My car and me keep drivin’ into the setting sun

Because of my current official status working on a French government-funded project, I am not entitled to a resident card in Morocco. Therefore, I could not buy the car I wanted locally and obtain a Moroccan license plate for it. So I took the opportunity of a business trip to France last week to buy the exact car I wanted online and second hand. I took three days off work to drive it back down from Montpellier to Meknes.

The road trip was enjoyable driving through Spain along the Mediterranean coast and through the Andalucian Sierra Nevada down to Algeciras where I boarded the ferry for Tangiers.

During the two days I drove through Spain, I set my internal feeding clock to Spanish time, taking a mid-morning sandwich so as not to get too hungry before the late 2pm lunch, which is only the beginning of normal lunch time in Spain. I enjoyed a very dense and concentrated hot chocolate on my first afternoon at the Café de Loló in the small village of Riba-roja de Túria in the suburbs of Valencia, and a glass of equally syrupy sherry wine after my excellent seafood dinner at Restaurante La Esquina in Algeciras on the second evening.

The sea in the Gibraltar Straight was very calm for our morning crossing. After a two-hours'-long wait to clear my car through Moroccan customs, I chose the speedier motorway ride back to Meknes, stopping over in the seaside town of Larache for a delicious sardine tajine sitting along the mouth of the river Loukkos.

On all three evenings of my road trip, I was impressed by the beautiful pink lights developing as the sun set: first in the old part of Riba-roja de Túria village, then overlooking Gibraltar peninsula from Algeciras. As I waited to refill my car's fuel tank upon arriving in Meknes on the third evening, I was gently immersed back into my new home by the pink dusk light and the delicate smell of green orange blossoms.

Adapted from I’m a poor lonesome cowboy
Pat Woods, From the original motion picture Lucky Luke: Daisy Town