13th March 2017. Tarifa, Spain.

The calves were so cute this morning, they must have had a bad night so they were just lolling around in the wild flowers and when the cow herder tried to move them on they eventually rose to their feet, moved along and when they were far enough away from him (not very far) they started dragging their feet again just like naughty children.

It was a bit chilly outside today because of the wind so the cow herder was allowed to sit in a car for about an hour while he kept his eye on them then he hopped out to move them on again and the car drove off.

I don’t think his heart is really in his job,  we wonder whether he’s the farmer’s son and is doing this job under duress!  We’ve seen him a few times over the last few days, he spends a lot of time on his phone.  Today we saw him move the cattle back to the next field and then as they were disappearing into the distance two more appeared WAY, WAY behind him, they seem to know the route so they made their own way home but half an hour after they’d all completely disappeared another cow suddenly wandered up and a few minutes later the white car that had left the cow herder earlier reappeared and a lady got out as yet another lonesome cow put in an appearance,  neither of them needed any assistance going home, they seem quite content to just plod back the way they had come this morning.  When the lady had had a good check around the common and was happy that ALL the cows had left she got back in the car and drove away.

In the afternoon we headed into Tarifa, it’s supposed to be rainy tomorrow and I wanted to look around the town before we leave tomorrow.  There was a great petrol station just outside the town which was 6 euros cheaper than the cheapest fuel we’ve seen down this end of Spain AND it had an area for emptying and filling the water and waste which was free as we’d bought a lot of fuel and on top of that when we pulled up to empty the grey water I got to see birds of prey swooping over the van and then riding the thermals above the hill in front of us!  This has got to be the best stop at a petrol station on the whole trip!

When we’d finished filling and emptying we drove into Tarifa, parked beside the main road and walked into the Old Town.

We were on a mission to find food and the very first cafe we saw as we entered the Old Town had a big sign up saying it had vegetarian food, unfortunately we’d arrived so late that the kitchen was closed and they were only serving drinks.  We eventually found a restaurant that was open for another 45 minutes so we went in there, Sod’s  Law says it had to be a fish restaurant, great for Darren, not so great for me but there was an egg salad on the menu so I had that.  Darren ordered the same and some marinated monkfish.  The salads that arrived were HUGE and very colourful, we haven’t quite got the hang of this, we think the Spanish share a large salad and order a fish or meat dish each.  I had been looking forward to sharing a desert but we were so full of salad that we didn’t have room for it, most disappointing.

After lunch we walked towards the lighthouse, the views over to Morocco were worth the walk in themselves but looking at the sun shining through the clouds on to the blue sea as the waves crashed against the rocks added to our enjoyment which was lucky really because Darren was shivering while we walked along the causeway to the most Southerly point in Spain because his mean wife insisted we had to go to the lighthouse only to discover when we got to the island that it’s not open to the public, whoops, sorry Darren.

We sauntered back through the town to the van and Darren started  to warm up again then we headed up the road to Lidl where we stocked up with fruit and veg before going back to the field we’d been staying in and were pleased to see that our space was still empty so we parked there.

This evening as the sun had finished setting Terry came over briefly to see whether I’d taken any photos of the sunset, the sky had been awash with strong orange and gold hues and although I had tried very hard NOT to go out and take yet another photo of yet another sunset  I couldn’t contain myself and had stood outside snapping away until the sun disappeared and so it seems had Terry.