The ride out of Benelup Casas Viejas is everything we could ask for: fresh legs after a good night of sleep, a quiet winding road on a beautiful crisp morning with the sun rising above the horizon, light brown Asturian mountain cattle at pasture accompanied by white egrets, dark green acorn trees and lakes. The kilometers click by and we feel the freedom and joy of being out exploring the world on two wheels, just the right speed to notice small details, hear the bird song and smell the eucalyptus and flowers.

By noon we arrive in Algeciras, the Spanish port city adjacent to Gibraltar. In addition to being a busy container port serving the Mediterranean, there are passenger ferries to a number of North African ports, leaving almost on the hour. We buy tickets to Ceuta (bikes travel gratis) and watch a theatrical disembarkation of our boat when it arrives. Despite a dozen employees directing traffic, someone has parked a small van directly where the boat unloads and is not to be found. Lots of shouting and hand waving ensues, but somehow the 18 wheelers navigate around it as they back up off the ferry.

Ceuta is a small Spanish autonomous city on the north coast of Africa. It is directly south of Andalusia across the Strait of Gibraltar and entirely surrounded by Morocco. Not surprisingly for a geographically strategic port at the entrance of the Mediterranean, the city’s history is rich, with wave after wave of conquest and control.

We arrive mid afternoon, after sailing past the Rock of Gibraltar, and the city feels alive with the pedestrian only retail streets filled with people.

Ceuta feels very Spanish in its cleanliness, urban planning and architecture, but much more diverse in its population than Andalusia. We hear Arabic frequently, as well as other African languages, and see women in headscarves and men in Sikh turbans. We walk through the city and look down the Mediterranean coast, southwest towards Morocco and Algeria. I wonder how it would feel to live in a small city state like Ceuta, with the burden of its history and enormous pressure from undocumented migrants seeking asylum in the EU. For some, like the woman we chat with in a small shop selling FC Ceuta soccer jerseys (whose team crest incorporates symbols of the four major world religions), living here means being part of a unique and largely peaceful confluence of cultures.