OK, so we weren’t actually tacking to Tangier, but we were on a boat. There is no train from Cadiz to Tarifa, so we caught the bus down first thing in the morning. It was then about a twenty minute walk to the ferry port at Tarifa. The name “Tarifa” is actually derived from the Umayyad Caliphate military commander, Tarif ibn Malik, but the current ruler of Tarifa is the wind. Most of the homages paid to Tarifa are to Neptune as it is one of the windsurfing capitals of the world – something clearly evident from the make-up of the shops on the high street.
Tarifa though is a logical point to get the ferry as it is actually the most southerly mainland point in Europe. The only land further south in Europe is islands and so the trip across from Tarifa is the shortest route to Africa.
The ferry arrived and despite some fairly random arrangements for security and getting stamped in to Morocco (we had to do it on the boat while rolling around all over the place!) we got to our hotel mid-afternoon. A welcome of mint tea and biscuits went down very well and we then headed out to explore a bit around the medina where the hotel was located. The most important stop though was the shop next door to the hotel who sold us Moroccan sim cards – 10GB of data (each) for less than O2 wanted to charge us for about 50MB – a simple no-brainer of a decision. Luckily the helpful shop owner did all the work for us, adding the credit and installing the sim card. The next challenge will be getting back to Europe ….
However, most of the exploration we saved for the next day. Attempting to navigate using our new found Moroccan data allowance proved a challenge. The narrow alleyways and high buildings don’t lend themselves to good GPS signals, but we managed to head through the medina and up to the Kasbah Museum (after a quick look at the Straits of Gibraltar from the fortified walls). Tangier, like Cadiz, was something of a mecca for a range of cultures, starting with the Phoenicians in the 10th century BCE who used it as a trading centre. The old Berber name was Tingi (probably meaning “marsh”), but the Greeks claimed that Tingís was named after Tinjis, a daughter of Atlas. The name was variously Romanised, Portugesised (is there such a word?) and Anglicised to become Tangier to us. Most importantly though it is the city which gave us the word ‘tangerine’.
With a mixed history, the museum took us through various periods; Phoenician, Cathaginian, Roman, Vandal (in medieval times) and then primarily Arab with a Portugese and English interlude. The Portugese actually gave it to us (how generous!) on the occasion of the wedding of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza in 1661, though the generosity of this act seems to have been tempered by them basically nicking everything that wasn’t bolted or concreted down; an official report said that they took “the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores“. It was a fascinating history and the museum itself was in a beautiful old palace built during the reign of sultan Moulay Ismail in the early 18th century. Appropriately, it was built over the ruins of the English “Upper Castle” – a nice metaphor to the state of British rule at the time. The palace gardens were home to some very dozy tortoises and some tired paving but they were nevertheless relaxing.
From the Kasbah, we headed next door to the modern art museum and a special exhibition called the ‘Lights of Africa‘. This was amazing and we spent a long time looking around. The works were commissioned originally in 2015 at the time of COP21 in Paris. The aim was to illustrate in art how a literally ‘enlightened‘ Africa would benefit from greater access to energy and electricity. The artists all chose different ways to illustrate how light and energy could make a difference, but inevitably the theme of climate change came through in many of the works as well. One artist was chosen from each African country and in a video installation each of the 54 artists was given 54 seconds on the video to demonstrate the meaning behind their work. An inspirational view of the contemporary artistic talent in Africa.
For a break we headed to an inauspicious looking café next to the museums, though to begin with, as the only people in there with the owner muttering over his tea-making, we did wonder what we had walked into. However, he seemed to mellow a little when he picked up his musical instrument and started playing for us. He seemed to be a sort-of Pied Piper of Tangier though as, once he started playing it, all the local cats began to appear. I am assuming that the instrument he was playing was an Oud – a similar instrument to a lute. Western lutes developed out of the Medieval Islamic oud which has a much longer history.
What was left of the day we spent wandering back through the medina and eating a very late lunch (or early evening meal!).
