After sending Chris and Anna off in the evening, and Robbie, Jill, John, and Laura the next morning, I set off on my own exit.
I had booked a plane ticket from Gibraltar to London-Gatwick. I knew I could take a train as far as Tangier, then I hoped to go on to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, and take a ferry from there to Spain proper, then head over to Gibraltar.

Armed with at least four currencies, what looks like three passports, and an international cellphone with SIM cards from Morocco, the UK, France, and Estonia, I set off, in Jason Bourne style, for Spain.

The train took about 5 hours, so I ended up getting to Tangier later than I expected. About halfway through the trip, some guy entered my cabin and started a conversation. I answered in Arabic, he pretended to be impressed that I could speak Arabic. Turns out, he was trying to hustle me. Gotta give him credit though; he really did have quite the repertoire. First: are you staying in Tangier? An effort to get me to go to his friend’s hotel. Then, once I said I was leaving immediately to Spain, he asked if I had already bought my ticket. I followed the guidebooks’ advice and said that I had indeed already bought my ticket. He claimed he was going to be on the same ferry, heading to Spain on business tonight.

He contemplated for a while, trying to plan his next move. “I have only bought my train ticket as far as Sidi Ali. Maybe you can give me money for the rest of the ticket, then once we get to Tangier, my friend has a hotel and we can go there and I’ll get you the money I owe you.”

Well, I started playing dumb, pretending like I didn’t know enough Arabic to understand his request. He simplified his language, there’s no way I could feign stupidity anymore. I explained that I didn’t have any cash left, I was leaving the country immediately so I had spent the last of my Moroccan Dirham.

“Ah, so you’ve converted it to Euro?”
“No, I don’t really have any Euro either. Maybe 5 Euro.”
“Ah! Perfect! Because the fare is only 5 Euro!” (It’s not.)
“Look pal. I can’t help you.” I turned back to my book and ignored him. I left him with a “May Allah help you.”
He then made an ostentatious display of pulling a Moroccan youth out of the cabin into the corridor, returning and claiming that all was well, his “brother” would help him. Of course, I saw their transaction and there was no money changing hands. At the next station (not the one he claimed was the end of the ticket he had paid) he got off the train.

Anyway, I got to Tangier, walked along the coast to the bus terminal.

I found out that there was no way I could get to Ceuta until quite late at night, and that only after taking a bus to another city, then taking a taxi to Ceuta. I decided to look into taking the ferry direct from Tangier to Algeciras, Spain. That ended up being the best option, but my ferry didn’t leave for a few hours. So I walked around Tangier, found an internet cafe, wrote and mailed some postcards, then headed to the port.
(I didn’t slip in fishguts getting this picture.)

I had my last Moroccan orange juice (best in the world) and cafe au lait (you never, ever, get the same thing twice when you order a cafe au lait in Morocco. So it’s always an adventure)

I asked the guy how much it was going to be. It was lucky that he said 20 Dirham. Because that’s all I had, and that’s all he was getting. I ended up leaving Morocco with only 20 Sentimes, pretty good I’d say.
I watched the sunset from the relatively empty ferry as we headed to Algeciras.

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