Journey to firmm in Tarifa

Text and photos: Edeltraud Konrad

Tarifa can be approached by two airports, either Málaga or Jerez de la Frontera. There are bus connections from both airports or you can rent a car. I personally like the landscape between Jerez and Tarifa a lot. Always follow your nose on the N340. After Cádiz the salt meadow glides by with its great variety of curlew and even storks. Further on my journey there are yellow bushes with a sweet scent lined up along the road for several kilometres.

This year the landscape is coloured in different shades of deep green as far as the eye can see. Gentle hills and flat areas with yellow or purple blossoms pass by. Later on we spot an oversized Toro on a hill, a black bull, the landmark of Andalusia. And suddenly they are here: the wind turbines, lined up like pearls on a string. They are all rotating in the same direction with the same rhythm and it looks like a wind turbine ballet. That’s beautiful to look at.

We just pass Tahivilla, which is located 23 km before Tarifa, my destination. On the willows underneath the wind turbines a countless amount of herds of brown cattle walk by. They share their pasture with the cattle egret.

  

I go all tingly, which announces how lucky I am. Soon I’m going to be there. It’s the fourth time in a row that I’m on my way to firmm, the foundation that researches whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar.

In Tarifa South I leave the road and stop on the right side on the car park of a supermarket. Here I look on the right side to the Atlantic and on the left side to the Strait of Gibraltar, the strait to the Mediterranean. I hardly left the car, as the wind almost blows me off. YEEEEESSSSS, Tarifa.

Levante, I have arrived.