Gibraltar – August 6

 25 degrees, very foggy in the morning, cleared by mid morning, fog rolled in again around 5:30, hot during the tour, but not at all humid and quite pleasant.

Gibraltar, the small British territory, is actually somewhere we’ve sailed past. Years ago, we sailed from Lisbon to the Mediterranean

caves

of course through the Strait of Gibraltar and past Gibraltar. We didn’t stop then…today we did. When we woke up we were already docked and could see nothing due to the very thick fog. It didn’t take long to burn off.

Todays’ tour was an afternoon one, so we took it easy in the morning and spent time at the pool. By 12:30 we had climbed a small bus and were on our way with a guide who was hands-down the most talkative guide we have ever had. I think she pretty much talked non-stop from the time

caves

the tour started until the time it ended…I suspect she is still talking…very informative I suppose, but WOW!

Gibraltar is very small – 3 square miles, one mile being reclaimed land! The landing strip for the airport crosses a main road here. Apparently, 16 flights take off or land here each day, and the road is closed each time a plane lands. I’d say

macaque with our ship in the distance

we saw about half of these flights today, super close right from the boat. From one vantage point we stopped at along the tour we could see Africa only 14 miles away and Spain even closer. We could also easily see from one side of Gibraltar to the other.

We first visited St. Michael’s Cave. This place is huge, developed, easily accessible with stairs everywhere and not much for having to duck – I mention this because we’ve visited

family meal

some other caves in our travels that aren’t as ‘developed’ – I guess

this is Britain after all. There was a huge central cavern with just as huge stalactites and stalagmites – and this is just the part visitors are allowed to see. This place was used as a hospital during WW2.

Next stop was the Apes’ Den. Before we even got to this second stop, we had already

seen a few of Gibraltar’s apes. The apes (sometimes called Barbary Apes but are really tailless monkeys called Barbary Macaques.) Apparently there are about 260 of these in Gibraltar - they aren’t super interested in the humans and are relatively calm, we’ve seen other monkeys that were a lot more energetic and interested in interacting with humans.

Great Siege Tunnel

Throughout the whole afternoon, we probably saw about 20 or so of these apes.

The last and longest stop today was visiting “Great Siege Tunnels”. These are tunnels British soldiers carved out of the ‘rock’ during the Great Siege of 1779 to 1783. This is where my knowledge pretty much stops. The guide was super interested in telling us extreme detail of this place and all of the stories that go along with it, but it didn’t take long for me to get a bit bored and stop listening – just a bit too much detail.

road, crossing the runway, Spain in the distance

And that was it…our time in Gibraltar. We had hoped for some time to wander around in town, maybe hitting a pub for a pint, but there wasn’t any time. Our tour ended about 3:45 and we were sailing again by about 5:00.

Our evening was spent as most of them on board are – pre-dinner drink, dinner, post dinner drink

Rock of Gibraltar

with an activity or 2 thrown in there. Tonight was the first night I sat outside on our deck before going to sleep. There are many things that I love about being on a cruise but being outside on our deck as we sail (particularly at night) has got to be top 3 – not really sure what the other 2 would be, maybe this is #1.