Dangdut: Gibraltar

I don’t believe that friendship should be limited by age or similar life stages. That said, at my current life stage it is hard to find friends who can celebrate with me important life milestones like turning 30. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself about that, but then I had lots of great friends from various and sundry life stages and ages send me nice messages on Facebook, and that made me feel better. And anyway, I DID get to spend my birthday with a great old friend and a lovely new one—Captain Roy and his wife Carolyn. They took me under their hospitable wings and showed me how the English live in southern Spain. Fortunately, they never made me eat Marmite, though it was present in case being English is contagious and I suddenly lost my sense of what things taste good. I did enjoy being the fact that refusing coffee for tea was not met with any sort of trepidation or snarky remarks.

Of course, probably the best thing about hanging out with English people is the conversation. Here are some examples:

Dear, dear. It seems I’ve gotten my trousers a bit wet. I’ll just pop over to the car and get my spare ones out of the boot.

Have you got any trainers?

Well then, what do Americans call a ‘bathing costume’?

Jolly good. Let’s keep going [on our hike] then, shall we?

*Ten minutes of laughing at the way I pronounce the word “leisure.”*

Also, after telling him about my anglophile sister who went to the University of Central Lancashire for a semester and thinks that qualifies her to spell everything with an extra ‘u,’ he said, “Well that is splendid. Your sister must be top form!” But then on finding out that she doesn’t consistently use British spelling for words like “tyre” or “programme,” he said, “Well that won’t do at tal.”

Lovely. Indeed.

Here are some photos of our last outdoorsy day (just me and el Capitano, as Carolyn had to get back before the end of half-term break). I went for a run in the morning. Then we went up to Roy’s son’s house to admire the view. Then down to brave a swim in the icy waters of the February Mediterranean, while pasty Germans bathed in frigid sunshine (probably under the delusion that we were having a nice summer day), then back up the mountain to hike as far as we could up the nearest slope in the local nature reserve.

Hanging with the Captain on the last day photos:

An Old Arab Village:

View of reservoir from Arab village

Cold swimming (note sunbathing
Germans in the background)

If growing up means it would be
a great indignity to climb a tree,
I'll never grow up, never grow up,
never grow u---up, not me!

Anyway, Southern Spain is beautiful, if a bit cold in February. I enjoyed the pristine beauty of trash-less beaches and lovely Mediterranean villages. Carolyn rented a car and drove us around the area to nearby Nerja and slightly farther away Granada and even all over Gibraltar. We saw the Alhambra on a cold rainy Tuesday, and it was exactly like I thought it would be: incredibly beautiful and amazing and much worse than it would have been decades ago before tourism became a thing, but still really enjoyable. We went to Gibraltar on a beautiful sunny day (day of my birth) and it was very lovely and British-y (we started out with breakfast of toasted hot-cross-buns at Morrison’s) and yet also not…I mean, apes aren’t exactly something you associate with England or any other part of the UK, and yet they were there on that rock. Captain Roy said I could touch one so I did and it came after me, but he saved me.

Gibraltar Photos:

Gibraltar is just a big rock

Driving across the border

Map of the rock

Little old Gibraltarian ladies sipping their tea at Morrison's

English breakfast with Carolyn

English stuff in Gibraltar:

The Union Jack is flying, even if you can't tell from the photo.
It made Roy and Carolyn happy anyway.

Fixing the cable cars

With the Cap'n on top of the rock

Roy liked telling me about all the ships--where
they were going and how much cargo in them.

Reclusive ape

Hey, I'm 30!

Examples of bad panorama photos I took:

More apes, probably discussing the amount of traffic each
port in view (Algeciras, Gibraltar, etc) can handle,
anyway that's what me and Captain were talking about.

Lighthouse--that's Morocco in the background.

Super-creepy underground history display--
every time you turn the corner one of these
guys is watching you through a window.

The Middle-East representing in Gibraltar!

I did go to Morocco by myself. The going and coming and meeting people part of the adventure is in the other post about my traveling (before or after this one maybe), and I really loved it. I love the mix of cultures and languages, Arabic, Spanish, French…as you like…and I like them all. I loved seeing the tomb of Ibn Battuta, famous Arab world traveller. That guy got to see the world before tourism became a thing—also before efficient public transportation, the internet, and airplanes became a thing. At least I know that my iPhone photos are better than his. I also loved the light house, seeing the Kasbah from the outside (it was Friday prayers…), and visiting the Caves of Hercules (seaside caves where Hercules was said to have resided at some point for some reason). Just driving around town was super fun. Coming back through the beautiful city of Tarifa was also super fun. I haven’t decided if I want to live the rest of my life in Tarifa or Tangiers.

A few more Morocco photos:

Bint Batuta at Ibn Batuta's grave

Door to Ibn Batuta's grave

Breakfast view

Breakfast cafe-I think it was founded in 1921 or something…

Lighthouse and view from Hercules' Caves

The Kasbah, which I didn't get to see

Hippos on the Nile from the MAF plane

In February, the shortest month of the year in case you forgot, I was in 9 countries—if you count staying overnight in a hotel in Cairo for transit as being there (I do because they stamped one of my last dang passport pages, the jerks!) and if you count Gibraltar as a country (they didn’t stamp my passport, charming people that they are, but I did have to sit for a cumulative several hours at border crossings getting in and out, so I count it) and if you count a month as a 30 day period, since technically February was over the day before I got to Sudan, the 9^th country which has most definitely finished off the last 2 pages of my passport. I’m in the process of getting a new one (meaning, I scheduled an appointment at the US Embassy and they’ll pencil me in for March 20), and it’s about time. I’ve started gasping when immigration officials pick up their stamps and have begged a few people to please, PLEASE not stamp on an empty page. I am looking forward to the new passport with hopefully a better photo of my face and many empty pages for stamps and visas and whatnot that should make my immigration stops less stressful. Still, I’ll miss my chubby, threadbare little blue book of adventures. It was a great conversation starter. I had fun watching eyebrows raise and thinking up different responses to “It looks like you travel a lot” and other such astute observations. But it is time. For real, it is.

Say what you like about the Entebbe Airport
(It is small, you have to carry your luggage up
two flights of stairs to Check-in,
no out-lets to plug in a laptop, etc.),
but you can't beat the view when you take off--
AND most of the time their wifi works
AND sometimes they turn the AC on.

This month in my travels, I’ve taken a variety of transportation means: airplanes, trains, busses, private cars, ferries, and motorcycles. In fact, my large green backpack that I may have gained through dishonest means (Spencer, was I supposed to give that back?) got even uglier when it dropped off the back of the motorcycle on the way to the airstrip in Mundri and rolled around in the red dirt for a while. It worked out, though, because it was always easy to recognize on those pristine conveyor belts in European airports as the grungy backpack that had been around the world a few times.

Being in real airports (not airstrips) always feels normal and home-like to me. Still, I am glad I’m not good enough at math or remembering details of my life to calculate how much of said life has been spent waiting in various airports in various states of cleanliness around the world, but it’s probably more than I’d like to admit. Fortunately, there is usually lots of candy available at airports. Though I was bummed that there was no ice cream to be found in the dang Entebbe airport. It would have been the least they could do since my original flight to Spain was canceled due to “fog.” Now I’m no flying expert, but I really thought that they had instruments and other important gadgets to help them fly when they can’t see that well. Otherwise, wouldn’t we get stuck in a cloud up there and not know how to get out? What’s the difference when the cloud is on the ground?

New EgyptAir friends

Egypt Air, well known for being an airline based in Egypt, kindly put the entire flight in a hotel in Entebbe for “until probably sometime later.” This was organized by Chaos himself who chose this moment to take on human form. But that worked out too, because I made friends with a Syria lady and an Egyptian man, and we made our own group and had fun. We had breakfast together and found bus rides to and from the venue together, and Haytham even helped me by calling and telling me that we were leaving for the airport in half an hour (information that was crucial to me making it on the plane, and also something that Chaos & co. had neglected to mention to me via the hotel front desk). Anyway, we all made it, got on the plane and found that we were all sitting in the same row, where we would have sat and probably never talked had our plans gone the way we all intended. Once we arrived in Egypt, they were able to go on to their final destinations, while I was lumped in with a Spanish tour group going on to Madrid at a swanky Cairo hotel. Fortunately, their tour guide was a Syrian guy, so we were able to communicate in Arabic since my Spanish is "not awesome," to quote a friend of mine from India.

Upon arriving in Spain, I was impressed by the efficiency of Europe. I was able to navigate a never-before-seen subway system and hop on a train that felt like some sort of futuristic transportation, it was so shiny and swanky. The best part is that as it was leaving the station and I was thinking about trains that I love (the Hogwarts Express) and comparing that to trains that I don’t love (any train in India), they played the theme from Harry Potter over the loud speaker in the train! I was so excited that I looked around for the lady with the trolley selling cauldron cakes and chocolate frogs, but I guess I was still too far south for her. From the train station, I hopped a bus (also super-easy and self-explanatory, probably run by personified Efficiency herself) to my final destination, which I missed because I was sleeping and had no idea where to get off. Ma3lish. I got to Torrox eventually.

My private car trips were mostly run by Carolyn (see the post about my 30^th birthday, which may come before or after this one, I don’t know yet) to Nerja and Granada and Gibraltar and cool places like that. I almost got to ride in a cable car, but they were renovating for my bday in Gibraltar, so we hiked the mountain instead. I must say, it is super-fun to be driven around and not have to worry about sleeping through your stop.

My sweet Moroccan mommy

Boat immigration-still easier than
Juba Intl Airport Immigration

And finally, my ferry adventure was probably my real adventure since I took the road less travelled (by tourists) and left from Algeciras to the new Tangier port. Here again, Arabic saved me (Note this important information, dear readers: knowing Arabic saves lives. Maybe. Or anyway it’s really useful at least). A sweet old lady took me under her hospitable Arab wing and even stopped the bus so it would wait for me to get through immigration in Tangiers where the very charming immigration official and I were charming each other with our charming Arabic conversational skills. “You can stay even 3 months—it is wonderful that you speak Arabic so well. You MUST be Lebanese. Come back anytime.” So charming. But long-winded. But my lady did not let that bus move without me.

My taxi-man

Once we arrived in the actual city of Tangiers, 45 minutes of traffic later, I had no where to go, and again, Arabic saved my life (probably). I changed money, got directions to a hotel, and caught a cab to the hotel. The cab driver kindly informed me that he is not really a local cab, but would make an exception for me. When I told him that I wanted to see the town the next day before hopping on a ferry back to Spain, he obligingly offered to show me around. He refused payment that night, so I knew he’d be back the next day, and then gave me a great tour. He even took me out to breakfast, proving what I’ve suspected for a long time: I am destined to be the wife of an Arab taxi driver. Seriously, they are the only men who ever ask me out.

And after Morocco, all the rest of my trips were going back, which is always easier, since you already know the way.

And now, I’ll leave you with a bunch of photos from my recent travels around beautiful places. . I will include photos here because I took lots of photos and I should use them for some purpose. Remember, I am not one of those fancy photographer people. I take photos on my iPhone and I take a lot in hopes that one or two will not have part of my finger in the shot. Fortunately, there is not too much that I can do to mess up the natural beauty of the places where I was. Still, I think it is important that you remember that these terrible photos I took and posted here do not do these places justice, so save up your money and/or get an international job and/or make friends with an awesome English sea captain, and go see them yourselves.