Gibraltar

It just seemed necessary to visit Gibraltar while we were on the southern coast of Spain. We discussed this with our host in Torrox and were told that spending one day was about right, so that's what we did.

To make the most of our time there, we planned a tour of the "rock" the afternoon we arrived. The first stop on this tour was the far end of the peninsula. As you see in the above panorama, we can easily see the 26 km or so to Africa (the mountain visible above the haze near the center of the image.



Getting into and around Gibraltar is a real experience. Getting in was complicated by our GPS data being out of date. we drove about for a while until we figured out what we need to do to not simply park and walk in but drive to our hotel. Once through immigration (this is British soil after all), we drove across the landing strip of the airport to get to town. This air strip was built between the rock and the mainland during WWII and the road simply crosses it. What else can you do?

the next stop on our tour took us to St. Michael's Cave. It is unclear what is going on here, but there are seats for so sort of shows (concerts?) and lots of colored lights everywhere. The space is large but not huge but the distance from beginning to end is not all that far. I've included a couple shots in black and while to get rid of the distracting colored lights and let you see the rock formations. They are pretty impressive.

While there are parts of the cave that are still dripping water, it seems to be be mostly dry nowadays.

Back outside, we see the large deep-water port that is the lifeblood of Gibraltar.

And, of course, the Barbary Macaques that are so iconic. Note that I did not bring my telephoto lens along just my usual wide angle zoom (10-24mm). For this images I pretty much just put the camera in the animal face and snapped away. This happens to the so much, they are oblivious.

Sitting in the warm sun, there was lots of grooming going on.

Sometimes they groomed themselves and sometimes they groomed others.

Mamma does not look happy.

We stopped for a look about and the van driver led me (since I had a nice camera) to a spot he really liked for photos. Here, I can see the African coast framed by the branches of a dead tree.

You can also see the large cargo ships plying the waters and the on-shore battery that remains from the war.

We also toured through some of the tunnels built for the war. These were interesting underground museums (of a sort) but not terribly photogenic. All business, no beauty.

Finding our hotel was a neat trick. First, the GPS was not quite right for some reason. Secondly, driving in Gibraltar is really awful. Streets are narrow, mostly one-way (the wrong way!), and the intersections are difficult to decipher. It is not easy to tell which option in front of you is the "main" road and which is the street that branches off to the left or right. By the time we left, we learned our way around enough to know that once past the airfield, there were about three turns required to get to our hotel. easy-peasy. Our first attempt took us on a tour of nearly the entire city as each missed turn took us on a one-way street that went in some new, unexpected, and wrong direction.

Once in our room, we found that we have a huge private balcony (for sunbathing, presumably) from which we could see the modern harbor.

So we rested and watched the sun slowly set.

When the sun went down, we could see the moon peering down on the wel-lit ports of Gibraltar and Algecira, Spain.

The next morning, once back on Spanish soil, we pulled over for a look back at the "rock" in the morning sun. From here, we were off to Ronda to see a very different place in the mountains.