Welp, we sailed into Barcelona, disembarked, hopped a plane for Washington DC, then on to San Francisco, spent a couple of hours in an airport hotel, and early the next morning we flew home. We are, of course, completely messed up as far as hours and "body-time", as for the previous several days, the time on the ship was just the reverse of the time at home, i.e., keep the same hour-number and just switch the AM and PM. So we'll need a few days to adjust, but....after exactly 5 months - it's really nice to be home. Thanks for coming along!

 

Our little dinghy, in between several monsters.

…and now that we’re in the Med, the seas are….glassy. Spain beckons.

Wish we could have gotten closer to the rock of Gibraltar, but…there it is, from a couple of different angles. We’re now in the Mediterranean.

Bahia Palace.

More Marrakech.

The drive to Marrakech was 3-4 hours each way. So we took advantage of the long drive, to utilize the highway signage to practice our Arabic and Berber.

Morocco. ❤️

We docked at Casablanca, in Morocco. We were here a few years ago, and did a wonderful excursion that included Rabat. But on that trip we were torn about doing Marrakesh instead - so that self-corrected today. Our guide started out saying that our tour bus was named the “Marrakesh Express”, thus grabbing the boomers right away.

I really want to ride one of these things. Not getting much cooperation from the ship.

The little village of Arucas was celebrating “Piedra y Flor” (stone and flower) with elaborate displays around town. It’s a late May festival and I think I’ve already forgotten our guide’s further explanation of it. 😳

The Opera House in Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria, with its view down the beach. (The last one’s for you Lynn, a bit of distance away, near the beach, is this statue of Alfredo Kraus).

Always welcome, for folks like us who try to be careful and count our kilojoules.

For the dog-people out there (you know who you are) the local street dogs in Cape Verde are skinny and could use better care, but they’re always waggy on approach to everyone, which is a good sign.

Went to a wonderful guitar maker’s shop (also violins, violas, etc) - beautiful stuff. Afterwards, he (and friends and father-in-law) gave us a great short, impromptu concert.

 

The usual markets, etc.

The Cape Verde islands remind me of up-country Galapagos - angular, basically barren, volcanic.

Btw, that enormous sculpture on the bluff above Dakar (you can see the stairway up to it, on the right) comes with a bit of local controversy - it had a $27+ million dollar price tag, and was apparently created in North Korea.

The ferry sailed by the Global Mercy, a huge floating hospital, which performs surgeries for local people of little means, who otherwise could never receive such care. Full disclosure - I’ve done the monthly donation thing to this organization for several years, but as this shouldn’t be a forum to blatantly solicit third-party endorsements, I’ll merely state that this organization……exists.

We took a local ferry from Dakar to the Île de Gorée, an island off the coast. It’s now a pretty island village (with no vehicles) but has, yet again, a sad history with the slave trade. The last photo is entitled “the Door of No Return”.

Traffic in Dakar is delightfully chaotic - with a few stoplights installed here and there, for no apparent reason.

 

The gentleman in the three-wheeler appeared to be giving either educational or religious studies to the kids on either side.

Now in Dakar, Senegal.

The tour included a visit to a crocodile farm, but I swear that on the drive there, I thought the whole general area just smelled like Death. (Not dissimilar to the “fetish market” smell from Togo)

You can’t see it, but there are several completely gutted, empty abandoned automobile carcasses, and there are goat families living inside.