July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011

Today was a busy day! We woke up early and set out for Tarifa, where we caught our ferry to Morocco. As we left Tarifa, they stamped my passport and then as we were about to leave the ferry in Morocco, they stamped it again. They did the same thing on the way back so I got 4 stamps in my passport today! 

Anyway... I HAVE NOW BEEN TO AFRICA! I can't believe it! I always thought that when I went to Africa it would be Ghana or Egypt and that it would be a ways in the future, but I got to go today! As we were getting off the boat, a man came up to us and offered to be our tour guide for the day for 20€. Because we had no idea what we were doing, we thought it would be a good idea to have him show us around. He took us  through some streets and showed us some interesting shops. The. He took us to the market. It was very interesting. I had been to a couple fresh-air markets in Spain, but these were nothing like them. It was so unsanitary and it smelled disgusting! It really did give me a sense of how people in third-world countries live. Then he took us to a rug shop where we spent quite a bit of time. My parents and Deej and Whit both bought rugs. Then our guide took us into a little souvenir shop. We spent a little time in there, but I didn't buy anything. 

When we came out of the shop, we were swarmed with little street vendors. Word must have gotten out that we were in there and that we had already bought some stuff because when we came out, they pounced on us. And they wouldn't leave us alone! We would tell them no but they would just keep following us! So we just walked back to the ferry. It was only around 3 in the afternoon, but we couldn't handle it. 

Whitney wasn't happy that we were leaving so early but my family didn't feel comfortable eating the food there after seeing the market and everyone was hungry. So it was probably best that we left. We got a couple snacks on the ferry to tide us over until dinner. 

Once we got in the car, we started driving to Júzcar. I had heard about it so I wanted to go see it. A new Smurfs movie was just made (Los Pitufos in Spanish) and it was filmed in Júzcar so the whole town is painted blue! The only problem is that it's up in the mountains so the drive there was kinda scary. But we found it and I was so cool to see! Then we drove to Ronda where we saw the bridge and ate dinner. 

Then we drove home. We played lots of fun games in the car on the way home to keep dad awake. Well good night! 

PS. There were stray cats everywhere today! Jill and I counted 16!!
PPS. There were so many boys today that would try and flirt with me and Jill and it was hilarious! Most didn't know a lot of English so I got "Lady! Do you love me?" and "Hi sweetheart" and "Bella, bonjour!" It was so hard not to bust up laughing!