Day 2: Ceuta

The main reason I'd booked us a hotel in Algeciras was not to see the sights of Algeciras, but because it was a good location from which to set off on an adventure today. When we were driving along motorways in this part of Spain back in 2021, we passed lots of signs advertising ferries across the Strait of Gibraltar; both to the city of Tangier in Morocco, and to the Spanish city of Ceuta. When we visited Gibraltar itself as part of that holiday, I was really excited by the fact that we were able to see across to Morocco, and thought at the time that catching one of those ferries would be a great way of saying that we'd been to Africa, without doing anything as scary as properly going to Africa. Returning to this part of the world sat on my bucket list for quite a long time and ultimately got superseded by events in 2024, when we decided to go to Tanzania! But when we found the cheap flights to Malaga for this weekend and were looking for things to do without hiring a car, the idea of investigating the ferries came back to the forefront of my mind.

I ruled out the idea of taking a ferry to Tangier once I realised that Ramadan was starting this week and therefore lots of things like restaurants were likely to be closed. That left us with the idea of a day trip to Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city situated on the north African coast. When I investigated it I found that there were multiple ferries a day to and from Algeciras, so visiting as a day trip was perfectly possible. I booked tickets for the 10.30 ferry this morning, which sounded like quite a civilised time. In reality, it involved a fairly early start because the instructions said we needed to be at the ferry port 90 minutes in advance of the departure time and the ferry port was around a 30 minute walk from where we were staying.

We left the hotel around 08.30 and soon discovered that there was absolutely no good reason to be at the ferry port so early. Luckily the port had a nice cafe where we were able to get some coffee, while waiting to be allowed through security and into the boarding area. Everything went very smoothly and by 10.30 we were sitting on the boat, watching it pull away from Algeciras.

Ceuta did not seem to be a hugely popular day trip destination - at least, not in February - and so we had the ferry almost to ourselves.

The journey was pretty short - only about an hour. There were some big waves once we got out onto the open sea and I was glad that I'd taken a seasickness tablet as a precaution. Unfortunately it was one of those ferries where you have to stay inside - and the windows were rather dirty - so I didn't get any great photos, but we sailed right past Gibraltar, which was exciting.

Before too long we arrived in Ceuta.

Right outside the port was a large statues of Hercules. I didn't know this until I got online and looked it up, but Hercules is supposed to have smashed open the Strait of Gibraltar, resulting in two pillars; the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and Monte Hacho in Ceuta on the other side.

I must also admit that I didn't really know very much about Ceuta at all before we started planning this trip.

The peninsula was originally part of Portugal back in the fifteenth century.

At some point Portugal and Spain shared a king and Ceuta ultimately chose to stay part of Spain when they separated, remaining Spanish to this day despite the fact that it is physically part of Africa.

Walking around it definitely felt like we were still in Spain and not in Africa. 

Over the course of the day we encountered several big Spanish flags.

As we walked from the port into the historical centre of the town, we passed huge fortified sea walls.

In the past Ceuta obviously needed protection from the sea. Today most attention is concentrated on its land border, where an enormous barbed wire fence apparently separates it from Morocco. This is EU territory in Africa, so a very attractive place for migrants to try and reach.

The centre of the town is very pretty.

It did actually feel a bit Portuguese, with its white churches that reminded us a bit of the Azores.

This looked like some sort of official building...

...and this was the main square...

...complete with cathedral.

The town hall building was also very attractive...

...and there were some very elaborate lamp posts on the main streets.

As we walked slightly uphill through the town, we came across a second statue of Hercules.

From here we could see down in the direction of the port...

...and up towards a fortress high above the town.

We also caught sight of what was a McDonalds in a surprisingly historic-looking building with a small turret.

As you can see from the photos, it was another bright sunny day in this part of the world and we walked past lots of palm trees.

We made our way along a promenade which seemed to run down one side of the peninsula.

En route there were lots of statues...

...fountains...

...and more flags.

After a while we turned off to explore a small park.

There were lots more palm trees and exotic vegetation here.

The route through the park led uphill, but it did mean that at times we got views back towards the main city where we'd started from.

As we got higher, the surroundings became even prettier.

I loved the yellow flowers covering this hillside.

Unfortunately, shortly after this point the path was roped off and we weren't able to go any further. We turned around and retraced our steps back down to the promenade.

As we continued round the promenade we had great views out to sea...

...and walked alongside more little fortifications.

It was much clearer to the eye than it has come out with the camera, but we could see the Rock of Gibraltar across the water.

It was really cool to see it knowing that a few years ago we'd been on that side of the water looking over here  

We walked for quite a long way, all the way to the tip of the peninsula.

We passed some great cactuses

Maybe not quite as big as the ones we saw in Arizona last year, but still really cool  

And we had some fantastic views back down the coast towards the centre of Ceuta.

It was tempting to continue looping around the peninsula, but we were conscious that we wanted to get back to civilisation on time to still be able to get lunch, so we turned around and started walking back towards the centre.

It took us about an hour of walking to get back to the town centre; this has ultimately been a 30,000 step day!

Once we'd had some food, coffee and a sit down we still had some time to spare before our boat back to Algeciras, so we decided to explore a little bit of the opposite side of the peninsula. 

This side was much steeper and we climbed upwards alongside big cliffs.

Whereas on the other side we'd been looking back towards Spain and Gibraltar, from this direction we were looking at the Moroccan coast.

And we had some great views of it  

We were conscious that we didn't want to go too far though and risk being late back to the port for the boat, so eventually we turned around and started heading back downhill.

No one had been interested in seeing our passports when we caught the ferry to Ceuta this morning, but on the way back to the mainland in the evening we had to go through passport control. The border guard visibly groaned at the sight of UK passports as it meant he had to get his new EES technology working. While all the Spanish people breezed through with their ID cards, we held up one lane of the queue for a good few minutes as he attempted to get the camera to recognise our faces and the other device to recognise our finger prints! Eventually it worked and we were through!

The ferry back departed at 18.30, getting us back into Algeciras some time after 19.30. By the time we made it back to our hotel room it was closer to 20.30, so it has been a long day - but it has definitely been an exciting one