Carry on Cruising

The first week of our Iberian Coast cruise went well (posting of 21st April) and our second week began with an evening departure from Gibraltar, bound for the African continent.

Many people have a romanticised image of Morocco’s largest city, Casablanca, due to the eponymous 1942 movie, all of which was filmed in Hollywood. In reality we found it very different. 

We docked in the Port of Casablanca, one of the largest artificial ports in Africa, with the ability to handle over 35 ships at any one time, with a capacity of over 3.5 million shipment containers. This was the sight that greeted us as we docked in the early morning.

Eager to see what the city had to offer we headed for United Nations Square, said to be an iconic spot, built at the entrance to the Medina (old city) during the time when Morocco was a French Protectorate.

Welcome to Casablanca

Not too impressed, we did not linger long and feeling the effects of the previous day’s 10 mile hike on the Rock of Gibraltar we headed back to the ship, from where we did at least get a view of the nearby Hassan II Mosque, the second largest serving mosque in Africa, with the world's second tallest minaret at 210 metres.

We then spent a relaxing day on the ship, which was followed by two more days at sea as we headed north, encountering a number of pods of porpoises and dolphins as we made our serene progress to our fifth port of call La Coruña.

Dolphin watch

Entertainment in the sun

Unlike our previous port of call. La Coruña is a beautiful clean city. Situated on a promontory in the Galicia region of northwest Spain it has a wide promenade leading from the port to the 16th century fortress of San Antón castle.

La Coruña harbour

La Coruña from San Antón castle

And from La Coruña another day at sea, across a cold and unusually calm Bay of Biscay into our last port of call, Bristol. We are familiar with Bristol (posting of 10 December 2012) so took the shuttle bus for a couple of hours in the nearby Somerset town of Portishead.

Portishead Marina

From Bristol we sailed overnight to a morning return to Falmouth, and the end of our first major cruise. And maybe our last!  Although we could not fault the Ambassador crew and entertainers, of 30 nationalities, 12 nights on a ship with only brief snapshots of various localities does not compare to our usual wanderings, mainly in Southern Africa, and we are now planning our next adventure, to the mountains and coast of KwaZulu-Natal, in November, following Process Mineralogy '24 and Critical Minerals '24.

A final farewell to the crew and entertainers of Ambassador's Ambition