Gibraltar, Great Britain

Friday March 28, 2008


We’ve been waiting 30 years to see Gibraltar since we couldn’t visit the rock on our last visit to Spain due a closed border as a result of Spanish/British tension, so today was a real highlight. It’s only 6 square kilometers of inhospitable rock, but a very interesting place. Of course the strategic location overlooking the straits where the Atlantic and Mediterranean meet, are the reason for the importance of this location and its greatest function up to the present, has been a military one. Even though a British protectorate, 90% of the people living and working here are Spanish, so the language here is either Spanglish or Gibrish – take your choice. They deslinate water for fresh water.

To get into Gibraltar, one has to cross the airfield – a most unusual feeling. Once in the city, we boarded smaller buses that could navigate the narrow, steep streets. They took us to a lookout over the harbour, where it was clear that ship traffic has not diminished – especially container ships.

Next was the St. Michael Caves one of the many natural caves in the rock. Combine this with the kilometers of massive tunnels built with the help of the Royal Canadian Engineers, make this a honeycomb of a rock.

On our way down from the caves, we stopped to visit the barbary apes. Nobody is quite sure about the total number of apes, but there are a handful of very social ones, eagerly awaiting the next wave of tourist buses. They provided some interesting photo ops.

Released from the formal tour, we cruised the main street finding few bargains in a place that is supposed to be duty free. We had lunch in a café on the main square – fish & chips of course and after lunch, Dawn & Bill set out to see if they could find a friend from the 70’s who moved back to Gibraltar in the 80’s. The chances of finding Ubi Malin were slim, since her name didn’t appear in the phone book, but when we asked about her in one shop, they thought she might live near the Red House on Main Street. So off we trudged and continued asking about her in shops. Just about to give up, we found a Rhodes-Malin name on a mail box, rang it and low and behold, Ubi stuck her head out of the third story window. At this point we had only a ½ hour to visit before getting back to our bus, but the re-married and re-divorced Ubi, showed us her place and we caught up a bit before she had to go back to work.

Our return trip to Portugal took 7 hours, which was long enough, but all agreed that the trip had been most enjoyable and we were glad we hadn’t missed it.