Rock of Gibraltar, UK
I woke up bright and early, about 6am, and went downstairs for a quick breakfast before waiting outside for the bus. Today I was going to the rock of Gibraltar! I packed my camera, my batteries, some water, some crackers, my passport… what I *should* have packed was a coat. The bus driver had the A/C cranked higher than a Florida movie theater.
When we crossed the bridge into Gibraltar, both the Spanish and the British customs agents checked my passport (if you can call briefly glancing to see if I was indeed holding something vaguely passport-shaped actually “checking”) and I had the disappointment of once again not getting my passport stamped. It hasn’t been stamped since Costa Rica, and here I’ve been in and out of France, in and out of Spain, in and out of Gibraltar, and back into Spain, and – nothing.
OK, enough venting. So, we get to Gibraltar and I board a smaller tour bus because I booked a guided tour. The rock of Gibraltar is not just a rock – it’s huge, like a mountain. There’s the British naval base and a runway for a small airport, and military tunnels within the rock as well as natural caves, which I got to explore. There are also monkeys.
Lots and lots of monkeys – hundreds of them. As we were leaving the bus, I was in the back, so I was one of the last to leave, and a monkey must have snuck in by the feet of the departing passengers, because he suddenly leapt from the floor to the seat of a woman who had left her bag on the seat. He rummaged inside, filched a banana and a sandwich, then dashed out of the bus and up the side of the rock to eat his prize. Hilarious!
As we were leaving the caves, another woman bought an ice cream bar. She was walking away from the stand when a monkey reached down from a tree, snatched the bar from her hand, quickly unwrapped the plastic, and started eating the ice cream bar. I started creacking up when she yelled at the monkey, “Hey! It cost me a pound fifty, that!” (Which is about $3 US. Crafty monkey.)
I also saw some sort of US satellites, old mosques, lots of shops and cafes, and a baby monkey. I caught sight of him crouched on the side of the road. He was so cute! I knelt down and inched closer in order to take his photograph. I was just thinking how funny it was that he would let me get so close when he suddenly sprang up and latched himself around my head, his legs wrapped around my neck and his little hands gripped the rim of my visor. Oh. My. God. This has to be the single most funniest thing that has ever happened to me! (In case you are wondering, monkeys are feather-light, very soft, very smart, and very playful. Oh – and very tricksy.)
So, I get back from Gibraltar and decide to charge up my batteries. Naturally my converter doesn’t fit in the wall – I need an extender plug. I try two supermakets and the Kodak store – nothing. Discouraged, I walk back to the hotel. Something possesses me to ask at a roadside souvenir stand – whaddya know, they have tons of them for 1 euro each. I rush back to the room with my prize, plug in my expensive 15-minute charger, and promptly zap it, the stink of fried electronics thick in the air. Oops. Luckily I brought my crappy 12-hour charger along as backup, but why couldn’t I have zapped that one instead? I flip the switch on the converter to low power and plug in the 12-hour charger. Oh well, better than nothing.
I later found out that today, the professor’s wife and her mother were hit by a car. They are bruised and sore, but otherwise fine. They were crossing the street and a car was pulling out from behind another car and didn’t see them. (It’s an epidemic of car accidents!) The good thing is that Spain as social medicine, so they were treated quickly, and for free.
