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The most interesting route to the caves and Cap Spartel runs around and above the coast via the quarter known as La Montagne. Follow this road for around 14km and you'll reach a short turn off to the lighthouse at Cap Spartel - a dramatic and fertile point, known to the Greeks and Romans as the "Cape of the Vines". The lighthouse, which you can visit and sometimes, if the keeper is around, climb, was built in 1864 by Sultan Mohammed III, who then persuaded Britain, France, Italy and Spain to pay for its maintenance; they did, until Moroccan independence in 1956. To the south of Cap Spartel begins the vast and wild "Atlantic Beach'', known locally as Robinson Plage . It is broken only by a rocky spit - 5km from the Cape - and then rambles off for as far as you can see. On the spit are located the Caves of Hercules . Natural formations, occupied in prehistoric times, they are most striking for a man-made addition - thousands of disc-shaped erosions created by centuries of quarrying for millstones. There were still Moors cutting stones here for a living until the 1920s, but by that time their place was beginning to be taken by professional guides and discreet sex hustlers; it must have made an exotic brothel. Today, there's a standard admission charge of 5dh (9am-sunset), though you're unlikely to get away without a guide, too, whose descriptive abilities tend to be somewhat dwarfed by the utter obviousness of all there is to see ("wet cave", "dark cave", "sea", etc). In midsummer there are usually a couple of stalls nearby, serving grilled fish caught on the rocks below.
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