Tangier Ville to Gibraltar

The British overseas territory of Gibraltar is a massive rock in the southern part of the Iberian peninsula.

From the northern city of Tangier in Morocco, one can go directly to Gibraltar twice a month with a direct ferry. The company FRS also has a service from Tangier to Tarifa, which is in Spain. This service is offered multiple times a day and consists of a 45 minute ferry ride.

From Tarifa in Spain, one has to take a bus to Algeciras, which is included in the round-trip ferry fare of 770 Moroccan dinars, approximately $77. Another bus from Algeciras to Gibraltar brings you to the final destination.

Since it was Christmas Eve, I was told the last ferry from Tarifa to Tangier was at 5 PM. The ticket official told me that if I left Tangier at 9AM, I could reach Gibraltar at 11AM and if I left Gibralter at 3 PM I could be at the ferry terminal by 5PM and safely make it back. He also said that since Gibraltar was such a small place, 4 hours was more than enough to see it.

Armed with my passport and the ferry ticket, I started walking to the port for the 9 AM ferry ride. The sun was just rising.

At the ferry terminal, they first check your ticket and stamp 'departed' on it. As you walk up the stairs, there is passport control, and the Moroccan agents stamp your passport. As you walk further, they scan the ticket, again near the ferry, they scan the ticket again and cut a part of it. Finally, as you're entering the ferry, the British agents check your passport and finally you are on board the ferry.

The ferry is huge inside and has hundreds of

seats, a duty free shop, cafeteria and offers free Wi-Fi.

With a few minutes delay, the ferry started and provided safety information in French, Spanish and English. It was supposed to take 45 minutes to Tarifa, but the overall time was one hour and two minutes.

The same ferry line provided a bus service included in the ticket price to Algeciras. That bus arrived when the ferry docked. However, the bus waited for 40 minutes and in another half hour, I was at Algeciras.

I looked around for a bus to Gibraltar but could not find it. I asked some people and they told me I had to go outside the ferry terminal area. I could not find a pedestrian walkway and ended up walking on the highway and came across a traffic police. She motioned me towards an exit gate. Outside, it looked promising.

I walked around, but did not find a bus stop. So I asked a few people and they did not speak English. Arabic or Spanish was their preferred language.

I came across a tourist information office discovered it was closed. As I continued walking, there were three people talking to each other. When I asked them in Spanish, one of them offered me a taxi ride for €50 directly to Gibraltar. He said that for €2.50, I could take a bus and showed me the direction to the bus stop which was a yellow building.

I went to the yellow building that I was supposed to go, but it ended up being a train station, and the person there told me to walk outside to find the bus stop.

After stumbling around for a bit, I indeed found a big bus stop with many buses.

The bus took one hour to reach Gibraltar, it was 1:10PM already and I had made it to my destination, albeit couple of hours later than planned.

Actually, I was not in Gibraltar yet, I had to go the international border and stand in the customs line. Then I had to present the passport to the Spanish passport control and get it stamped. After that, I could go to the Gibralter side and had my passport inspected by the British authorities. All of that took a couple of minutes in total.

Now I was in Gibraltar. Not knowing what to do and what to see, I came upon a bus stop with a bus already standing, waiting for passengers.

For €3.60, I could buy a ticket on the bus from that spot to the cable car station all the way to the end of the line for the bus and see this very small British overseas territory.

I decided to take a cable car ride so I could see the panoramic view. However, the line to buy the tickets was too long and the last car left the top in just an hour. Abandoning the cable car excursion, I decided to walk back to Spain and see the whole Gibraltar area on foot enroute.

There were fancy shops on each side as well as many eateries. People were walking around buying jewelry, watches, sunglasses, and the whole area looked very festive.

In less than half hour, I was all the way back to the customs area, but had to walk through an active airport to get there.

After walking on the tarmac, I saw the signs for returning to Spain, and had to go through Spanish customs where they stamped my passport again. In a few minutes I was back at the bus stop to go back to Algeciras. The bus was supposed to come by 2:45PM and did not show up till 3 PM. I was worried that I would miss my ferry and was about to get in a taxi when the bus arrived. It brought me to Algeciras in 45 minutes.

I was rushing to find the port bus terminal where the could get the second bus to Tarifa, but lost my way repeatedly. Not wanting to miss the ferry, I decided to get a taxi for €35. It brought me to Tarifa in 25 minutes and I could see the ferry docked and waiting.

With 45 minutes to spare before the ferry left, I had plenty of time to board.

I just realized that my stay in Gibraltar was literally for an hour and a half while the travel time was a total of 10 hours. However, I did get stamps on the passport, traveled through three countries over the course of the day, enjoyed good weather and crossed an international airport runway on foot!