I awoke at the prescribed time of 10am, thankfully aware of where I was this time, and shook off the previous night's Feria festivities with a hot shower. I was aiming to catch an 11:30 bus from the Plaza de Armas to Cadiz as I had been instructed by the hostel. Skeptical of their advice I checked the times on my phone only to discover the bus was at 11 and not 11:30. Egads! A mad dash out of the hostel ensued in which my beloved towel (per the Hitchhiker's Guide the most useful travel article) was sadly left behind.
I hurried down to the bus station arriving at around 10:45 only to discover, to my great horror, that the station I had been directed to was in fact not the right one! I made another mad dash for the bus, scuttled across town, and arrived at the correct bus station precisely in time to see my bus pull out of the parking lot and head for Cadiz... without me. Since I was planning to meet Vera in Cadiz at 12:30 and had already told her so, my next task was to wander the streets aimlessly until I could find a free wireless signal to send her an update of my plight. Long story short, I found one, sent the email, got the ticket, and was on my way to Cadiz, albeit 2 hours later than I had wanted.
Just as promised Vera was waiting for me at the bus station when I arrived in Cadiz. This is one the great things about travel- you can meet someone randomly somewhere, have a 10 minute conversation about what you're doing, then a week later you're traveling with them to Morocco. Why would I ever want to go back to work again?? Since we had about 2.5 hours to kill before our bus to Tarifa, we wandered around the coast and old town of Cadiz chatting and taking in the much appreciated respite from the rain.
The bus to Tarifa departed around 4:30 and was a short 2 hour trip. When we stepped off the bus, the delightful weather of Cadiz was immediately (and appropriately) blown from our memory as we were confronted with a severe rainstorm and driving winds. As any intrepid travelers would do, we battened down the hatches and set forth in search of a hostel. Our first two attempts were unsucessful unless you are defining success by getting soaking wet, in which case we were excelling. Finally, a nice man at one of the failed hostel attempts made a call and found us a room at the Hotel Africa; aptly named considering it had a great view of Africa from the upstairs terrace where the rain finally broke for a few minutes.
After getting out of our wet clothes and checking emails, we
came to discover that we were suddenly famished. While on the terrace we joined
forces with Marty whom Vera had met in Cadiz and Laura who had come that day
from the UK via Gibraltar. The four of us set out with two objectives: (1) see
the coast of Africa; and (2) find a place that served hot soup to combat the
cold windy atmosphere. Lucky for us we were successful on both fronts and got a
great view across the sea at Africa from the old wall.
Then it was on in search of a place to get our grub on and
came upon a great café boasting a seafood soup. Bingo. Four soups all around
and in addition I tried the tortilla de camarones (shrimp tortilla) which is
apparently a specialty there. It was also tasty- reminded me a bit of the
Chinese scallion pancake.
After dinner, Marty taught us how to play an Argentinean
card game called Truco. It’s fairly complex and involves a set of cards that
has the suits: swords, clubs (as in an actual club), coins, and cups. It also involves utilizing facial expressions
as well as a side game where you add up the face values and try to bluff your
way to additional points. After that game I taught them the Yugoslav card game
and then it was time to get some rest. Big day venturing into Africa tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment