Travel Blog: If It's Friday, This Must Be.......

....Gibraltar! Yes, it is turning into that kind of a trip!

Backtracking just a bit, after three consecutive days in port, Thursday was a most welcome sea day. The weather was sunny, warm and clear, which meant we spent almost all of it inside the ship at the various lectures. One of the things we enjoy about Crystal is the varied lecturers they bring onboard to give presentations on the sea days, and this one is no exception. A port lecturer, talking about the upcoming ports of call, a geo-politics lecturer, talking about the Middle East, and a special interest lecturer, in this case Ken Walsh, who has covered the White House since the Reagan years. Between them, lunch and updating the blog, it was soon time to put on the Formal wear for the Captain's Welcome Aboard Evening. A mere five days AFTER we actually boarded! Ah well, better late than never, and a nice day was had by all.

Friday morning we were up bright and early, so much so the sun had not yet peeked above the horizon, for our tour in Gibraltar, The Rock by Foot. It was still rather "early morning" dark when we sailed in, but "The Rock" was on our side of the ship, so this was our first view;

Oddly enough, it really doesn't look anything like it does in the Prudential Insurance ads!!

Gibraltar has a population of about 30,000 permanent residents living in the City of Gibraltar which has spread all the way around the base of The Rock. After meeting our local guide, a rather colourful fellow by the name of Alan, we set off as part of a small fleet of minibuses on our tour. First stop, the cable car to the summit of The Rock, arriving so early it wasn't even running yet! Felt a little sorry for the bleary-eyed young fellow who had to come to work an hour early to ferry tourists to the top! The top station is actually somewhat below the highest point of Gibraltar, but the view is spectacular!

After a brief bathroom/coffee/photo stop, Alan gave us a brief history lesson about the growth of the city of Gibraltar and the territory in general, followed by "The Monkey Briefing". One of the other things that The Rock is famous for is its resident colony of about 200 Macaques. They have lived on Gibraltar for possibly as long as 200 years, and they have absolutely no fear of man. In fact, quite the opposite, they have "struck fear" in tourists visiting Gibraltar for years. The instructions for the tour said quite specifically, no jewellery, earrings, dangling bracelets, or anything bright and shiny that might attract attention, unless you were prepared to let the monkeys have it! Our ship escort even took off her name tag!! Alan's instructions were fairly simple, if a monkey lands on your shoulder, or grabs your arm or leg, try not to panic and let him deal with it. Easy for HIM to say! So prepared for who knew what, we set out, and found almost no "monkey business", just a few spread out along the road mostly minding their business and foraging for breakfast. As I said, we were kind of early! We did, however, see a few babies, the youngest Alan estimated as not much more than a week old.

This family (you can just see Dad on the far side) had a few
of us trapped on a staircase for a few minutes.

Over the next two hours, we climbed to within about 200 feet of the summit of the Rock, visited St. Michael's Cave, a natural cave within the rock itself, as well as the Great Siege Tunnels.

One stalagmite had been cut and polished
to see just how old it might be. At least
250,000 years!

Gibraltar had originally belonged to Spain, but was deeded to the British after one of the interminable wars of the 1600 - 1800's. Sometime in the late 1700's, the Spanish decided they wanted it back, so laid siege to Gibraltar for something like 18 months, forcing the British Garrison to construct a tunnel network into the top third of the Rock, from which they were able to hold off the Spanish until relief arrived from England. During the First and Second World Wars, this tunnel network was greatly expanded, and while we did not see any of that work, what we saw was most impressive considering it was done mostly by hand over a period of several months, during which the tunnellers never saw daylight, or had much in the way of fresh air either!

One of the scenes set up inside the caves. Another one,
of the officers quarters, has a guard saying 'Halt! Who goes there?'
every time somebody walks by - and there are lots
of visitors.

After leaving the tunnels we drove back down from the Rock and through "downtown" Gibraltar, most of which is contained within the walls of the old fortress area. Along the way we passed The Tower, used for executions during British colonial times, it now serves as the town jail, capacity 62 "guests".

Alan told us that while crime is not an issue, during the 13 years, from 1969 to 1982, that the Spanish closed the border (Francisco Franco being highly PO'ed at the Brits for something or other) crime actually dropped to zero, and the town jail was used to store food and other supplies brought by ship from Britain. Now days, while the Spanish border police can be a pain, some 10,000 workers (including Alan) cross into Gibraltar from Spain to work. All of them using that single road from the border that really does cross the runway of the International Airport! Although we had seen the pictures on the web, until we saw it with our own eyes, we really were not sure they were real! We didn't get much of a city tour, so we'd really like to come back and check it out on a full day's port stop. They say that in some respects, the Gibraltar people are more British than the British, and we did see some really nice looking pubs as we drove by.

Not only does this road cross the airport runway, but those
buildings in the centre of the photo are the border with Spain.

Yes, that's how close the shipping port is to the airport!

After leaving Gibraltar in the early afternoon, we next had to cross through the famed Strait of Gibraltar to get from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. We had always pictured in our minds sailing past this huge rock that, of course, looked just like that Prudential Insurance logo. In reality, the strait is anywhere from 9 to 13 miles wide, not that narrow little passage that many people visualize. Had we been awake and on the bridge during our approach around 4:00 in the morning, we would have been able to see the mythical Pillars of Hercules. About 20 miles out, a sailor can only see the tip of Gibraltar on one side and the northernmost peak of the Atlas Mountains on the other. We're not sure where Hercules comes into it, but it has been referred to this way for a very long time.

Here are some photos of our sailout and the Strait: