Blake and Deborah in Europe: Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a little piece of the British Commonwealth that sticks out from the southern coast of Spain. It's mostly just the big rock made famous by the Prudential Insurance Company, but a community of 30,000 manages to nestle onto a narrow shelf of land, some of it reclaimed from the surrounding sea, at the western base. Our Spanish bus stopped just short of the border, where we walked across with a disinterested wave from immigration control. Suddenly the signs were in English, we could understand what people were saying, and the ATMs were spitting out pounds instead of euros.

Our main interests were getting on top of the rock to admire the views and to see the so-called “apes,” which are actually Barbary macaques – a type of monkey. There are about 200 of them on the rock and they are fond of jumping onto vehicles and tourists, and collecting peanuts from the tour guides for whom they are the bread and butter. There are also some caves and siege tunnels worth viewing. And fish and chips.

To leave Gibraltar on foot as we did you actually have to walk across the peninsula's only runway (“Please Cross Quickly” the sign says). Another wave-through by the bored border security brought us to the bus station where we were shocked to see our bus driver for the trip home was the same fat, disgusting, emotionally volatile driver we had on our trip down from Seville. He remembered Myra and gave her a lecherous “Hola.” Just before pulling pull away from the station he bought some lottery tickets from a roving vendor, thus adding to his already considerable list of vices. For this short trip the driver at least seemed to be alert and we made it back to Tarifa in good order.