On Wednesday we left Granada behind and drove down to Gibraltar. For some reason, this was a place that had much allure for both of us. It was a must see given that we made it to Spain. I really didn't know what to expect, but for some reason it wasn't what we saw.
Above is our first real view of the rock taken from the nearby spanish town, La Linea, where we parked the car. We walked across the border, flashing our passports but noone seemed to care. We took a bus to the center of town - finding the entire place to be far larger than either of us expected. To get to the town and the base of the rock you have to cross the middle of the airport runway. That was an interesting experience.
The town is a fairly typical European town except more people spoke English here and there were some lovely accents! The other thing they have is english candy, specifically my favorite candy in the whole world - Rowntree's Fruit Gums. I'm embarassed to admit how many rolls we bought.
After a mediocre lunch in town, we took the cable car to the top of the rock. The views were fantastic. That mountain in the middle of the picture with me is AFRICA. Imagine that!
One thing that was very interesting up there were the apes. They are free roaming and can be found all over the place. Spain has tried many times to get Gibraltar back from the British. It is said that Britain will not leave the rock until the apes leave. Supposedly Winston Churchill once learned that there were only 3 apes left and he ordred that more be brought immediately from Africa. Winston would be happy to know that there are a lot of them up there now. We even saw lots of little babies which were very cute.
What wasn't so cute was the one that came up and hit me in the rear and grabbed the roll of Fruit Gums I was eating right out of my pocket. It all happened so fast I didn't even have a chance to get scared. I debated momentarily whether to wrestle him for them because I had barely opened the tube of candies, but level heads prevailed and I let him have them. I opened another roll and kept it in a zippered pouch until we were out of ape territory.
We explored the top of the rock for a while admiring the views and watching the apes and listening to the audio guide. There are actually three peaks up there. The cable car takes you to the middle one. After much debate, we decided to WALK down the mountain. Keep in mind that Gibraltar is almost as tall as the Empire State Building. About half-way down when my legs began to shake from the effort of walking downhill, I began to question the sanity of this decision, but once down in town again, we were tired and proud to have done it.
Not surprisingly, we didn't see anyone else walking down. A goodly part is stairs straight down the mountain but there were also several kilometers of inclined roads. The views were terrific, of course, all the way down.
After a rest and some ice cream it was off to Seville. What a whirl-wind tour this is.
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