Having been in northern Africa four months earlier I guess I wasn’t expecting to return there so soon after especially when based in Japan! However, just a few months after my once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tunisia I was planning a short trip to Seville in Spain, and the possibility of taking a little side quest to Morocco was too good an opportunity to turn down.

I had been on my way to Algeciras in Southern Spain before I met an Australian couple who said that I could get the ferry from Tarifa instead which proved to be a good time-saving decision. On arrival in Tangiers I soon lost my way in search of an ATM and when I finally found one it didn’t accept my card. I was then horrified when the next one swallowed my card, and if my other card hadn’t worked I would have been well and truly been in the sh*t! Thankfully, I got my card back after some locals hassled a guard into helping us all get our cards back on an afternoon when the banks were closed.

After that I found my way around and booked a bus ticket to Chefchaouen for 8:00 pm that night. With five hours to kill I set about trying to find the old Forbes Museum on the outskirts of the city which featured in Timothy Dalton’s first outing as James Bond in ‘The Living Daylights‘ (1987).

Back in the medina area I had an overly sweet glass of mint tea at Gran Cafe de Paris which very much played its part in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘ (2007).

It was that film which really brought Tangiers to my attention following an enthralling  chase sequence through the medina and across the rooftops. My half day in Tangiers was not so thrilling and I was probably a little disappointed by it in all honesty.

Being annoyed by touts is par for the course in some countries but there are times when they can be useful such as when I arrived in the mountain city of Chefchaouen at 11:30 pm with no accommodation booked. I told him I was staying at a place mentioned in my  guidebook and he did the usual saying what a nice place it was whilst walking with me and chatting. Before I knew it he was taking me there which to be fair was a real blessing as I would never have found it by myself as it was a 20 minute uphill twisty walk before the maze of the old medina.

We enquired at about five places before I finally got a cheap bed in a bit of a sh*thole. I paid off the tout with 10 MAD (less than a pound), went to bed and checked out early the following morning before walking around the beautiful medina which is awash with blinding blue-white houses and buildings. It was pretty much desserted as little did I know that things didn’t get going in this city till about 10:00 am!

I found a new hostel in the medina and checked in as it looked a bit nicer and the staff were friendly. It was a pound more than my previous one and was also a dorm but seemed like a better option for me socially.

Whilst checking-in I met an English guy who I sat with outside a cafe drinking a cup of mint tea and eating our breakfast. I told him I planned to climb Jebel El-kelaa (1616m)  in the Rif Mountains and he was up for that so we set off and soon met another couple on the way.

The four of us climbed it on a pleasant day of sunshine with a fresh breeze. It was a fairly easy climb although we did go off course along the way somewhere which subsequently meant we were almost rock climbing at one stage!

Overall, we spent about five or six hours on the trail where the scenery was at times like that in the Brad Pitt movie ‘Babel‘ (filmed elsewhere in Morocco) and only interrupted by a few guys trying to sell us kif (the arabic name for marijuana which is grown in the area) and some locals who shouted at us every time we took a photo. Fair enough, if you point a camera in their face but when you’re just taking a photo of scenery it’s a bit annoying. We obviously ignored what was basically just a cheap attempt to get some money off us.

After decending, Andrew and I went up the hill on the other side of the town to see sunset and we basically walked around the town in the evening to kill time where I sampled a cheap bowl of tasty snails (yes, really!) from a street vendor as well as tajine which is a Moroccan stew and meat dish.

The following morning I left Chefchaouen at 6:45 am and spent a couple more hours back in Tangiers before taking the boat to Algeciras as I wanted to see Gibraltar (from the boat) and use my return bus ticket to Seville. However, I was told the next bus using my ticket  wasn’t till 8:00 am the next day so I had to just bite the bullet and pay 17 euros for a new ticket with a different bus company that got me back into Seville just after 9:30 pm.

Click here to read ‘TF Flashback: The Pain & Ecstasy of Spending A Week In Tunisia (2009)’

Click here to read ‘Morocco 2010 Pt II: Two Days In A Uniquely Blue-Coloured Town’

Click here to read ‘Morocco 2010 Pt I: On The Trail of Bourne & Bond In Tangiers’

Click here to read ‘Dining Out: Tokyo’s Best Moroccan & Spanish Restaurant’