Gibraltar

We chose to do a day trip to Gibraltar on a bit of a whim. We were planning on a weekend away from Seville and it sounded like a fascinating place to visit, even a bit exotic. Right at the end of the Iberian Peninsula, controlling the entrance of the Mediterranean, and a critical location both for trade and the military.

THE ROCK!

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory so we had to cross passport control out of Spain and into Gibraltar. We'd read the easiest was to walk across the border and catch a bus on the other side. We were so off-season that driving across didn't look crowded either, but it was certainly an easy way to enter. It was also a great excuse to use our left-over British pounds which we had had since our time in Scotland.

We started by filling up with a jolly good English breakfast at a cafe in town (complete with red coats, I mean British soldiers, marching by) and decided to take an adventure and walk up rather than take a van tour or funicular. It wasn't entirely clear how far it was, but we were prepared for a hike and so headed up the streets and staircases towards the WWII tunnels.

The entire upper area of the Rock of Gibraltar is a Nature Reserve famous for great views, a variety of tunnels with some natural caves and a resident population of Barbary macaque monkeys. These were the same species we had seen back in the Atlas mountains in Morocco a month before! However, this population while also being accustomed to humans is famous for stealing food from people, even aggressively opening their backpacks or even grabbing their phones. Christine had researched various stories and recommended strategies and in the end, we chose to bring nearly no food with us. The small baguette we started with was eaten early on by our boys and we took care not to open our packs while around monkeys and took the precaution of only have adults wearing the backpacks. We certainly didn't want a monkey picking on Adam thinking it could take him on!

The north end of the Rock contains tunnels created during World War II when the British military had evacuated the residents of Gibraltar and were preparing in case of siege as Italy and Germany gained power across Europe. The specialized tunneling companies from the Royal Engineers and the Canadian Army took advantage of natural caves and enlarged them as well as evacuated tunnels large enough for trucks to enter with supplies, motorcycles to zip around with deliveries and several hospitals and bunk beds for soldiers. They set records for the speed of tunneling through rock. While it ended up not being needed for a siege, the tunnel system had the capacity for the entire 16,000 person garrison to last for 16 months! The rock currently hosts 30 miles of tunnels. Visiting them was an interesting history lesson and fun to explore.

We also got to explore the older tunnels on the rock created as early as 1779 to help during a siege that lasted three years, 7 months and 12 days! The tunnels primarily served to position cannons to provide protection for Gibraltar.

We next traversed the length of the reserve, stopping in to see St Michael's cave - complete with colorful lights and amphitheater for concerts. It was quite fun to explore, and though it is a natural cave the multicolored lights lent a surreal quality. Apparently, the Queen of England even visited the amphitheater once.

We did indeed run across the troop of monkeys and while they didn't pay much attention to us, we did see them approach a woman as she put down her backpack and opened it to put her jacket away. We took photos but kept our distance.

We were tempted by ice cream at a small shop at the near the cave, but the monkeys hanging around the tables convinced me it wasn't the best place to buy a treat!

We climbed up a bit more to explore the Sky Walk and walked along a tiny road trail used in the James Bond movie Living Daylights - complete with requisite monkey scene.

Having worked our way to the other end of the reserve, we were now in good position to go down the Mediterranean steps that have a great view. We'd been walking for about two and a half hours since ending our tunnel tour and they afforded us a fantastic view out into the Mediterranean Sea with distant glimpses of Africa and lots of cargo ships. At this point we were a little worried about the gate at the end closing, but it turned out not to be a problem.

We ended at a monument to Hercules (who had one foot in Europe and one in Aftrica and separated them at Gibraltar) and walked about 20 minutes back into the commercial area. We were all famished and tired but proud of our accomplishment...we hiked up and down the Rock of Gibraltar!

Like us, you may have thought of Gibraltar as more of an island than a peninsula. We were perplexed as we headed across to border to see it quite well connected to Spain by the length of the airport's air strip (if you're walking, you have to heed the signs that stop car and pedestrian traffic to allow airplanes to take off or land). We learned on our tunnel tour that in fact it used to be only a narrow connection to the mainland. It was only a true island during high tides!  They created a significant amount of land by filling it in from the earth they dug out from inside the mountain and even created an airstrip. You can see from this photo from on top of the rock how far the airstrip sticks out into the sea!

Operation Gibraltar was a success!