Hits and mists (Morocco)

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From the end:

Only in Al Hoceima, on the Mediterranean coast, was I spared the Moroccan chancer's distinctive cry - "Hello, my friend." Here, as at Asilah, you are likely to share the town beach, Plage Quemado - a yellow curl like the Islamic crescent, bounded by two cliffs and the placid, aquamarine sea - with at most a handful of other bathers at this time of year. The beaches at Asfiha, Torres de Alcala and Kalah Iris, all within an hour's drive, are even more sparsely peopled.

Drinking thé à la menthe, haggling over leather goods and swimming, the days passed easily at Al Hoceima. A mystery was even solved: female Moroccans do dip. Two young women came down to the beach early one morning, in hijab, as is customary, from head to ankle. After elaborate contortions, they stripped down to only about three times as much as western women wear to swim and took to the ripples.

To complete my circuit of the north, I had to travel through the Rif Mountains. Morocco is the world's leading exporter of marijuana, and this is where most of it is grown. The Rif has always been a lawless region, and $2bn annually in drugs revenue has not made it any more compliant; gangsters, like the cannabis plants, are everywhere. A certain liquidity on my part on the eight-hour bus-ride through the region was, then, not solely down to the stomach bug I had picked up at the last greasy spoon in Al Hoceima. Especially avoid getting off the bus in Ketama, right in the middle of the Rif, where all the deals are done; you can see how heavy its inhabitants are through the window.

Back in Tangier, I took a boat to Gibraltar, as, in the 8th century, did Tariq ibn Ziryab, the invading Moor who gave the Rock its still recognisable name: "Jabal Tariq."

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