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Gibraltar
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Our
last week in Spain we rented a time-share condominium in Marbella on the Costa
del Sol (near Malaga) and used it as a base of operations
to visit
surrounding towns. One of these day trips was to Gibraltar. After we
rented our car at Jerez we had driven past
Algeciras (the Spanish city across the border from Gibraltar) on the way to
Marbella. It was a nice change to listen to an English-language radio
stati
on.
It was a bit different from home though, listening to announcements for garden
parties, and for articles for sale by local residents. Pretty small
listening audience I guess.
I think we
could have taken our rental car into Gibraltar, but the line at the border was
long and moving slowly (shades of Tijuana!). We decided to park in one of
the many parking lots on the Spanish side and walk across the border. Our
first surprise was that there is an airport runway between the border gate and
the
city.
We referred to our trust Rick Steves travel guide, which told us to hop on the
Number 30 bus
which would take us to town for about a buck, payable in Euros or Pounds.
We decided
to stay on the bus, which went to the far edge of the peninsula, where we
visited the “last shop in Europe (much cheapness)”. We also drove past the
local mosque, which had been donated by Saudi Arabia. We were a little
surprised at how much open land there is.
We
rode back into town and walked about a bit and then took the cable car to the
top of “the rock”. This is where the apes
are
located. There are lots of signs saying that feeding the apes is
prohibited. They seem to be universally ignored. People were letting
the small
apes climb on them, but all Pam and I could think was “lice”. We kept our
distance, which didn’t seem to bother the apes either. Maybe they thought
we had fleas!
The fog lifted fairly early and since it was a nice day we decided to walk down
from the top to the mid-point cable car station. Part of the old
fortifications was a rock wall that went directly down the mountain. It
had steps along the top so we decided we would just walk down them. We
should have taken a clue from the warning signs at the top. However, there
was no barrier so we were undeterred (“there ain’t no OSHA in Europe!”).
The further we walked down the steps the steeper they got. There was a low
wall on one side and nothing but a 10-foot drop off on the other. They
were only a couple of feet wide, so Pam was going ahead to test the structural
integrity. Suddenly she stopped and said “We’ve got a problem”.
There were two apes napping on one of the steps ahead. After a discussion
of a few minutes, we decided the only option was for one of us to cautiously
step over the sleeping apes to see if we
could get
past without being bitten. Fortunately Pam made it safely by, so I
followed.
The
timing wasn’t right for us to take the tour of the caves and old gun
emplacements, so we decided to save that for our next trip. We spent
another hour wandering through the town, looking at souvenirs, and checking out
the pubs. By then we found ourselves back at the edge of the airport, so
we decided to go ahead and walk across the runway. They have crossing
lights for auto and pedestrian traffic. I presume the aircraft always have
the right of way.
We found our way back to Spain, stopped at McDonalds for an ice cream cone, and drove back to Marbella.