Southern Spain and a Cruise to West Africa--Introduction

The more countries you've been to (103 in my case), the harder it is to find new ones to go to.  While doing some web surfing, I came across a cruise on the Silversea line that went from Malaga, Spain, down the west coast of Africa, ending in Ghana.  Silversea is a luxury cruise line, and generally I don't even look at their cruises because they are way beyond my budget.  But for some reason, this itinerary was priced very reasonably, I think because it was a "repositioning" cruise, where they move a ship from one region to another.  In this case, the ship was being repositioned from the Mediterranean to South Africa for (our) winter.

So, we booked a 13-day cruise from Malaga, Spain to Accra, Ghana, sailing in November of 2015.  This was actually half of the repositioning cruise, which continued on to Capetown, but 13 days was all we could handle.   Scheduled cruise stops were:

• Casablanca, Morocco
• Agadir, Morocco
• Arricife, Canary Islands
• Las Palmas, Canary Islands
• Dakar, Senegal
• Banjul, The Gambia (yes, they call it "The Gambia")
• Abidjan, Ivory Coast
• Takoradi, Ghana
• Accra, Ghana

In addition, we decided to go to Spain a few days early and spend a couple of days in Seville and Granada.   Here's a map of our journey:

Those of you paying attention may notice that the red line does not go to Casablanca or Agadir, Morocco--I'll explain that later.

In response to your anticipated questions:

Q: Why would you go to places where there's Ebola?

A: We didn't.  The Ebola epidemic was in the countries outlined in green (Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia), and we passed by those countries.  As I write this, Liberia has been taken off the Ebola list, but there are still a couple of cases in the other countries.

Q: Weren't you afraid of terrorists or a coup?

A: All of the countries we went to are stable democracies, except for The Gambia, which is a stable dictatorship.  All of the countries are majority Muslim, but they don't have a major radical Islam presence.  Having said that, while we were on the ship, some terrorists in Mali took hostages in a hotel, but that was over 500 miles from where we were.  

Q: Don't you have lots of holes in your arm from all the shots you had to get?

A: The only shots we had to get were for Yellow Fever (required by Ghana).  We were advised to take malaria medication, but that's the case for large parts of Africa and Asia.

Q: Have you been to West Africa before?

A: I spent a week in Dakar, Senegal in 1981 on business, and Brenda and I did a shore trip to Tangier, Morocco a few years ago.

OK, let's go: Days 1-2: Seville