Friday 15th - Gibraltar

Now, for those of you that don't know, because I didn't and it's probably one of those Trivial Pursuit questions you can never answer and think you'd be some much cleverer if you could answer, Gibralter is basically just a great big enormous rock about 300m high, sticking up out of the water, attached by a thin strip of land, to the very Southern most tip of Spain. It's very close to Northern Africa (Morocco), and, (this is the bit I find fascinating), came about when the two continents divided millions of years ago and Africa literally pushed this huge piece of rock up out of the bottom the sea. You can still see sea-shell fossils at the top of the rock. Isn't that cool?

So anyway, Danni, Emma and I got the morning bus to La Linia, which is where you stay in Spain if you want to go for a day to Gibralter. Got a hotel there and got over the border about 12.00, (immigration closed for siesta so a quick passport flashed seemed to suffice). Just in time for a lunch of (pretty average) fish and chips.

There were loads of Brits going over the border from Costa for their 5 quid bottles of vodka and duty free cigs en masse. The originally titled "Main Street" was a log like shopping at an airport... perfume, makeup, sunflasses, big brand names. I wanted to see the caves which I had heard were very good so decided to do a rock tour. Broke the budget a bit, but in 35C heat you'd have to have been psychotic to climb the rock yourself.

Gibralter belongs to the UK 'in perpetuem', meaning they don't have to give it back like they did HK. How it came about belonging to the UK is a story I learnt when I took the tour. The driver/guide was a fountain of information and I was fascinated how this tiny piece of land could have so much history. I've probably got it all wrong but bits pieces go something like this:

First stop was the beautiful St Michael's stallectite and stallectmite limestone caves. They were enormous. One Stallectite? Stallecmite?, had fallen and they'd cut a cross-section and it was like marble. They could even tell how old it was from it's rings, just like a tree trunk. Also, when the caves were discovered years ago, they'd found a human skull that they did not identify as Neanderthal until a similar skull was found several years later in Africa. I thought that was pretty cool trivia. Just like Discovery channel, only in 3D.

Further up the rock, we stopped to see the monkeys (Barbery Apes). Sir Winston Churchill, on his visit to Gib once, famously said that if the monkeys were ever to leave the rock, so would the British. Since then they've been protected and there are about 300 of the smelly things all trying to steal your camera.

Next stop we went to the Great Seige Tunnels. These are a huge set of winding tunnels cut right into the centre of the rock by the British Army during WW1 during the British Invasions. Also very impressive as all cut by hand.

A great tour, ended with our driver telling us to look out for him in "The Living Daylights" as 1) the man at the opening scene getting shot, 2) the man at another opening scene getting shot, and 3) the man at the fruit stall running to get out of the way of more shots. He was quite a character actually - would have liked to have a beer with him but he was a but old for me.

Then spent the next few hours looking for the perfect pair of Gucci sunglasses that I bargained down the price of and am very proud of. I have a bet with myself that I can't make them last a whole year without sitting on them, breaking them, losing them or scratching them. I really hope I lose.