Tarifa and Marbella

We had a very special activity reserved for Friday: a trip to Tarifa, the southernmost point in continental Europe, just 14 kilometres from Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar. Once there, we boarded a boat that took us on a search for marine animals. Though we did not come across any whales, we did encounter several pods of dolphins of different varieties, such as the stripped dolphin and the bottleneck dolphin.

It was truly a fascinating experience to stand between two continents, surrounded by busy shipping lanes with all kinds of ships and, at the same time, plenty of wildlife. We saw dolphins jumping out of the water and even playing with our boat, adapting their speed to match that of our boat so that they remained just ahead of our bow. They are indeed magnificent creatures and we spent a long time admiring them; it had to be the captain of the boat who woke us from our reverie by saying that we had to get back to land.