Nine days in Andalusia and the Rif: Africa is closer than Madrid
Two nights in the sherry town, two on the southern tip of Europe, then a one hour ferry to Tangier and a bus up into the blue mountains.
- Length
- 9 days, 8 nights
- Where you stay
- Jerez de la Frontera, Tarifa, Tangier, Chefchaouen
- Places
- 24 across 9 days
From the roof of the castle at Tarifa you can read the hillsides of Morocco, fourteen kilometres away, well enough to pick out individual buildings. The ferry takes about an hour. That closeness is the whole point of this trip: two countries, two continents and two alphabets inside nine days, without a single flight after the one that gets you to Spain.
Jerez de la Frontera opens it, because it is the least touristed of the big Andalusian towns and the one where the local obsessions (sherry, horses and flamenco) are still local rather than staged. Tarifa follows, a walled town on the last headland of mainland Europe with a Roman fishing port down the coast and the wind coming through the Strait hard enough to have made the place a kitesurfing capital.
Then Morocco. Tangier for two nights, which is enough to stop reading it as a port and start reading it as the strange, half European city it spent the twentieth century becoming. And finally three hours up into the Rif to Chefchaouen, a blue mountain town that most people see on a day trip and should not.
Nothing here needs a hire car. Buses connect all four, the ferry runs several times a day, and the only reservation worth making in advance is the equestrian school in Jerez.
Highlights
- Andalusian horses performing to Spanish orchestral music in Jerez, then a sherry cellar an hour later
- Baelo Claudia, a Roman town with its forum still standing on a white sand beach
- The Strait crossing, with passports stamped on board and Spain shrinking behind the wake
- Cafe El-Hafa above Tangier, mint tea on a cliff terrace facing Europe
- The Spanish mosque above Chefchaouen at sunset, with the whole blue town below
Where to stay
Jerez de la Frontera, two nights
Jerez gave sherry its name (the English word is a corruption of the Spanish one) and it is still a town of cellars, with the big bodegas occupying whole blocks in the middle rather than sitting on an industrial estate outside. It is also the home of the Andalusian horse and one of the three towns where flamenco is generally agreed to have been invented, which for a place of two hundred thousand people is a lot of claims to be making.
What it is not is a tourist town. There are no queues, the old quarter empties in the afternoon, and the tapas bars in the lanes north of the cathedral fill with people who live here. That contrast with Seville, an hour up the line, is the reason to start here.
Two nights gives you an arrival evening in the old town and one full day for the two things that need booking: a morning at the equestrian school and an afternoon in a cellar.
Tarifa, two nights
By bus from Jerez de la Frontera, Jerez de la Frontera bus station to Tarifa bus station, about 89 km.
Tarifa is a small walled town on the point where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, and the meeting is visible: two different colours of water, and a wind that funnels through the Strait almost every day of the year. That wind turned a fishing town into a kitesurfing capital in the 1980s, so the old Moorish streets now have board shops in them and the beach north of town is full of sails.
The Roman layer is the surprise. Fifteen minutes down the coast at Bolonia, Baelo Claudia sits on the sand with its forum, basilica and theatre still standing, a town that got rich turning tuna into fish sauce for the Roman empire.
Two nights: one spent almost entirely out of town at the Roman site and the beach, the other on the ramparts and the causeway out to the point.
Tangier, two nights
By ferry from Tarifa, Port of Tarifa to Port of Tangier Ville, about 33 km.
Tangier spent from 1923 to 1956 as an international zone administered by a committee of European powers, with its own currency, no income tax and very little law, and it has never quite stopped being that city. Spanish is still spoken in the shops, the cafes are French, the medina is Moroccan and the whole thing looks at Europe across fourteen kilometres of water.
The port and the corniche have been rebuilt in the last decade and the medina above them has been cleaned up rather than gentrified, so the walk up from the boat to the kasbah is steep, busy and completely straightforward. Nobody has to be met at the dock.
Two nights buys an arrival afternoon in the old town, one full day for the kasbah and the coast at Cap Spartel, and a first evening on the terrace at Cafe El-Hafa, which has been serving mint tea on that cliff since the 1920s.
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Chefchaouen, two nights and a last morning
By bus from Tangier, about 83 km.
Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 as a fortress against the Portuguese, filled with Muslims and Jews expelled from Spain, and closed to outsiders until Spanish troops arrived in 1920. The Andalusian ancestry shows in the architecture: tiled roofs, arched doorways, a kasbah with a walled garden inside it.
The blue came later and nobody agrees why. What is not in dispute is the effect, which is a hillside town painted every shade from powder to indigo, at five hundred metres, with the Rif mountains directly behind it.
Most people come on a day trip from Fez or Tangier, photograph three lanes and leave by four. Three nights is what makes it a different place: a walk to the waterfalls at Akchour, an evening on the square when the coaches have gone, and a last morning at the spring where the town does its laundry.
Day by day
Day 1 in Jerez de la Frontera
Into Jerez: the cathedral and the old walls at dusk
Get in, drop bags, and walk. Jerez's old quarter is small and flat and the whole of this afternoon fits inside fifteen minutes of walking, which is the right way to start a trip that ends in the mountains.
Plaza del Arenal is the hinge of the town, a wide square with palm trees and a bronze horseman in the middle, and every street worth taking runs off it. From there it is five minutes downhill to the cathedral, a strange and rather good building that mixes Gothic bones with a Baroque front and stands on the site of the town's main mosque. It only became a cathedral in 1980, when Jerez finally got its own diocese.
Finish on the Alameda Vieja, the gardens on the ridge below the Alcázar walls, which catch whatever breeze comes up from the coast. Then eat late, as everybody here does: nothing serious happens in a Jerez tapas bar before nine.
- 17:00
Plaza del Arenal
ArchitectureThe main square, and the point everything else is measured from. Sit at a terrace for half an hour and get your bearings before doing anything else.
- 18:00
Jerez Cathedral
VisitGothic, Baroque and Renaissance in one building, on the site of the old main mosque. The Zurbaran in the sacristy is worth the entry on its own.
- 19:30
Alameda Vieja
NatureThe gardens along the ridge under the Alcazar walls, best at dusk when the heat drops and the town comes out to walk.
- 21:30
Tapas in the old quarter
EatThe small squares ten minutes north of the cathedral are where locals eat. Order a chilled fino with whatever you have: dry sherry is the town's table wine, not a dessert drink.
With more time: If you land early, the Central Market a few streets north is the best hour in Jerez before two in the afternoon: an 1885 iron and glass hall with the Atlantic catch on ice and a row of stalls that will pour you a glass while you stand there.
Day 2 in Jerez de la Frontera
The equestrian school, a sherry cellar and a flamenco palace
Book the show at the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art before you arrive, because it runs only a couple of mornings a week and sells out. It is housed in a nineteenth century palace by Charles Garnier, the architect of the Paris opera house, and what happens in the arena is genuinely odd: a dozen Andalusian stallions performing dressage set to Spanish orchestral music, closer to ballet than to any horse show. On non-performance mornings you can watch training instead, which is cheaper and in some ways better.
Then a cellar. Tio Pepe is the biggest name and the easiest to book, a cathedral-scaled complex of barrel halls in the middle of town with a little train that runs between them, and the tasting at the end is a proper walk through the styles from bone dry fino to black, syrupy Pedro Ximenez. The tour is in English several times a day.
Keep the evening for the third of the town's obsessions. The Andalusian Flamenco Centre occupies an old palace in the upper town, holds the largest flamenco archive in the world, and is free. It is a research institution rather than a show, so treat the afternoon there as the homework and find a pena or a tablao afterwards for the real thing.
- 11:00
Palacio Duque de Abrantes
VisitThe Royal Andalusian School's home, a Garnier palace with an arena behind it. Book the performance well ahead, or drop in on a training morning for a fraction of the price.
- 14:00
Lunch near Plaza del Arenal
EatNothing elaborate. A plate of prawns from Sanlucar and a glass of manzanilla, then back out into the afternoon.
- 16:00
Tío Pepe
VisitThe best known of the town cellars, right under the Alcazar. Tours run in English through the day and end with a tasting of five or six styles; book the morning of, or a day ahead in spring.
- 18:30
Andalusian Flamenco Centre
VisitFree to enter, with listening booths and film of singers nobody outside Andalusia has heard of. Closed at weekends.
- 21:30
La Cruz Blanca
EatA small square by the old town hall, busy with locals, good for a long dinner that does not start until half past nine.
With more time: The Cartuja stud farm, nine kilometres out of town, has bred the Carthusian bloodline since the monks started it five hundred years ago, and opens for guided visits on some mornings. If you would rather see working horses than performing ones, swap it for the school.
Day 3 in Tarifa
South to Tarifa, and the end of Europe
Take a morning coach south. It is about two and a half hours to Tarifa, usually with a change, and the last half hour along the coast road is the good part: the Strait opens up on your right and the Moroccan mountains come into view, much bigger and much closer than anybody expects.
Tarifa's old town is entered through the Puerta de Jerez, the only surviving gate of the Moorish walls, and behind it the streets narrow to a metre and a half and stay that way. It takes about twenty minutes to walk across the whole thing and rather longer than that to stop getting lost in it.
Save the last hour of light for the causeway. It runs out to the Isla de las Palomas, a low rocky island holding the lighthouse that marks the southernmost point of mainland Europe, and the water on one side of the road is the Mediterranean and on the other the Atlantic. On a clear evening the lights come on in Tangier while you are standing there.
- 09:00
Coach from Jerez to Tarifa
TravelAbout two and a half hours with a change at Cadiz or Algeciras. Book at the Jerez bus station the day before; departures thin out after lunch.
- 13:00
Puerta de Jerez
ArchitectureThe one gate left from the medieval wall, and the way into the old town from the bus stop. Everything below it is pedestrian.
- 14:00
historic centre
HistoricWhitewashed lanes too narrow for cars, running downhill from the gate to the Plaza de Santa Maria. An hour of aimless walking is the correct way to use it.
- 19:00
Punta de Tarifa Lighthouse
HistoricOut along the causeway to the southernmost lighthouse in Spain, with the Mediterranean on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Go for the last hour of daylight.
- 21:00
Mandragora
EatThe best cooking in the old town, and not cheap by Tarifa standards. Book, or eat early.
With more time: The island itself is military land and only opens on a guided tour booked in advance through the Andalusian environment department, which takes you past the lighthouse to the actual point. The view from the causeway is most of it.
Day 4 in Tarifa
Baelo Claudia, Los Lances and the castle
Bolonia is fifteen minutes west by road and worth the early start. Baelo Claudia is a complete small Roman town on a white sand beach: forum, basilica, temples to the Capitoline triad, a theatre cut into the slope, and a row of salting tanks by the shore where the tuna was turned into garum, the fermented fish sauce the empire ate on everything. It made the town rich enough for Claudius to grant it municipal status, which is where the name comes from. The site museum is good and the whole thing takes about two hours.
The beach it stands on is one of the best on this coast, backed by a dune the size of a hill, so bring what you need to stay a while.
Back in Tarifa, spend the late afternoon at Los Lances, the wide beach north of town where the kitesurfers are, and then climb the castle before it shuts. The fortress dates from 960 and is one of the best preserved of its age in Spain, and its famous moment came in 1294, when the besieging army held the commander's son outside the walls and threatened to kill him unless the gate was opened. Guzman el Bueno threw down his own dagger. They killed the boy; the castle held.
- 09:30
Baelo Claudia
HistoricA whole Roman town on the sand, with the forum still standing and the fish salting tanks by the water. Closed Mondays; the museum at the entrance is included.
- 13:00
Lunch at Bolonia beach
EatA handful of beach restaurants sit a few hundred metres from the ruins. Fried fish, a jug of something cold, and no reason to hurry back.
- 15:30
Los Lances Beach
NatureThe long wind-blasted beach north of town, and the reason Tarifa exists as a sports town. Even from a towel the kite traffic is a spectacle.
- 18:00
Castle of Tarifa
HistoricBuilt in 960 and barely altered, with a walkable rampart and a view straight across to Africa. Late afternoon light is the best of the day up there.
With more time: If the Levante is blowing hard, swap the beach for a lesson. The kitesurfing schools along the Los Lances road take absolute beginners and a three hour introduction costs less than a decent dinner.
Day 5 in Tangier
Across the Strait: the medina and Cafe El-Hafa
Get to the ferry port for a mid-morning sailing. Board, then go straight to the police desk in the lounge and get the entry stamp while the boat is still loading. The crossing takes about an hour and the last twenty minutes, with the Rif rising ahead and the whitewashed city stacked up under it, is the moment this trip is built around.
You land in the middle of Tangier rather than at an industrial terminal, so walk. The medina climbs directly from the port, and ten minutes uphill puts you in the Petit Socco, the small square that was the centre of the international city and is now a row of cafes with old men and very strong coffee.
Late afternoon, take a taxi or walk twenty five minutes west along the Marshan cliff to Cafe El-Hafa, open since 1921, a set of terraces cut into the slope with nothing between the tables and the water. Order mint tea, take the lowest free table, and watch the ferries you were on that morning going back the other way.
- 10:00
Ferry from Tarifa to Tangier Ville
TravelAbout an hour. Buy at the port desk an hour before, and get your passport stamped on board rather than in the dock queue.
- 13:00
medina
VisitThe old town, entered straight off the port road and walked uphill. Smaller and much less intimidating than the medinas at Fez or Marrakech.
- 15:00
Petit souq
ArchitectureThe little square at the heart of the medina, which in the international years was where every deal in the city got done. Now the best coffee stop in the old town.
- 17:30
Cafe El-Hafa
EatTerraces on the Marshan cliff, open since 1921, with Spain across the water. Mint tea, no alcohol, and no hurry.
- 20:30
Saveurs de poissons - Chez Poppeye
EatA fixed menu of whatever came off the boats, served in a lane near the port. Good, cheap and busy; go early.
With more time: If the ferry lands you early, the Gran Teatro Cervantes is a five minute detour on the way up from the port. It is derelict and locked, and the ruined Spanish art nouveau facade behind the railings tells you more about what this city used to be than any museum does.
Day 6 in Tangier
The kasbah, the Legation, and the corner where the Atlantic starts
Start at the top. The kasbah sits at the highest corner of the medina and was the sultan's palace into the twentieth century; the Dar el Makhzen inside it is now a museum of Moroccan art and archaeology, with a courtyard worth sitting in even if the collection does not detain you. The lanes around it are quiet in the morning and the terrace at the north wall looks down on the port.
Walk back down for the American Legation. Morocco was the first country to recognise the United States, in 1777, and this house was the gift that followed: the only American national historic landmark on foreign soil, now a museum and library with a room of Paul Bowles material that explains half of twentieth century Tangier.
In the afternoon take a taxi twelve kilometres west to Cap Spartel, where the Atlantic and the Mediterranean formally divide, and the Caves of Hercules just below it. The cave opens to the sea through a gap that happens to be shaped almost exactly like Africa, which is the photograph everybody takes and is, in fairness, remarkable. Agree the taxi fare both ways before you get in.
- 09:30
Kasbah
VisitThe sultan's palace at the top of the medina, now the city museum. Go at opening, when the kasbah lanes are still empty.
- 12:00
The American Legation Museum (TALM)
ArchitectureA medina townhouse given to the United States by the sultan in 1821. Small, cheap, and the best hour of history in Tangier.
- 14:00
Restaurant Darna (de L'association Darna)
EatA courtyard restaurant run by a women's charity a few streets from the Legation. Home cooking at canteen prices, lunch only.
- 16:00
Hercules Caves
NatureSea caves under Cap Spartel with an opening shaped like the map of Africa. Twenty minutes by taxi; fix the return fare before setting off.
With more time: Back in town with an hour spare, the Mendoubia Gardens off the Grand Socco are the place to spend it, under trees that were already old when the international administration was still running the city.
Day 7 in Chefchaouen
Up into the Rif: the square, the kasbah and the blue at sunset
A morning coach from Tangier climbs for three hours into the Rif, and the landscape changes completely: cork oak, terraced smallholdings, and villages the same colour as the rock. Chefchaouen appears late, all at once, pinned to a fold in the mountain.
Walk into the medina and go straight to Outa el Hammam, the long main square under the kasbah walls, which is where the town happens. The kasbah itself is a fifteenth century fortress with a walled Andalusian garden inside, a small ethnographic museum, and a tower you can climb for the roofline.
Then the climb everybody does and nobody regrets. The Spanish mosque sits on the hill opposite, twenty five minutes up a stony path from the Ras el Ma gate, built by the Spanish in the 1920s and never used for prayer. It exists now as the sunset viewpoint, and from up there the blue reads as one colour laid over a whole hillside rather than as a series of pretty doorways.
- 08:30
Coach from Tangier to Chefchaouen
TravelAbout three hours with CTM. Book the day before and take an early departure; the road is winding and worth seeing in daylight.
- 13:30
Outae Hammam square
VisitThe main square of the medina, under the kasbah wall. Cafes on one side, the Grand Mosque with its octagonal minaret on the other.
- 15:00
Kasbah
VisitCheap, quiet and shaded in the afternoon, with a tower you climb for the roofline. Allow an hour.
- 18:30
Jemaa Bouzafar Mosque
VisitTwenty five minutes uphill from the Ras el Ma gate for the view back over the whole town. Go an hour before sunset and take a torch for the way down.
- 20:45
Chez Foad
EatFish and shrimp tajines, in a town three hours from the sea, and better than that has any right to be. Small, so go early or wait.
With more time: The day trip coaches leave around four in the afternoon. Whatever lane looked impossible at two will be empty at six, so if the medina felt crowded on arrival, walk it again after dark.
Day 8 in Chefchaouen
Akchour: the God's Bridge and the waterfall
Take a shared taxi from the Ras el Ma end of town out to Akchour, about forty minutes east into the Talassemtane national park. This is the day the mountains stop being scenery.
Two walks start from the same bridge and you can do both. The first goes right, an hour and a half up the riverbed to the God's Bridge, a natural rock arch a hundred metres above the water that looks engineered and is not. The second goes left, six kilometres up a well used path to the Grand Cascade, a waterfall falling into a green pool that everybody swims in.
Neither is technical, both are rocky, and the river crossings are done on stepping stones that move. Take proper shoes, more water than you think, and cash for the cafes along the way, which are shacks on platforms over the river and serve very good tajine.
Arrange your taxi back before you set off, or accept that you will be negotiating from a car park at five in the afternoon.
- 08:30
Shared taxi to Akchour
TravelForty minutes from the top of town. Grands taxis leave when full from near the Ras el Ma gate; agree the return time and price at the same moment.
- 09:30
The God's bridge
VisitAn hour and a half up the right hand path to a natural rock arch over the gorge. The last stretch is a scramble; the drink at the cafe underneath it is the reward.
- 13:20
Tajine at a river cafe
EatWooden platforms over the water with a fire going underneath. Cash only, and worth the stop even if you are not hungry yet.
- 14:45
Grand Cascade D'Akchour
VisitSix kilometres up the left hand path to the big waterfall and its pool. Allow four hours for the round trip and bring something to swim in.
With more time: One walk instead of two makes this a half day, which leaves an afternoon for a hammam in the medina. Most are men-only or women-only by time of day, and any guesthouse will tell you which hours are which.
Day 9 in Chefchaouen
Ras el Ma, the old quarter, and the road out
Chefchaouen deserves its last morning at the top of town rather than in a taxi. Ras el Ma is the spring where the river comes out of the mountain, ten minutes uphill through the medina, and it is still where a good part of the town does its washing: concrete basins, running water, and a row of cafes on the far bank facing the noise of it.
Walk back down through Souiqah, the oldest residential quarter, which is where the Andalusian refugee families settled in the fifteenth century and where the blue is deepest and the doorways lowest. This is the part of town that is a town rather than a photograph, and at eight in the morning you will have it to yourself.
Then the bus. Tangier is three hours back for a flight or another ferry, Fez is four hours south east and has an airport, and both leave in the late morning. Buy the ticket the night before.
- 08:00
Ras El Ma
VisitThe spring at the top of the medina, with the laundry basins and the cafes across the water. Best before nine.
- 09:15
Souiqah quarter
VisitThe oldest quarter, settled by families expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century. Ten minutes of lanes and the best blue in town.
- 10:30
Cafe Clock
EatBreakfast on the roof of a four floor riad, with the mountains on one side and the medina on the other. Open early, which most places here are not.
- 12:00
Coach out to Tangier or Fez
TravelThree hours north to the coast or four inland, both with morning departures. Book at the CTM office the evening before.
Before you go
Getting in, and the one hour that matters
Jerez has its own small airport with seasonal European routes, but most people arrive through Seville, an hour away by frequent train, or Málaga, which is further but better connected. Either works. Give yourself a night in Jerez before the first full day rather than landing into it.
The crossing is the Tarifa to Tangier Ville fast ferry, run by two competing operators, several sailings a day, roughly an hour dock to dock. It is the only route that lands you in the city itself: the Algeciras boats go to Tanger Med, forty kilometres east, and then you need a shuttle. Buy at the port an hour before or online the day before, and note that sailings are cancelled in a strong Levante wind, which is the one genuine risk on this route.
Passport control happens on the boat on this route. Find the police desk on the passenger deck as soon as you board and get the entry stamp before the queue forms, because without it you will be sent back to the end of a much longer line on the dock.
Buses, because there is no train
Jerez to Tarifa is a coach, about two and a half hours down the coast road with a change in Cádiz or Algeciras depending on the departure. Book it the day before at the bus station, which sits directly next to the railway station.
In Morocco, CTM and Supratours are the two intercity coach companies worth using: assigned seats, luggage checked into the hold for a few dirhams, and terminals rather than kerbsides. Tangier to Chefchaouen takes about three hours and climbs the whole way. Book the day before, in person or online, and take a morning departure so the afternoon is still yours.
There is no railway at either end of the Moroccan half of this trip. Chefchaouen has never had a station and Tangier's line runs east and south, not into the mountains.
Money, dress and the border
The dirham is a closed currency, so change money after you land rather than before. Cards work in Tangier hotels and larger restaurants and almost nowhere in Chefchaouen, where the entire town runs on small notes. There are cashpoints on the main square.
Morocco keeps the same clock all year while Spain moves its own, so from late March to late October Tangier is an hour behind Tarifa and in winter the two match. Morocco also drops back an hour for Ramadan. Check the difference before you book a sailing.
Covered shoulders and knees are the comfortable default in both Moroccan towns and more than a default in Chefchaouen, which is small, religious and residential. Working mosques are closed to non-Muslims throughout Morocco, so the Grand Mosque here and the one in Tangier are things you look at rather than enter.
When to go
April to early June and September to October are the good windows. The Strait is calmer, Tarifa is warm without being August, and the Rif is green rather than parched.
July and August fill Tarifa with kitesurfers and Tangier with returning Moroccan families from Europe, which is atmospheric and makes rooms expensive and ferries full. Winter is quiet and mild at sea level and genuinely cold at night in Chefchaouen, which sits at over five hundred metres and where hotels are stone and often unheated.
The wind decides more than the season. Tarifa has two: the Levante from the east, hot and relentless and the one that stops ferries, and the Poniente from the Atlantic, cooler and calmer. Locals will tell you which is blowing before you ask.
The shape of this trip is a straight line about two hundred kilometres long, and the reason it works is that almost nothing on it is famous. Jerez, Tarifa, Tangier and Chefchaouen are all towns that people pass through on the way somewhere else, which is why they are still themselves.
If you have three more days, add them at the Moroccan end rather than the Spanish one. Fez is four hours south east of Chefchaouen and is the reason most people come to this country at all, and arriving there overland from the mountains beats arriving by plane.
Go deeper on one city
Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Can this be done in the other direction?
- Yes, and it works just as well: fly into Tangier or Fez, start in the Rif and finish in Jerez with the sherry cellars as the last thing rather than the first. The only argument for going south is that the ferry is more of an event when you have spent two days looking at Africa from the Spanish side.
- Is nine days enough for both countries?
- It is enough for this corner of both. What it is not is a tour of Spain or of Morocco: Seville, Fez and Marrakech are all deliberately absent, and adding any of them would turn a slow trip through one small region into a week of transport.
- What happens if the ferry is cancelled?
- Strong easterly wind stops the Tarifa fast ferries a handful of days a year. The fallback is a bus or taxi twenty minutes to Algeciras and the conventional ferry to Tanger Med, which sails in weather that grounds the fast boats, then a shuttle bus or taxi the last forty kilometres into Tangier. Build the flexibility into the day rather than into the schedule.
- Do I need a guide in Tangier or Chefchaouen?
- No. Both medinas are small, signposted and walkable, and Tangier in particular is much less pushy than its reputation. Unofficial guides will offer at the port; a polite no thank you is enough.
- Where should I stay?
- In Jerez, the old quarter between the cathedral and Plaza del Arenal. In Tarifa, inside the walls, though rooms are small and the wind is loud. In Tangier, the medina or the kasbah for atmosphere and the seafront for space. In Chefchaouen, a guesthouse inside the medina with a roof terrace, which is where you will spend every evening. Copy the plan into a trip and the nights are already split the right way.