The Rock of Gibraltar shatters the skyline of this part of the coast, casting its shadow on the sun-bleached cities of Southern Spain. You can see the coast of Africa (and hear that fucking Toto song in your head), so you would assume it would be get there in a place where harbors are crammed into every available piece of shoreline, right? You are wrong! So very, very wrong.

We left Granada planning to make a quick stop in Gibraltar, before sailing to Tangier. That didn’t happen. If you are looking to make this trek, here’s how it goes:

Wake up with a slight hangover in Granada (if you read the last post, you know you get free tapas with every beer. Don’t judge…), dragging bag and backpack down the avenue. Wait for a city bus that never comes. Walk more. Stumble into the main train station of Granada, which actually has no trains. Take the bus towards Algeciras.

I would honestly recommend just going all the way to Algeciras, as it is easier to get a ferry out of; however it is not a city that caters, or even cares to try, to foriegners. Guess what? We went the harder way.

We got off the bus in the middle of the Spanish plains. The wind whipping dust and sand as it came howling and searching off of the cliffs in the distance. A storm choking and coughing tup black on the horizon. For some reason, between lonely highway and fallow farmland, someone thought to build a high-speed rail station here.

From Middle of Nowhere, we caught the train to San Rocio-La Línea - a town north of Gibraltar. You have to remember, Gibraltar is a British territory (you know how they do), so Spain. Doesn’t really care if you want to get there. All trains, busses and traffic stop at the border on the Spanish side. If you really want to go there, you walk.

So we too the train, meandering through valleys and clinging to cliff-sides in Southern Andalusia. Small villages and farms pass by in a blur from the drunkeness of lack of sleep and the night before.

When we arrived in San Rocio, we stumbled out of the small station and into a cab that took us speeding to the hillside to the shores of La Línea de la Concepción (the Spanish side of the little Gibraltar peninsula). We spent the night here to gather our thoughts and belongings, before jumping into the truly unknown. The town of La Línea is a clutter of cubic apartment blocks squeezed into a narrow strip of land that is battered by the sea on both sides. We spent the evening sipping cheap beer on the docks, while the sounds of hotel-casinos and British tourists echo off of the cliffs of Gibraltar and across the bay.

In the morning, we walked to a bus station that lay in a pile of itself, broken windows and boarded up doors, to wait for the next bus heading to Algeciras. Really, we only caught the right one because some nice, old man made sure the driver took us to the right place.

In Algeciras, we limped to the port, where (would you believe it?) we took another bus to the actual ferry port in Tarifa. Basically, if you want to go to Tangier from Spain, you go to Tarifa. Not La Línea (which has a port), not Algeciras (which has a port), not Gibraltar (which also has a port). You go through Tarifa, period.

From there, passports stamped, we jumped off the edge of Europe (of course the ferry was playing that goddamn Toto song).

Tl;dr:

Granada - Middle of Nowhere (you’ll know when to get off)

*Bus to train

Middle of Nowhere - San Rocio

*Train

*Both of these will cost you about 30 euro.

San Rocio - La Línea de la Concepción (cab)

* 21 euro (20 euro for us. Our guy had mercy on us, since we had no change.)

La Línea - Algeciras (Bus, if you can figure that one out)

*2 euro

Algeciras - Tangier (this means taking a bus from the port of Algeciras to Tarifa + the ferry to Tangier)

*33 euro

Godspeed!