At Gibraltar we had a conversation with a few people who had come from Tarifa. We had expected to pass it on the way to a campsite, but they encouraged us to actually stop in. The drive via Algeciras offers some rather spectacular views as evidenced by our portrait for that day.
The young people in the Tourist Office explained how popular the beach town of Tarifa had become. Unless you’ve owned a home there for years, locals now need to find reasonably priced housing in Algeciras a half hour away. We asked our usual questions about chocolate and Jews. Sorry, no chocolate. However, they did tell us that Jerez, at the Puerta de Jerez had probably been the “Jewish street.” We found many pricey tourist-oriented shops, some with North African and Moroccan, and Indian merchandise. In the old food market, Mark stood for about five minutes before realizing he had to take a number.
Tarifa, one of the departure points for 45 minute boat ride to Spanish Cueca,“Morocco.” A sure sign that we’d missed our chance to see an unadulterated old town was a poster in the coffee stand on the cliff.
“Out of towners” are buying up most of the lovely real estate inside the old walled city as well.
Mark’s “nosy” shots of the inside patios, taken only when the doors are left wide open.
Tarifa’s location at the southernmost tip of Spain, where the Atlantic slips into the Strait of Gibraltar, makes it a great location for wind and wave sports. We hadn’t seen as many surf shops even in San Diego. We had parked a few doors away from the Tarifa ECO Center, a 100% organic, vegetarian restaurant with “wholemeal” pizzas, a bookstore with these T shirts
where they use a recent model iMac and kindly brought us a very long extension cord so we could plug in our PowerBook and check our email using their free WiFi.
