"Is it morning already¨?"
Consciousness seeped in through my fuzziness and revealed the wafting beachcomber voices and brilliant sunshine to actually be a bright torch brandished by a pair of Andalucian policemen babbling at me in Spanish.
"Hola!" I called out of the tent groggily, "Mi Espagnol is muoy povre. Hablar despacio, por favor!" (translated: "Hi! My Spanish is very poor. Please speak slowly!")
They laughed at me and asked where I was from.
"Australia."
"Australia? Whoa - muchos lejos!" ("Australia? Whoa - that´s mighty far!")
"Si, si!" I agreed as I tumbled into some clothes and out of my tent. By this time, one of the police officers had wandered off to speak to a Hungarian couple nearby.
"Hablar Ingles?" ("Do you speak English?") the remaining officer asked.
"Si!" I mean, yes!" I responded eagerly, hoping that they could then explain what they wanted.
"Yo soy no hablar Ingles!" ("I don´t speak English!") he resounded. After a moment he added thoughtfully "Mi amigo hablan poquito Ingles. Una momento, por favor." ("My friend speaks a little English. One moment, please.")
I checked my clock and it was almost two in the morning. We waited, smiling politely at each other in the moonlight, for his fellow officer to get back.
"Okay," the second officer began, "excuse ... my English is ..." he shrugged. "You no sleep aci (here). You go. You car?"
"Huh?" I replied.
"Okay. You go Hungarian car. I talk with them. Okay?"
"Okay." I responded obediently.
He went off to talk with the Hungarian couple and left me and the other officer smiling silently at each other again. He soon returned, babbled rapidy at me some more in Spanish and made some radical hand movements indicating I had to move my tent.
"Balle?" ("Okay?") he asked.
"Balle." ("Okay.") I responded fittingly. The two officers left smiling.
As I later understood it, I was not supposed to camp in that place. Since I didn´t have a car, the officer had organised a lift for me with the nearest car he could find: the Hungarian couple. Seemed like an obvious solution for him, except for some miniscule details: when I went over to talk to the Hungarian couple after the police left, they could speak neither English nor Spanish, had no idea what the police officer had wanted and had no room in their car besides.
Where to go? I decided that, considering the long day, my best bet was to drag my assembled tent with all my belongings down to the nearby beach and nestle in between some sheltering rocks. Surely the beach would provide a good night´s rest? I settled into my sleeping bag, pleased at the cushioning effect of the sand beneath the tent floor and the shelter that the rocks around me had provided from the moaning coastal wind. I fell back into a deep sleep around three-ish, breathing in fresh sea air and with a vague sense of accomplishment amidst the natural elements.
Then ... at four thirty in the morning ... like every August morning before in the entire history of Spain, the natural tide came back in ...
The ´sheltering´rocks nearby provided sufficiently hard surfaces for the waves to crash against and splash my tent with sprays of cold sea water. I was spluttered awake to find the wind had picked up as well, blustering sand through the holes in the tent´s netting. I tumbled out of my tent for a second time that night to find the ocean rushing up within a metre of my tent! Unable to see for the dark and the flying sand, I dragged everything urgently up a nearby incline and nevertheless managed to secure the fly down, dive in, rug up and fall into a deep, well earned sleep.
I awoke again at about 10am to the sound of people walking on the beach, gentle waves slapping the sand and the sun doing her warm up rounds. Everything in my tent was saturated with sand, including my eyelashes, but I was so happy the night was over and that I´d managed to get a really deep sleep. I sat outside my tent and watched the beach wake up over some breakfast I had deemed the least sandy of all my food. Then I packed up my tent and started for the camping ground to see if there were any spaces available. I later discovered that the rocks I had sheltered in the night before were once part of a Medieval Moorish fortress. It had, in fact, been one of the longest outstanding strongholds in the last battle against the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula in the eleventh century. The fortress was literally crumbling into the sea like some ancient biblical description. I felt honoured and suprised to have unknowingly sheltered in such a monumental nexus of History! When I went back the next day, there were even tourists taking photos of themselves standing next to my ancient sleeping quarters!
I met up with my Belgian friends again who took me to the Torre De La Pena front desk and, despite the camping ground being full again, convinced the manager I wouldn´t take up much room. I set up my tent and looked around hazily after the long night and relazed into the beautiful tranquility that is Torre De La Pena. I spent a glorious day drinking coffee at the campers´only beach front restaurant (see photo gallery for pictures), swimming and relaxing on the beach watching the windsurfers glide across the water. I met scores of holiday makers from all over Europe, not just Spain, spending their Summer vacations there. That evening, the camping ground was filled with the bubbles of conversation from campers swapping stories about their day, their holidays and laughing about their far off lives. I met a family from Italy with three children, a couple from Austria who were headed to Morocco the next weekend, a German and a Catalan group of students who were on their Summer break together and another campsite of Sevillians who enjoyed playing flamenco around the campfire to the early hours every night. I was in Bliss!
The next afternoon I ventured towards the main road and caught a bus to Tarifa, the nearest town, in search of an internet bar and a few essentials. Tarifa is the Southernmost tip of Spain and is reputedly the European origin of docking tolls for ships, hence the term ´tarrif.´ Tarifa is widely reputed to be the ´Surfers Paradise´of Spain. It is true they both share a wealth of vacationers, a wide shopping range, nightly entertainment and are surrounded by sunny beaches, but physically they couldn´t be more different. Far from the jumble of Surfers´ Paradise´s modern skyscrapers, Tarifa is a stunning example of Spain´s preserved Moorish town planning, architecture and physical history. Directly inside the ancient, walled district of town with the solid gates, the Medieval buildings are painted white and house modern shops of every description. Go a few streets to the left and the rest of the quarters are dulled to a natural sandstone colour from use and are still active, busy neighbourhoods just as they were a thousand years ago! Directly to the right of the main entrance I spotted a sign saying "Chilimos: Comida Vegetariana." Now, as a vegetarian, I have found Spain a little difficult to negotiate; in Barcelona, there is a little more variety, of course, but for the most part, vegetarian means tortilla (omelette) or cheese bocadillos (rolls) as the only alternatives. Here, in this little coastal town of Tarifa, I found a restaurant that not only made my favourite dish (vegetarian lasagne), but made it really well and with soya meat as well! I was overjoyed and gobbled it down way too quickly - I had to follow it up with a slice of their luscious baked cheese cake!
After dinner I found an internet cafe (the most expensive in Spain so far) and spent a half hour letting people know I was not in Morocco after all. The sun had set by then as I wandered around the streets of Tarifa which were bustling with tourists. I followed the general flow of traffic to find myself in a night craft market (a little pricey for my taste, but quite a nice, good quality range). Beyond the market was a Mudejar castle (one of three in the town) and, of course, the port itself, where the ferries were rushing to and from Morocco (without me on them, I noted forlornly).
I spent the next few days in the tranquile haze that envelopes all the holiday makers on the Costa de la Luz; wandering across the beaches, over to explore some ruins, through National parklands or down to the nearby town for an evening stroll in my own, sweet time. I even made sure to eat at least one ice cream every day, just to put the cherry on the top! By Saturday, though, I was feeling somewhat restless. I had looked at the maps on the internet and had spoken to numerous travellers who suggested the best way back to Barcelona from Tarifa was to travel to Seville via Cadiz and then by train to Barcelona via Madrid. Any way I looked at it, it was going to be a long journey and I didn´t want to rush through such oft dreamed of destinations. I spoke with some of the Sevillians at the camping ground for recommendations. One of them, Pablo, was heading back to Seville via Cadiz the very next day and would not hear of me taking the bus!
.... tune in next time for "Andalucian Tranquility: Part Two."
