The bike rental shop where I left my luggage was not the kind of place that stored luggage, but it was the closest to my hostel in Cadiz where I could lock it up for a few days – seven, to be exact, since Spain’s Epiphany holiday ensured I wouldn’t be able to get it back any sooner. By the time I left, expecting to never see my luggage or the shop again, there was only thirty-two minutes to walk to the bus station, purchase my ticket, and travel the two hours to the coastal city of Tarifa. It all would have seemed easy enough if the beachy, traveller-happy Tarifa was my destination, but it was not; I was going to Morocco.
As a lone female traveller, it isn’t necessarily the best idea to head off to Morocco or the continent of Africa for a week without a plan – however flimsy – but the decision came about with more inward tossing and turning than I experienced at any other time on my 7-month long journey through three continents. After an awkward, days long inward fumble, I stuffed my bare necessities into a cloth sack, rushed from the hostel and dropped off my luggage, hoping that I would be able to catch the Tarifa bus and the 1 PM ferry from Tangier…and more than anything that I could find somewhere to stay in the Moroccan port city before the sun began to set around five.
Justine Leonhardt 