A Stone's Throw from Africa

Our home-made cream & white wine mussel pot!
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Tarifa is about little more than wind. It is a mecca for windsufers and kitesurfers from across the globe who arrive to ride the waves and enjoy almost year-round gusts that keep them coming back for more.

The day we arrived was too windy - even the die-hards had packed it in and the beaches were pretty much deserted. The hundreds of wind-farms that mark the route into town are pretty good testimony to the power of the elements at this southern end of Spain.

Nice to be 'Almost Home'

In front of the Tarifa Jet - the ferry to Tangiers
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When you get to the town you quickly realise that every shop is either a surf shop, kite shop, or pub. We checked in at our very unremarkable hostel (see seperate review) and decided against the beach option. Instead we found the local supermarket and bought about 2kgs of the very reasonable priced mussels. You will recall from our Marseille journal that we had greatly enjoyed the creamy garlic mussels there so we decided to make use of the communal kitchen of our hostel to attempt to recreate the dish.

Sunset at one of the many (windy) Tarifa beaches
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In spite of having no real clue about how best to make the mussel pot, and our really cheap white wine in a box partly curdling the cream we added, the end result was superb. We dined like kings - and were the envy of our fellow hostel dwellers!

After an afternoon nap we braved the still-strong winds and walked into the port area to get info about the ferry transfer to Tangiers. FRS runs a very modern rapid ferry service across the straits - with room for cars if you feel the need - but the price was a little steep at 27 Euro per person or 73 Euro per car. The 'Tangier Jet' is advertised to make the trip in 35 minutes - although our own experience the following day was closer to an hour and twenty minutes due to delays when entering the Tangiers port. After we had established which ferry we would be taking (they run 5 times daily - we chose the 11am one) we walked past the wind-swept beaches and back into the old city to look around. We got back later to the hostel to find that our kitchen no longer had power (they switch off the kitchen electricity at 10pm) so we tossed together a few leftovers for a cold dinner, which was greatly improved by the company (and food contributions) of Roger, a fledgling writer from the USA who was also staying in the hostel (welcome to the Blog Roger!)

All in all Tarifa may well be a great place - especially for any beach-related watersports, but for us it was primarily an interesting stop-over on our way back to Africa. It is, as the guidebooks all say, almost within earshot of the North African coast, which can be dimly seen in the distance. It was nice to be 'almost home'!