Tarifa, Ronda and Setenil de las Bodegas

After Morocco, we spent just over a week exploring some of southern Spain and the Malaga region.

Tarifa

Although we could have taken a ferry directly from Tangier city to Tarifa (shortest option), we decided to take the cheaper option of going from Tangier Med to Algeciras. When we arrived in Algeciras, we drove back down to Tarifa. We spent 2 nights and one day exploring Tarifa. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and the Island of Tarifa was closed. The Island of Tarifa is not actually an island anymore because a causeway was built in the 1800s. This makes the bottom tip of the island the most southern point in mainland Europe. You could see Morocco and Tangier just across the straight.

There is a really interesting castle in Tarifa that happens to be free after 4 pm on the first Sunday of every month – as we discovered when we rocked up at 3:58 and the ticket officer told us to wait 2 minutes 😊.

The old town was also quite pretty with a few nice churches and windy streets.

Ronda

I was pretty excited to visit Ronda after photos of it started showing up on my Facebook feed. The drive up through the mountains from Malaga was beautiful. Ronda was a really nice town with cute shopping areas and restaurants. But the icing on the top is the “New” Bridge (built in the 1700) spanning over a deep gorge that connects the “new” and “old” towns. (There is also an old bridge – which can be seen in one of the photos below if you look closely – and even further upriver an older Roman bridge)

The other highlight of the day was that we found an amazing local place for lunch (Bar El Lechuguita). We saw it had good reviews on Google Maps so we ducked into this tiny tapas bar and took the last couple of seats. Most of the tapas on the menu were only 1.40 euros, with a couple being 2.50 and a few for 5. We ordered about 15 tapas all up – and they were delicious! When we left, there was a line of about 20 people outside waiting to get in!

Setenil de las Bodegas

This was another interesting town about half an hour north of Ronda. The castle that dominates the mound is not much to talk about, but what’s interesting about the town is that the houses, shops and restaurants are built into the rocks. The length of the town follows the river, and slopes on either side of the riverbank. Unfortunately, the landscape and the number of tourists meant that parking wasn’t ideal (and definitely not for people with accessibility issues) – we had to park at the top of the mountain and walk down and back up again.