Sunday, December 23, 2007

Gilbralter...

The Rock of Gibralter towers over the coast of Spain that touches it on each side. We drove there from our rental apartment in Calahonda, Spain in a steady rain. The low hanging clouds allowed little site seeing, but it did not stop the towering rock from darking the sky a bit more.



Gibralter is a British Territory and once we got past the border control, we felt like we had returned to England. Everything was in English and we had quite a selection of pubs and other English department stores to choose from.



Because Gibralter is very small, everything is smashed into a very small area. As you leave the border control, you drive right over a giant runway. With all the tight security restrictions in the States, I was quite surprised to find myself driving on a runway!!




We squeezed our rental car around tight corners, navigating slowly up the Rock of Gibralter. Many corners were so tight, there was several shades of paint from the side of cars decorating the buildings. The roads wasted little time taking us up and we were soon looking down on the Strait of Gibralter. It was easy to understand why this was such a strategic military location during World War II. At its narrowist point, there is only 8 miles that separates Africa from Europe. As we looked down at the water, you could easily see Africa off in the distance.

We drove up as far as the roads would allow and then we got out and started walking. As we we turned the first bend in the road, we met our first monkey sitting on a wall at the road's edge. It just sat there looking at us giving us no indication whether or not it cared about our existance. It was strange meeting up with a monkey outside of the zoo. It just did not seem natural, but we found many more monkeys during our walk that day. There were all shapes and sizes. Some looked like they were going to grab us around the legs if we got too close, others looked like they wanted to play. We were advised by a lot of signs that the monkeys did bite, so we tried to keep our distance.







We did make it to the top, but the clouds hid any views from us.

No comments: