Tarifa - last chance salon

It's Monday (I wrote this some time ago, guessing Monday 22nd July, currently 9th September and still not posted!) and the plan is I take a lesson at 11:00 before the Levante kicks in. Sadly the arrangements get screwed up and I'm sitting around while the wind gets stronger. I take a walk up the beach and sit down on the shore to watch the action, and sleep. I'd been thinking about getting a shearing, shake myself into action and drive into Tarifa looking for a hairdresser. When I eventually find a parking place I locate a nearby salon and get a cut. Surprising how much better that feels.

Daniel recommended the restaurant in the fishing village over the dune, so off I go. The road is seriously bumpy and goes on for 2-3km and then stops. I'm still up at the top of cliffs, where is this fishing village? I manage to turn around and find I'd passed the restaurant a couple of hundred meters back. This is definitely not a fishing village. There is a car park but I'm not turning round again to take the van up the ramp but instead find a slightly wider bit of road, I recon cars can pass.

There are a few clientele and plenty of energetic staff. The waiter explains fresh fish is a specialty, if I was interested his colleague would show me what was on offer. Along comes a tray of fish and I go for Sea Bass. The waiter recommends a tuna salad which I accept along with una cupo vino blanco por favor.

The salad arrives and is delicious. The wine is served with an olive but on enquiry turns out to be a frozen grape. The Sea Bass was grilled and served with vegetables nicely cooked and well presented. I had a cheese cake for desert and another cupo vino blanco, with coffee to finish. All in all the best meal I have had in Spain and Portugal this year.

El Levante blew all night so there was clearly no chance of getting on the water in the morning. Few kites were out but plenty of wind surfers. I went to the beach but had a beer and Sardines at the bar. Speaking to one of the water sport instructors on the beach I discovered the professionals went to Palmones opposite Gibraltar a 45min drive where the wind was expected to be 15kts. That will do me, so I set off towards Tarifa where I stopped to clean the van which was covered with a thick dust and splattered insects.

Got to Palmones around 5:00 and stopped at a bar to enquire about windsurfing, no one spoke English making it a little tricky, but I discovered I just needed to carry on, the beach was straight ahead. I arrived to find a packed beach but no kiters and no wind. You can see Gibraltar in the background.

Back to Tarifa then.

The ride through the coastal hills and wind farms was fun. The turbines appearing from behind the landscape like huge moths.

Returning to Tarifa I found a parking space near the ferry terminal to Morocco. The fort was closed but I walked right round and gazed over to Morocco. Vodofone automotive rang saying my bus had been sabotaged? Calling them they say they had a low battery alarm which is ridiculous, the batteries are fine and I'd just driven 30km. Still good to know they are doing something, meaningful or not. I find a bar and have a sangria, surprisingly refreshing with a vino blanco or two.

I now have a day to get up the mountains to meet Daniel. It's probably a 3hr drive, which I interpret as leaving me the morning to get out on the water for a last kite surf. The wind is showing around 20kts so I should be good to go and start getting my stuff together. Now where did I leave my phone? it's not in any of the usual places. My suspicions were confirmed by my neighbour calling my number, the phone was wedged down the side of the seat, I couldn't see it but it was there for sure. I have experienced this before and was confident I could retrieve it, so I made for the beach. I went out to the shore line to check the conditions and could see I needed an 8m kite. I left my gear in a bag and went back to collect a kite and put on my wetsuit.

Back at the van I think I should retrieve my phone or I will have no idea how to find Daniel. 3hrs later I have my phone, what a waste of time! I eventually forced the seat sufficiently to allow me to lift the phone with my finger tips. Time to abandon kiting and collect my gear off the beach, Trudge trudge, through the soft with no shade, this is exhausting in itself and that's with no wetsuit. I get back and without further delay make for the hills.

Off I go along the coastal road towards Malaga and find myself in a traffic jam on a dual carriageway with apartments and hotels crammed in on both sides. Eventually I turn off and start to ascend into the mountains, only 30min away but what a contrast. As I follow the route to Comares the road gets steeper and the corners tighter. At one point I'm unable to manage the hairpin in a village and have to make two 3 point turns with the trailer attached and on an incline. Once round I could smell the clutch and feel it slipping, the engine was getting hot too. Am I to get stuck in the mountains with a flight to catch tomorrow. Taking things very steadily for a few kms everything got back to normal and I was getting close to Comares.

The Google map gets a bit vague in these parts, it's sort of suggesting I need to be on the other side of the mountain and pointing me towards a steep track. Up I go only to encounter an impossible hairpin. A tall stranger appears - the road ahead is closed, someone has roped it off. This guy was really helpful suggesting I should go back down the way I came and round the mountain, a few miles but straight forward. He helped unhook the trailer so I could turn the van around and I set off again. It was now getting dark, I gave it 15min and to my relief finally arrived in Comares. It was good to find Daniel in the bar and I followed him home on top of the mountain. I parked alongside his workshop in a gated compound.

Up early in the morning to sort the bus out and Paddy picked me up at 8:00 to run down to Malaga airport and an easy flight home. Turns out I had left the radio on in the bus and there were consequences.