Morocco is a very interesting, but very foreign country!....

Our last update was a couple of weeks ago when we were in Almerimar. From there we moved on to Marina d'Este near Almunecar. We stopped at Marina d'Este because it was a convenient place from which to travel to Nerja where we had been told there were some fabulous caves. It can sometimes be a bit underwhelming when you make the effort to visit sights that have been recommended - but not in this case.....the caves were amazing!! I have posted some photos below, but they don't really do the caves justice, you can't really get any idea of their scale. They were huge and the stalactites and stalagmites were astounding. Well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. 

Our next stop was Puerto de Velez and to be fair, it didn't have a great write up in our Pilot Book. In spite of this it still managed to disappoint us. It was a fishing port and definitely one of the grimmest marinas we have visited so far. It was plagued with seagulls, presumably because of the fish offal that was regularly being deposited in the water there. We left early the next morning for Benalmadena with quite a few seagull souvenirs on our previously pristine decks.

Seagulls flocking round in Puerto de Velez as the offal is ejected.....

Don't get a dark cover on your boat!

Benalmadena is quite a pretty spot, much nicer than Puerto de Velez. In fact it claims to be the Trip Advisor Marina of the Year - I presume this is because of the votes from the trippers who visit the bars and tourist shops around the marina because I don't think it can be based on the votes of the yacht owners who use the marina. 

Benalmadena was a pretty spot, but........

It certainly didn't get my vote. I had several criticisms of the place:
1. They had a non-standard plug socket for their shore power, but instead of providing an adaptor as other marinas with unusual connections do, it was necessary to take off our plug and wire in theirs. Not a huge issue perhaps, but irritating and unnecessary.
2. Their Wi-Fi was useless! A few places get it right but the wi-fi in most marinas is pretty poor, I can't understand why it is so difficult. Anyway in Benalmadena it was appalling.
3. The security was non-existent and this was my biggest issue. Generally there is a gate preventing access to the pontoons unless you have a keycard or the access code. Not here!! At 01:00 we were woken by the sound of people climbing onto Viridian. I presume they were trying to steal our bikes, which were stored on the aft deck. Fortunately they ran off without taking anything after we disturbed them but it tainted the marina for me. We left the next morning.

From there we went to Fuengirola which was a good place to visit the hilltop town of Mijas. Strangely, there were some interesting pieces of Salvador Dali artwork in the Picasso museum here.

Dali's iconic work, Swans reflecting Elephants

We next stopped in Estepona. 

I liked this mural in Estepona

I liked the old town in Estepona, which was splendidly decorated with flowers.

The highlight of this passage was that we were visited by some dolphins who came to play with the boat. This was a nice surprise because we hadn't seen any dolphins for a long time, I guess they may be a bit more common nearer to the Atlantic. 

We are now back in La Linea next to Gibraltar, which is where we are leaving Viridian whilst we return to the UK for Christmas. Since we are staying here for a while we decided to take a trip to Tangier, which is only a short distance across the Straits of Gibraltar. Well, it was a fascinating trip because although it is only a short distance geographically it is a huge distance culturally.

We booked a very reasonably priced hotel, the Dar Jameel, in the Medina. However actually finding it was slightly more complicated than we had expected - the old town was a maze of narrow streets filled with houses and little shops selling all the goods imaginable. 

Whilst we were searching for the hotel it was a bit of a hassle because we were continually accosted by locals who wanted to guide us; sell to us; or just wanted money, but when we eventually found the hotel we loved it.

We went exploring and found it was a very pretty city. 

The market was fascinating, the plethora of exotic fish, meats and vegetables was stunning. 

That evening we went out for a wander and discovered that crossing the road is a very different experience from Spain, where the drivers are very considerate to pedestrians. In Morocco zebra crossings were merely road decoration and you play a game of chicken with the car drivers, taking your life in your hands every time you tried to cross.

Alcohol is difficult, but not impossible to find. Since we had OD'd on mint tea during the day we searched for a bar serving alcohol and spent an enjoyable evening being fed an unending stream of free tapas whilst we drank.

I like free food with my beer.....

The strangest thing we found was the separation of men and women. The bars were full of groups of men, chatting; drinking mint tea, watching the football - whatever, but there were no women there at all! It seemed very peculiar......

Investigating the interior....

At the risk of receiving hate mail, I’m starting with information which may not be popular...... It’s now the middle of November and the daytime temperature here has been consistently in the mid 20s for the last few weeks - with blue skies and glorious sunshine.  We were expecting that there would be some rain as we are now officially in the Mediterraean winter, but perhaps it will come later.  The big difference though is in the evenings. We have now stopped eating dinner on deck because it begins to get quite chilly as soon as the sun starts setting and it is now dark about 6.30pm. We have started turning the heating on in the evenings and we actually watched a movie a couple of nights ago, snuggled up in our fleeces. We know it’s been much colder at home and so are very grateful for the climate we are experiencing.

It's a bit cloudy for our departure from Almerimar 

More usual weather!

We have been in Almerimar for about a week.  It is even quieter than when we were here in August and in a bid to get customers, the free tapas with a drink have become even more ridiculous.  Greg is working his way down the extensive free tapas list (nothing to do with the beer he tells me).

Some free tapas to accompany Greg's beer....

Another free tapas with my Coke....

As an aside the mooring costs in the marina are very reasonable.  It costs €16 per night (including water and electricity!) which is helping us to balance out some of the ‘ouches’ we experienced in the High Season. In addition we have been fixing our water filter without outside assistance!!!! This is a first for us; mechanical or electrical engineering not being either Greg or my strong points.  After many hours of sealing and re-sealing joints (and it was still leaking) we discovered it wasn’t the pipework or joints at all……in fact the filter cartridge had a hairline crack in it at the back which we couldn’t see. We only found out by blasting water through it on deck instead of trying to fix it in situ under the sink! To think we could have had two days lazing around instead just by buying a new filter cartridge! 

It hasn’t all been repairs though.....  We had a lovely day when our friend Alan Malarkey cycled on his proper racing bike from Almeria to Almerimar to meet us on Viridian and then treat us to lunch.  It was great to catch up and we were very impressed with Alan’s fluent Spanish.  We have decided we should make more effort than just knowing how to order beer and wine! 

It was great to meet up with Alan

We also went to Granada on the coach for the day, taking our Bromptons with us.  It was brilliant. However, we failed to do some important research before we went.  We assumed that it would be another glorious sunny day and in fact it was…not a cloud to be seen.  The difference is that Granada is high up in the Sierra Nevada and as we climbed the winding roads, the temperature display at the front of the coach showed the temperature dropping rapidly. I had been reading a book totally oblivious but when it got to 11C Greg pointed it out to me and we both started to get worried.  Then we saw a sign saying ‘This way to the pistes’ in Spanish and we also spotted snow!

Snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance

When we got off the coach everyone was wearing puffajackets and scarves.  Greg was in his open toed sandals and I was wearing three quarter length trousers. Luckily, we had a sweat top with us because we had to cycle in the dark at 6am to get to the bus station before we set off. They weren’t enough though and Greg’s feet were freezing by the time we had cycled and found the Alhambra Palace.  We did make a decision though to stop off in February on our way back to Valencia and to try to ski in the Sierra Nevada for a few days.  We brought our ski kit with us so let’s hope the snow is good by then.

Granada is a beautiful city.  You can’t really explore it properly in one day so that’s another reason for us to go back.  We went to the Alhambra which we should have booked in advance because it was packed out and there were no tickets left unless you booked on-line….so we stood in the queue and booked on-line and lo and behold we got in.  Seems mad to me…if there are tickets left on their online web site why can’t they just sell them to you?  Anyway it was well worth going - as you can see from the photos the palace was amazing!  

People living on their boats are much less transient in the winter and it is easier to meet up with people and get to know them better. Last night we were invited for drinks and tonight we are hosting dinner on board Viridian.  It’s great to get to know other people because everyone has tips and different experiences to pass on.  We are currently trying to find people with recent experience of sailing in Morocco.  Our North African pilot book is now 10 years out of date and we are planning to go there after Christmas, so it would be good to get a bit more information beforehand.

Tomorrow we are setting sail further south, hoping to visit the caves at Nerja and stop off at some of the places we missed on the way up this coast.