After a cold shower we packed up our gear and checked out of the hotel. amidst a mumble of complaining about not having another day in Fes (the malcontents were still…well, malcontented!), we drove out of the old city and headed north on the final leg of our journey through Africa.
The road wound up to the top of a range of hills giving a magnificent view out over Fes and the surrounding country. The day was fine and warm and the land was green and fertile under a clear blue sky.
It took all day to drive up to Ceuta¹ at the northernmost tip of Africa, with a few stops along the way for coffee and lunch. At about 4:30, we came over a rise and in front of us was the sea! The Mediterranean rolled calmly into the bay at M’dik-Fnideq, a small town about 20 KM from the border. We spent most of our remaining dirhams on a tooled leather belt for Brian².
We reached the border between Morocco and Spanish North Africa at 6:00, went through the Moroccan side without any trouble, and then stood in the cold wind at the Spanish side, watching Footrot Flats³, of all things, dubbed into Spanish, on a small TV inside the border guard’s hut!
They put a drug dog through the truck (the look of abject terror on the face of Skip, a hardened pot-head, was priceless!) but it found nothing and we were free to go.
We drove into Ceuta and found a campsite on the hill overlooking the sea but most of us slept in the truck as we couldn’t be bothered putting up our tents.
¹Ceuta is an 18 square kilometre enclave of Spanish territory on the northern tip of Morocco (and thus, by definition, on the northernmost tip of Africa) opposite the Spanish city of Cadiz, 14 kilometres away on the other shore of the Straits of Gibraltar.
²Linda’s stepfather.
³ An iconic New Zealand animated movie about a sheepdog and his adventures on his master’s farm: Footrot Flats. NB I carried a stuffed Dog (the sheepdog in the original cartoon strip and the movie is simply called “Dog.”) throughout our world travels.
CurseOfTheTraveller 