Day 83 ~ Monkeyin’ Around in Gibraltar

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Our day began with an alarm from the DH’s phone for 5-Holy-Buckets-30 AM! We had to report for our tour at 7:40 a.m. Because we tend to move on the slow side in the mornings, we were awake to greet the Big Rock as we sailed in to Gibraltar.

Gibraltar has changed hands over the years many times. The Greeks called it the Pillars of Hercules. In the 700’s, the Moors gained control of it. The Spanish wrestled it back from them only to lose it to Britain in the early 1700’s. It’s easy to understand why this odd bit of real estate is so valuable. Whoever owns it, controls access to the Med.

Gibraltar used to be separate from the mainland, but now there is a stretch of flat reclaimed land that connects it to Spain. The Spanish would like to have it back, but the residents consistently vote in referendums to remain British. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when Great Britain decided to leave the EU, but Spain and Gibraltar have worked out a side deal that will continue to make it easy for Spanish citizens to cross over to jobs on the Rock and vice-versa. The DH was excited about the fact that our tour bus drove us across the runway of the airport to see the customs check point for Spain. When a plane is coming or going, the road is shut down until the air traffic clears the space.

Our destination today was a cable car that would take us up to the top of the rock. After that, we’d have to return to the ship on our own. Our bus driver was singularly unhelpful, but we decided we’d figure out what to do when we were ready to head back. We had until 8:30 PM to return so we weren’t too worried.

The top of the rock used to serve military interests and there are a number of crumbling reminders of its previous use. Rising over 1300 feet from sea level, it has expansive views.

But now it’s only for tourists, so there was the obligatory souvenir shop and restaurant, which wasn’t open yet because we were in the second cable car that went up. One of the biggest draws is the presence of Barbary Apes, otherwise known as macaques.

They were first introduced to Gibraltar in the 700’s by the Moors and are the only wild apes in Europe. There are about 250 macaques on the rock today, but during the 1940’s there numbers were sadly dwindling. Legend says as long as the apes are on the Rock, Britain will hold it. Churchill ordered more apes sent from Africa to beef up the existing troops and they are doing well there now.

We only saw 3 apes, but that was fine with me. They are said to be quite aggressive and have been known to attack tourists if they think there’s food in their bags. The macaques give me the creeps a bit because they’re enough like humans to be intelligent, strong and determined, but they’re also feral animals. It made me think of the CS Lewis story where some of the Talking Animals in Narnia had gone wild and lost the gift of speech. And Lucy wondered if it were possible for men to go wild inside, but because they were men you wouldn’t be able to tell. (I’m sorry to tell you, Lucy, it is entirely possible. Nothing has ever been more brutal to human beings than other human beings.)  

We were able to work out the compass directions from the position of the sun and discovered that we could see Africa in the distance. But the cloud cover was so low, it clipped the tops of the mountains and made it difficult to get a good photo. So we started back to the cable car and down the steep side of the cliff.

We still weren’t sure how we’d make our way back to the Pacific Princess, but then we saw a German couple from the big Tui Meine Schiff ship berthed next to us getting a map of Gibraltar from a vending machine. We lined up behind them, but when two maps popped out for them, they gave us their extra.  Bitte schoen!

So we began walking the couple of miles back to the ship. You can always tell when the Brits have been somewhere. They leave traces of their culture in their wake. Pubs and gardens are a big giveaway, though the residents of Gibraltar do drive on the right instead of the left. Guess it would be too confusing to switch when they pop over to Spain.

The walk was mostly downhill, my favorite! And since we were on our own, we could travel at our own pace, stopping to snap photos as we pleased. When we reached Queensway Road, we took a hard right because we could see water between the buildings ahead. At this point the way was quite level because we were on reclaimed land. The wall pictured above was built in 1540, the sea lapped at its foundations.

We kept to Queensway until we detoured through the Commonwealth Garden.

We’d expected to stay on Queensway until it intersected with Water Front Road. However, when we saw this next sign, we decided to leave the map in my bag and follow the friendly arrow pointing us toward the cruise terminal.

Little did we suspect that they may have had another reason for directing us down Europort Avenue than being helpful. It didn’t take us to a place where we could access the terminal, but we did find a Morrison's grocery store.

I love visiting grocery stores in other countries and we haven’t been able to do it often on this trip because we’ve rarely wandered about on our own. Wouldn’t you love to have locally sourced mangoes and coconuts and passion fruits in your grocers?

From the grocers, we could see the upper decks of the Pacific Princess, so we headed toward the water. But we discovered we couldn’t get there from here. It was time to break out the map and figure out where we were. A few more twists and turns and several blocks of backtracking and we were finally on the street that would take us back to the PP.

We dumped our bags in the cabin and, feeling exceedingly virtuous about the 10,000+ steps we’d walked, we headed up to have lunch on the fantail. The sun was so warm and welcoming, and we were joined by Kristy and David. And finally, the clouds parted and we were able to get a semi-decent photo of Morocco on the southern horizon.

Years ago, #1 Daughter had a vivid dream that she and I were going to Africa.

Well, sweetie, I’m almost there. Maybe someday we'll make it the rest of the way together.