Down the Coast

In El Puerto de Santa Maria our friend and host, Manuel, gave us detailed information on how to get to Tarifa via trekking routes rather than highways once we'd gotten past Chiclana de la Frontera. After a quick visit to Cadiz and an overnight stop in El Puerto (where Cadiz University Sea Sciences major Emilio took us in) we took backroads towards Chiclana, camping for the night a few kilometers short of that town.
The next day, while heading towards Conil de la Frontera, we met Pete, an Englishman with a big backpack on a small motorbike who sputters down the shoulder of the highway to get where he is going. He warned us about the rain in Spain, and talked to us about his conversion from skinhead hooliganism to Hinduism. He signed our petitions for peace in the Middle East and blessed us before we continued our walk. Some thirty minutes later, Pete sputtered by, stopped his motorbike and handed us twenty euros for our journey. We graciously accepted. Thank you, Pete.
Arriving at Conil we slept on the beach, then took advantage the following days of Manuel's maps he'd made for us. The going was sometimes slow and difficult in soft sand, but it was well worth it as we rounded Cape Trafalgar and climbed over the cliffs between Los Canos de Meca and Barbate. It was on these heights that we had our first spectacular view of Morocco. We camped the night just short of Barbate.
The next day, in desperate need of a shower, we paid the price to use a gym in Barbate, but only for the shower, then we continued our journey past Zahara, which is a ghost town in winter but for a few diehard surfers. We passed Atlanterra to find ourselves in an eerily deserted, but extremely wealthy neighborhood on cliffs overlooking the sea. We felt that we were trespassing as our pilgrim backpacking was wholly incongruous with our surroundings.
Rounding the point near Atlanterra we made our way down to Playa Bolonia, and as it was getting dark we had to camp on the beach, surrounded by 'no camping' signs. The next day we hiked the final 22 kilometers to Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe and undoubtedly the warmest at this time of year. We hiked the last 5 or 6 kilometers on the beach, watching the kite surfers, then found our first host in several days, Jorge, who kept us well cared for for the next two days before our crossing to Morocco and Africa.