar, 1hr ferry) 5th hour of travel for the day. As the bus pulled away...I noticed that all of the signs looked eerily familiar. They looked exactly like street signs I had seen in Huelva and the rest of Spain. The building signs were also in Spanish. I didn't know much about Morocco so I initially assumed that a lot of Spanish was spoken here with it being so close to Spain. I was then perturbed at the idea of having paid to travel to a different country and a different continent that mirrored the one I had just left. Our Moroccan tour guide, for the weekend, announced to us that we were still in Spain. Ceuta and its neighboring town were still a part of Spain. Morocco had previously been split in half and owned by Spain and France. I hadn't known this! About 30 minutes later or so, we arrived at the border or Morocco. There, we sat for an hour while our passports were taken from us to a government office to be forgotten about examined and stamped. Why it took a whole hour still puzzles me. After crossing the border we had another 20 minute or so bus ride to the hotel.

Our hotel was in Rincon I believe...Right outside the city of Tetouan. Unfortunately it was dark outside by the time our ferry had landed in Ceuta. I say unfortunately because our hotel was situated on the beach of the Mediterranean and we weren't able to take in the view. Not that night nor the next morning as our bus departed bright and early. The four star hotel was nice. Different from what most people think of when they think four star hotel, but I was very happy with it. It was decorated in typical Moroccan style. Immediately upon our arrival we were required to meet downstairs for dinner. For dinner we had salad, fried fish and flan. Everything was very good except for the flan. I have a big texture issue with flan.

To be continued....

Mac & cheese, witches, and hiking

A few weekends ago we made a big "American" meal. Our roommate's friend was here for the weekend and we were all wanting some delicious food so we decided to make macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, and apple crisp. It was AMAZING. The mac and cheese was a little difficult. They don't have a big variety of cheese here. Actually, they do have a variety...but not of cheeses that we're used to. They have plain cheddar, parmesan, iberian cheese, gouda, provolone, enmental, goat cheese, mozzarella. It was hard to find good cheese for macaroni and cheese. We ended up making our cheese sauce out of cream cheese, provolone and cheddar cheese slices. The only cheddar here is in sandwich slices. It was funny using 30 sandwich slices for mac and cheese. The sauce turned out to be delicious though. The apple crisp was super good too. And same with the chicken...fried in corn oil because I guess they don't have vegetable oil here (or at least not that we could fine). It's funny watching us all cook because we have absolutely no measuring devices. We just have to eyeball it and wing it. Perhaps we'll all leave Spain better cooks because of this? 

Halloween in Spain is nothing like it is in the states. For starters, it didn't feel like it was time for Halloween. It was too warm (sorry Ohioans :) ) . None of the leaves had fallen yet. It just didn't feel right. In the school where I teach, all of the classrooms have calendars with pictures of leaves falling in October. It's just wrong. Nothing felt right about Halloween. Hardly any stores sell pumpkins. You don't see pumpkins on peoples porches. There are very few stores here that have costumes. VERY few. And hardly any of the students at my school dressed up. Also - Spaniards think that all Halloween costumes must be scary. The kids that did dress up at school were terrifying. Most had some sort of food powder smeared all over their faces and big dark circles around their eyes. You didn't see any pumpkin outfits, or minnie mouse, or buzz lightyear. Just witches and beasts and dead things. Kind of scary actually. We had November 1st off for All Saints' Day so Monday night we went to a Halloween party. It was at the house of a few girls that we work with. I dressed up as a witch...not too exciting, I know. I just couldn't get into the spirit this year. After drinking at the girls' apartment for a little while, we went to bar called Bombosa. It was pretty fun. They played our favorite Spanish songs for us and some good American ones too.

This past weekend we went hiking. A couple of my roommate's teachers had invited us to go with them. There ended up being a group of about 10 of us....my two roommates and I, and then the teachers and their friends. We left at 9 on Saturday morning to meet up with everyone. We split up into 4 cars and drove 1.5 hours north up into the Sierra mountains. It was both a beautiful drive and a terrible drive. I've never been one to get motion sickness but the drive up into the mountains was terrible. I've driven through mountains before, and while I didn't like it, it also didn't make me feel as bad as the drive here in Spain did. The road that we drove on was a ridiculously curvy highway and we drove through it like we were being chased.  

Actually, I've been feeling motion sickness a lot here in Spain...during the bus rides to/from school mostly. I don't know if it is in my head (mom no comments please) or if perhaps it is from all of the roundabouts. I've never seen so many roundabouts. And roundabouts while riding a bus are awful. I've grown to think that it is impossible to tip over a bus...because if it were possible, we would've flipped many many times by now. 

After we arrived to the town in the mountains, and I was able to stand on stable land, I felt fine again. Hiking was interesting. It was cold the majority of the time. We started out going downhill most of the time. Which, yes, means we went uphill the majority of the way back to the car. In total we spent about 6 hours walking the trails...including a lunch break of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for my roommates and I (I think the Spaniards thought we were crazy). During the hike we saw an abandoned house, ate berries and chestnuts picked from trees, and saw some wild mushrooms, pigs and horses. The views weren't really spectacular, as we were surrounded by trees the whole time, but it was amazing to be outside exploring the hillside. 

The night before hiking, we decided we would have an early night since we had to be up so early for hiking. So instead of going out, we went to dinner instead. We ended up eating at La Mirta. The place with the amazing provolone cheese baked with oil and spices. Yummmm! We had lots of wine and of course the provolone cheese again. We also had red pepper stuffed with a shrimp/cod blend. That was delicious. We had "patatas bravas". Not sure what the translation is but they are little chunks of potato with a delicious sauce drizzled over top. Our final dish was black rice. Be advised that I did not pick this and would definitely have not agreed to ordering it had I known what it was. Black rice. Rice with pieces of squid in it. What makes the rice black? Squid ink. Not okay. 

Not this coming weekend, but the next, we'll be headed to Morocco. It's a trip organized by a program out of Seville.  First we're swinging by Gibraltar for a short visit. To see caves I believe. Then we'll take a ferry over to Ceuta, Africa. The two cities we'll spend most of the weekend in will be Tangier and Tetouan. In those towns we get to see more caves and go on a camel ride. Pictures and stories to come!