Day 83, 25 September 2012. Ferry to Tarifa, Spain, bus to Jerez de la Frontera, car (courtesy of our lovely friend Carmen) to one of the white villages, or Pueblos Blancos - Arcos de la Frontera. What a day! We farewelled Tangier as we walked to the ferry terminal. Dark clouds were backlit by a lightening sky and tiny fishing boats were motionless at the port (yesterday´s cover photo). The ferry ride was uneventful, thankfully, though we did meet a fellow traveller from Sweden, who turned out to be Russian. We docked at Tarifa at 10.30 am and walked through town to get to the bus station and our first € priced meal -Arghh! $4 for a toasted sandwich and coffee.... diet about to get strict. We feel that we´re getting very efficient at this seat of the pants kind of travel and we jumped on the 12.30 pm bus to Jerez and proceeded to nap for a couple of hours. The Spanish countryside is so CLEAN compared to Morocco. No donkeys, no rubbish dumps and fields and fields of wind turbines. Stunning roads. New cars.... all very impressive. Just before we reached the Jerez bus station our driver had to give way to a speedy black car. Turns out it belonged to our great friend Carmen who´d just driven 700 km to get to the apartment in Arcos, make us lunch and then zip to the station to pick us up for the 24 km drive back to Arcos. Truly blessed to have such a lovely lady looking out for us - and the first familiar face we´ve seen in almost 3 months! Arcos has been the site of settlements since pre-historic times and the site of Roman occupation from the 2nd century BC. It really hit the map and was established in the 15th century by the Arabs, but has been reinforced and built over since the Christians took back this part of Spain. After an amazing local meal of fresh tuna, salad, fruit, cheese and pate we sat in awe for quite a while just taking in our surroundings - hard to belive this apartment was built in 1894 (renovated in 2007). We felt like we´d just checked into a castle. Carmen speaks almost no English and we speak even less Spanish so have been communicating via Google Translate which is fabulous. And frustrating. But better than nothing. We realised at 9 pm we were officially on Spanish time because we were settling in to read on the sofa for the evening and Carmen suggested a walk around Arcos to see the monuments illuminated. The Castle, the church of St Mary (today´s cover photo), the arches and city walls are stunning stone edifices from many different time periods and all beautifully illuminated and we wandered the cobbled streets peacefully for an hour or two. It is an incredibly beautiful place and the churches and convents built over the original islamic monuments have really brought home the fact we are in another country - no longer do we have Allah O´Clock 5 times a day from 100s of mosques at once. The only noise here is the church bells tolling the hour between the civilised times of 8 am and midnight.