Spain in Morocco
Melilla was a great experience! A very Spanish town with art-deco facades, tapas and other Spanish food, streets overdecorated with Christmas lights, tidy green parks, upper class boutiques, an amazing historical centre with museums and art galleries, bars and music till late at night – not what you expect to find if you’re on a 12 km2 patch of land surrounded by Morocco. We happened to be there when Morocco played against Spain… can you imagine the chaos when Morocco won!? Police checks, barred roads, helicopters to avoid riots. Finally everything ended smoothly.
Alexanders sport session at the harbour 
food shopping in Melilla 
Melilla la Vieja – the beach 
Mealilla la Vieja bridge 
Melilla old town, bridge 
historial museum in Melilla 
Melilla military museum 
beautiful art deco Melilla 
central roundabout in Melilla 
Marina of Melilla 
palm trees with parrots 
one of the parks in Melailla 
the typical hot chocolate served often with churros to dip! no calories 
lighthouse of Melilla la Vieja 
view from Melilla old town 
tunnels under the convent in the rock 
octopus next ot our boat, hunting crabs 
lovely ocupation, peeling shrimps 
who knows who this chap is? pls comment if you do: size of a duck, swims like a penguin
new rigging in Almerimar
After deciding to refit our rigging (and having talked to other sailors and getting advice by phone and mail), we sailed back to the Spanish mainland, to Almerimar, a harbour with a lot of services and providing all kinds of material.
Being stuck with strong west winds and bad weather for at least a week anyway in Almerimar, we agreed this important work to be done by an Englishman during the following days. To keep the costs as low as possible, Jean-Luc was ready to climb on the mast a few times and help with the work. We also bought a wind generator and mounted it, had our outside bench cushions recovered (they were literally falling to bits), made quite some Christmas biscuits and home schooling. We also rented a car for 2 days to visit Malaga and Grenada – check our separate post excursion to Malaga and Grenada.
arriving on the spanish coast 
wet athmosphere in Almerimar 
X-mas biscuits 
stormy seas are beautiful seen from far! 
beach of Almerimar 
caught a fish in the new fish trap – let him go again, don’t worry 
rainy Almerimar 
shocking sight of a boat in flames… 
how to transport a 18m long steel bar – our forestay 
muray trapped in our fish trap 
and the conger eal followed 
sailing off to Gibraltar
Christmas and departure
Other than that, we worked on the boat and tried to stay dry and out of the wind ourselves and were extremely happy to have our little heatings to dry the boat inside (electricity charges were included in the harbour fees 😉).
We even managed to make Christmas eve into a special evening with presents, and Christmas day we had a delicious dinner. After settling all our (quite high) bills, we then were finally to go (after 19 days!…).
Yeehaa, direction Gibraltar!
Great report and photos. Mellila looks beautiful. Looking forward to Gibralter etc!
The bird is the colour of an eider but too small and ruffled I think.
Thank you!
Have just scanned through this quickly, will read again.
It’s not on your blog, Alison has just checked
No problem, will check that.
You can also scroll down on the “landing page” when you arrive on the first page. There you find all our articles, last one first 😉