Europe
After a day of tearful goodbyes we finally took off in Edmund, our Land rover named honourably after New Zealand’s admirable explorer Edmund Hillary. Our first stop was Lausanne where Audrey and Olivier kindly let us stay for 2 nights. We also managed to have dinner and share a bottle of wine with Anne and Lea before we ‘really’ left Switzerland which was very nice.
We pretty much drove nonstop to Granada with hotel and camping stops in between in Avignon, Perpignan and Tarragona. As we had spent a long day driving, we thought we would stop in Murcia to find a hotel, a typical Spanish town that seems like the entire city was built in the last 2 weeks, which leads to it being named a shithole. Much to Milan’s distress, there was no hotel that had sufficient parking space for Edmund so we continued driving hoping to find a hotel in Cartagena. Luckily enough for the Spaniards the hotels in Cartagena only provide parking for small cars so we continued to the coast to find the blue triangle on the map indicating a camp site. ‘This one looks great’ said Louise, ‘it even has a viewpoint! It must be a good campsite’. Once arriving at the entrance of the camp site, Milan quickly turns the car around after seeing an old naked man walking around and only then noticing that on the camp sign it says it’s “camping naturalista”. Who would have thought they ever existed??! We drove on to the next camp site which turned out to be very nice, although noticeably under German invasion as people walking past said Guten Abend to us. Could it be the Swiss license plates I wonder? On the 16th we finally did our first touristy thing and queued up to see the magnificent La Alhambra. Although, to our slight disappointment we were not aware that there are only a limited amount of tickets in the morning and the afternoon to see La Alhambra so we got tickets to see the gardens instead which were just as beautiful, we think.
After Granada we continued off to the port town of Algeciras – what a dump. We found a lovely campsite on the beach along the coast just past Tarifa which rightly so has been named Costa del Windsurfing due to the constant wind and surf, which is full of windsurfers and kite surfers. We spent the last couple of days sorting out bits for the car, shopping for food and I had the migraine from hell which left me bed ridden for a day. Milan seemed content to sort the car out by himself in the wind and rain.
We crossed from Algeciras to Ceuta on the 19th (it’s only a 35 minute boat ride) apparently a lot easier than crossing to Tangier as there are a bunch of Moroccan thieves waiting for you there. Now it’s time for the hustle and bustle of Morocco!
Photos of our European leg can be found here.