Charmed by the tales of two continents
I LAST wandered through the medina of Tangier as a 19-year-old on my way to Marrakech. Returning at the beginning of a brief but blissful holiday on two continents – Europe and Africa – I felt a sudden tug from the past.
We were strolling through the food market when a distant roar of voices surged up past the rows of stalls selling spices, oranges and the glossiest dates you've ever seen.
Tangier has kept an unusually authentic medina, one that’s meant for daily food-shopping rather than picture-hungry tourists. Now I remembered the explanation for that cavernous sound. In a vast and gleamingly white-tiled hall, fish-sellers standing on raised platforms flashed and twisted their sabre-swift knives like a merry band of operatic brigands as they bantered with buyers across their spectacularly heaped marble slabs of exotic, rainbow-coloured fish. And such fish! Gigantic tuna, trapped in a labyrinth of nets and speared by the local fishermen, are big business here. Alongside them lay mullet, swordfish, octopus and bass.
Heading back to Spain on the evening ferry, I peered into the sea that bred such creatures. Calm water – silky-dark and silver-streaked by a rising moon – flowed dreamily below us as we chugged towards the orange-tiled domes and pointed-hat roofs of distant Tarifa, and back for another enchanted evening at our secret paradise: that haven of laidback glamour that calls itself the Hurricane Hotel.
Our exotic holiday had begun with a flight from Luton to Gibraltar – wonderfully convenient for a trip to south-west Spain.
But where to stay while flitting through Britain’s last foothold in Europe? We chose the plush new Sunborn Yacht Hotel. Tucked up in our luxury cabin after dinner with the Sunborn’s Gibraltarborn manager, Dylan Trenado, we felt we’d been granted all the perks of life. Stay on an obligingly absent multimillionaire’s trophy-boat without ever having to brave a storm at sea? It was bliss.
I vaguely remembered Gibraltar as a noisy one-street town with a lot of loud pubs and grabby monkeys. Times have changed. The Rock’s famous monkeys are still in residence – Churchill apparently predicted that Gibraltar would be lost if they ever quit – but the pubs have mostly given way to charming cafes.
Gibraltar is well worth a stopover even if you don’t fancy cocktails atop the Rock and a glimmering view of the mauve peaks of North Africa across the narrow Straits. We were on our way to Tarifa, where our crossing to Morocco would take just 30 minutes and where the old town offers pretty Spanish shops and a visual feast of Moorish architecture. Just beyond Tarifa, aloof, relaxed and ineffably cool, stands the Hurricane Hotel.
It is the most effortlessly enjoyable country hotel I’ve stayed at anywhere in Europe. Lovingly restored in the 1970s by the enterprising Whaley brothers (James Whaley, Derek Jarman’s film producer, landscaped the hotel’s luxuriant gardens), it’s a cross between a Moorish palace and an exotic plantation mansion.
Tortoises sleepily circle a lily-padded pond. Comfy lounging sofas overlook a pristine beach, while off in the distance, windsurfers skid, twist and race towards each
other across the whitetipped crests, their wind-filled sails transforming them into warring butterflies. Above the more elegant two crystal-clear swimming pools, a long veranda is softly lit by lamps for dinner – the food here is both afordable and delicious. Even on a short visit, the Hurricane Hotel spoiled us for choice of things to do. Our day-trip to tangier was delightful, but so too was an expedition to the ruins of Baelo Claudia, one of the best-preserved Roman towns Spain. It’s easy to see why many people return here. Whether you prefer lolling by the pool, windsurfing, exploring or swimming out towards what the ancients called ‘The Pillars of Hercules’, the Hurricane has it all.