I’d lost count of how many stray dogs I’d seen so far, and we weren’t even halfway through the trip. And I’d already run out of food to give them. I looked for dogs as we walked through the brightly coloured and unique medina, which perfectly depicts the landscape we were riding through. The coastal air I’d been colliding with had done me well, I thought; it cleared my head in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I would feel myself changing with each curve in the road, offering a new and noticeable shift in a culture that I couldn’t yet relate to.
Backing up a bit: we departed Malaga, Spain, riding the Costa del Sol Highway, arriving in Tarifa on the southern coast of Spain to catch the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tangier, Morocco. We approached the border crossing and experienced our first shift in culture. The guards asked our guide why I was riding a bike by myself; it seemed off-putting to them, seeing me as the only woman in a group full of men. Carlos, one of
