The Last Leg

Thence began the most miserable part of my trip. I arrived at the Sevilla train station, after a harrowing race against time and through a maze of streets, to find out that the bus was later than advertised, and as soon as I got to the station, I experienced what would become a regular painful pang that told me it was time to find a washroom quickly. I went in the disgusting bus station washroom, found it crowded, and dashed into the street to find another place, running into a tapas bar. The next 15 minutes was nature's way of telling me that I needed to get home eventually and find a doctor.

It's times like this in which travelling alone is unpleasant.

I got on the bus, concerned about the lateness of the time, and grew quickly nauseous over the bumpy roads heading south. The fellow beside me spoke absolutely no English, but offered me something to eat out of his bag, and I politely accepted. It was a pork rind, I decided, and I ate it. It was vile. I thanked him politely, and, in a show of unwanted generosity, he surprised me by pouring a huge amount into my hands.

I ate them, and their effects on my already parasite-tainted body were wholly unpleasant. There was no bathroom on the bus, but it did stop at what seemed like every local village. As the sun went down, we by-passed the depressingly industrial outskirts of Cadiz, and I started to wonder how long it would take.

South and south we went, now in the darkness, until I could see across the straights of Gibraltar to Africa. The lights of Tangiers, Morocco glowed brightly. I got off in Tarifa, quite late, and was on my own to find a hostel. A friend at the hostel in Sevilla told me that rooms in Tarifa were both cheap and plentiful. Neither claim was true. After almost an hour of walking around, I found a seedy place for just over 20 Euros.

Feeling sick in a dingy room in a small town across from Morocco, I guess I should have felt like I was having an adventure, but I had had enough adventure for then. I went to sleep, and woke up to see if I thought anything better of the town in the morning.

No.

But I still decided to explore the place.

Tarifa is one of the principal ports from Spain to Tangiers, Morocco, with ferries running every hour. It was amazing how close Africa was. There was a certain dinginess about the place. I had read that Tarifa is known as being the mecca for windsurfing, with great winds making conditions ideal, but I saw little of that while I was there.

I walked down to the beach, and decided to go for a quick dip. This is the point that separates the Atlantic from the Mediterranean, so I went for a swim in both.

I soon trudged up the main street, hauling my suitcase, and hopped on a bus to Gibraltar. The steep mountains, covered in turbines, looking across the straits to the Rif Mountains, were magnificent. The process of getting to Gibraltar was labyrinthine; I had to get re-routed on a city bus in Algeciras and was dropped just shy of the border. Gibraltar was clearly and dramatically visible from a distance,with a 400 metre tower of a rock rising straight out of the ocean. I arrived there and got through a joke of a border crossing (I didn't even have to stop walking, as I merely flashed my passport). As soon as I got in, I had to walk cross the landing strip for Gibraltar, pausing for any planes that land, and arrived in an English city set in the Mediterranean.

I briefly walked through the town, got a cable car up the Rock, and enjoyed a vast view of the Mediterranean. I found some nice Dutch people to take my picture. I was enjoying the view, but I realized it was time to go home, back to Canada. I realized I really, really missed Canada.

And I needed to see a doctor.

My homeward journey began here.

I took a train to Malaga airport, and slept poorly on the floor. I flew to Paris, then to Montreal, and I have never been that happy to be home. A thunderstorm delay and a short hop of a flight to Toronto later, and I was in Toronto. Did it ever feel good to sleep on my own couch again!