We arrive in Gibraltar without a pre booked Princess excursion. Since we are close to the town and the Rock, we decide to arrange our own transportation. We chat with a few drivers of the many many vans that greet the ship. They take 7-8 passengers and have a set route that they follow. We wait a short time for 2 others to join us. They take us to a look out to the Pillars of Hercules. The Rock of Gibraltar is on the north side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is attached to Spainis , but is a British Overseas Territory. It is one of the Pillars of Hercules. The other is Ceuta, which is in north Africa but is controlled by Spain. We have a foggy start to our tour. Morocco is obscured by the fog.
“Kiss me Here” The Last point in Europe!! Michael & Nicole take the opportunity.
We now head up “The Rock”. For the rest of this tour we are in a huge queue of taxi vans. They drop us off first at St. Michael’s cave.
St Michael’s Cave was long believed to be bottomless. This probably gave birth to the story that the Rock of Gibraltar was linked to Africa by a subterranean passage under the Strait of Gibraltar. The famous macaques or Barbary Apes were said to have come to Gibraltar through this subterranean passage. Since we missed the stunning display of the Northern Lights while we were here, we substitute these images.
The Gibraltar macaques are actually a tailless monkey called a Barbary Macaque (Macaca Sylvanus). No one is sure how they got to Gibraltar, however, speculation has it they were brought either by the Arabs sometime after 711CE or the British after 1704. They are plentiful and definitely NOT SHY!!
They hop onto the taxi vans, the hop on to people. A new viewpoint of Hop On Hop Off!!
Here is the line of taxi vans. These tours are very well coreographed! You are able to get out of your van, walk for a bit while your van makes it way to the front of the queue, then you hop back in and off you go. There is no time for lollygagging! There is only one road, one direction.
The airport for Gibraltar bisects the peninsula. in 2011 Greg, Leslie, Stu and I parked on the Spanish side and had to wait for a plane to land or take off before we could walk across the runway into Gibraltar. Still the same today!
Our driver drops us back in the town. We do a bit of exploring in this very British town.
There are other tunnels that we did not have the opportunity to see as they were not on the the tight schedule of this tour. We still have 4 hours before the ship sails, so Michael and Adam decide to hike back up to see if they can see the tunnels. After a few missed turns they do finally find some tunnels.
Nicole, Alex and I headed back to the Sun Princess. We meet by the pool for a beverage and Alex kindly brings us pizza. I head for a snooze and received messages that Michael and Adam made it back to the ship!! Yeah, I can relax and enjoy my nap.
A very AWESOME Day!!