Gibraltar, Tuesday December 27th

We made a reasonable start and only had a half hour wait at the Algeciras bus station for the bus to La Linea de la Concepcion, 20 kilometres away. We were certain that there were two English book shops in Gibraltarr and that we would be able to buy a guide to Morocco and work out some plans. The road took us past a fairly boring range of megastores with the bus stopping now and then. At one stop I heard a man ask for his fare in English, and smiled at him and said hello in a friendly fellow traveller way as he came past. He was Ran, an Israeli man, whose family was on their Christmas visit to relatives in Australia. Meanwhile he had taken a trip to Morocco, and was just about to fly home to England from Gibraltar. He spoke so glowingly of his experiences in Morocco and was even planning to return with his children next year. He offered us his guide book, refusing to take any money for it, saying that he would buy the up to date one for his trip next year. We hopped off together and walked through the border check, where they didn't even look in our passports, and where we later heard that a female traveller had shown her husband's passport photo by mistake and been waved through. The no man's land area is a little bleak, but we were soon onto a footpath that led across the runway of the Gibraltar airport. They stop the traffic going across when a plane is taking off.

The rock dominated all the views, and was high and rugged, but with plenty of vegetation on it. Arches brought us through to a square where Gibraltar central began, and to a multitude of signs for English fish and chips with big servings. We enjoyed a drink with Ran to hear more about his time in Morocco, and to take some notes. He was very pleasant company and we were so happy to have met someone who was full of positives and enthusiasm. After we parted from him, we realised that the only book shop we had seen was closed, so it was very lucky that we had his guide and didn't have to worry about searching for the second bookshop and hoping that it was open.

Prices for the tours up the rock seemed very high, but so did the cable car tickets. We had the most expensive chips we have ever eaten for lunch, since we paid in Euros in Gibraltar which has a currency of Gibraltan pounds and can accept English pounds as well. The exchange rate in shops for Euros is highway robbery and nothing like the current rate in banks. The chips cost 3.20 pounds, and since the rate now is about one pound to one Euro, we were shocked to have to pay Euros 5.50. We had paid about Au$11 for two miserable serves of chips.

Our next exchange rate shock was even greater when the cost of the cable car with admission to sites on the rock came to the equivalent of Au$98 because we only had Euros, but it would have been about Au$60 if we had had pounds! We decided to walk up the rock and to pay for entry to the sites when we got there.

Listening in to our discussion about the money and the distances on the rock were a South African couple who live in London. They asked us what we had found out and decided to walk too. We all set off in what must have appeared to be a mutiny to the ticket office sales girl who had seemed amazed that we had even questioned the exchange rate, let alone refused to be fleeced.

What a stroke of luck it was to have met Graham and Lorna, who were wonderful company for the whole afternoon. It was no stress to walk up the rock, and when we reached the Nature Reserve ticket office we were able to use our Visa card and buy a ticket just for the sites. It cost 16 pounds for both of us, so we saved more than Au$60 by walking and being able to use our card, gained some new friends and had a greater sense of the rock and its views and environments.

The rock is home to a colony of Barbary Apes, and Graham told us of the legend that Gibraltar will only be in British hands while the Barbary Apes live there. He added that he had read that Churchill didn't trust military strategies alone and had imported some more Barbary Apes to ensure this important strategic point was not lost. The Rock provides an outstanding lookout point for the Straits of Gibraltar, which is the narrow stretch of water between Africa and Europe. In the past watches have been kept on movements in the straits and many battles have been fought over ownership of Gibraltar. There have been 14 sieges of the Rock, castle and town of Gibraltar, and there are more than 70 kilometres of tunnels dug into the Rock. We could see the coast of Africa in the distance and it looked as though swimming across would not be out of the question for a good swimmer.

Our first view of the apes was very exciting. Many signs warned against feeding them and interfering or interacting with them, explaining that they bite. We had not realised that they were so used to cars and people that they virtually did as they pleased. Sitting on top of parked cars was common, and when one lady sat down away from her family who were admiring the apes, one went over, sat down beside her and reached into her pocket. It also examined her handbag strap and, given the warnings that the apes grab things and run off with them, she was crazy to just laugh. We didn’t see any major problem behaviour from people but we did see that ape babies were not responded to by their mothers when they cried. Of course the babies are so cute that they would be surrounded by people, and the mother would be nearby but didn’t come over when the little one chirruped its distress. That may be normal for Barbary Apes or it may be a learned behaviour in this setting. The apes are fed to ensure that they have a balanced diet. Apes groomed each other with the most intense concentration and apparent appreciation of the taste of whatever they were finding. Their bottoms looked dreadful, and were on display whenever they moved. The babies had the oldest looking wizened faces and it seemed that the apes looked younger as they aged. The Rock is clearly the domain of the Apes, and people and cars respect that, although we felt that some tour vehicles, not quite so respectful of human walkers, were travelling quite fast.

We learnt that the Barbary Apes are not apes but the only tailless monkeys. It is thought that no tail may be an adaptation to the cold. They are very social and all members of a group, including males, show a lot of concern for the young. That suggests that the behaviour that we observed stems from the adults having no concern for their babies in the presence of people. They were once common along the North African coast but are now in danger due to habitat loss and hunting.

In mythology the Rock of Gibraltar one of the pillars of Hercules, with the two pillars marking the limit of the ancient world. There is disagreement over the identity of the other ‘pillar’ in northern Africa. There is no forgetting that this Rock has a military history, with enormous cannons still in place and huge metal rings in the roads and rocks showing where ropes were used to haul the cannons up the hill.

We visited the cave of St Michael, which is a system of enormous limestone caves with many stalactites and stalagmites. A large cavern had been hollowed out in preparation for use as a hospital in the Second World War, but it was not needed and is now an auditorium. The caves were very beautiful, and lit in a subtle way that allowed you to see the formations without turning it into a technicolour Disney World. A stalagmite had fallen maybe a thousand years ago and was lying cemented by nature to the floor of the cave. In 1972 a piece was cut off the top end revealing a cross section of the stalagmite. I looked like a beautiful piece of marble, with several cores and swirls and patches around them. Scientists were able to tell when each part had been formed by the patterns. Another system of caves with a lake in it, lies below this one and was discovered in 1912 when there was blasting to provide another entry.

The cave has been used by the military at various times, with 500 Spanish troops hiding here before a surprise attack on the British in 1704 and a Moorish wall concealing the entry suggesting that it was used during the invasion of Spain in 711. The cave was known to the Ancients and was considered to be the gates of Hades and the entry to the Underworld. Two Neanderthal skulls and other items show that Gibraltar and the caves were used 40,000 years ago. A skull was found in Gibraltar eight years before the one found in the Neander Valley, but it was the West German find that gave the species its name.

We entered the Great Siege Tunnels which were used when the British were besieged by the Spanish from 1779 to 1783. As we walked down through the tunnels, we explored the small caverns that were dug out for cannons to fire from. Curtains of wet leather or rope hung over the front of the guns to ensure that sparks did not fly back in. Incredible amounts of gunpowder was kept and used here, so at times the noise, smell and dust in the air must have made the place unbearable. The tunnels were dug by soldiers from 1772, because civilians were ‘ill disciplined and likely to run away in times of danger’. These soldiers, tradesmen soldiers, later took on the title of The Royal Engineers. The digging out of these tunnels, by hand with the help of detonation and inserting wood into crevices and soaking it, was a major achievement.

When the siege ended in 1783 the tunnel was 370 feet long. The enemy commander, the Duc de Crillon, commented that they were ‘…worthy of the Romans’, and while it is a reasonable but exaggerated statement, I wondered in what circumstances the Duc was being shown through the tunnels and to what extent he was bound to flatter the English. Tunnelling continued and St George’s Hall, a battery site for seven guns was dug out. It was the site of a military dinner to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the ‘sortie’, by which little euphemism I presume they mean the years of bloody fighting and loss that was the Great Siege. The mannequins of soldiers in action added to the atmosphere, especially the one behind a door grill who shouted out ‘Halt, who goes there?’ giving us a little fright. I think some history behind the siege would have added to this visit, and while there could be lots in the museum that we did not have time to visit, at least a summary would help visitors to understand more while here.

The exhibition ‘Gibraltar, a city under siege’ was in the ruins of some buildings that were originally built by the British as a powder magazine. The first walls had old graffiti all over them and a mannequin was depicted at work inscribing his name and a date in the 1700s.

Apparently being besieged led to many hours of boredom and the development of some artistic skills, as the picture of a boat showed. Lorna and Graham commented on the absolute deluge of graffiti in Spain today and we agreed that it is everywhere. In fact we would probably note its absence rather than its presence. Illness and disease led to more deaths than military encounters. Soldiers were allowed to have their wives with them, but rations were only allowed for five wives for a battalion of 85 – 100 men. The wives were the nurses, since there were no professional nurses in those days. This is an intriguing situation, since there were wives who survived ‘off the record’. How did they work out whose wife would be fed, and what were the ways for ‘off the record wives’ to make a living? Certainly one springs to mind in the presence of so many bored men, and it isn’t giving art lessons. The only acknowledged role of women was in nursing men back to health quickly to help the garrison to withstand the siege.

The lash was administered to impose discipline, with one drummer receiving 30,000 lashes in his first fourteen years on Gibraltar. At what point were those in charge going to decide that perhaps life as a drummer in the army was not the best match for this man? During the siege people’s homes were bombarded from both sides, and so they abandoned them and lived in shanty towns on the south side of the Rock, where disease and death became rife. Rations were scarce so to preserve flour soldiers were ordered not to use it to powder their hair. That sounds pretty extreme to me. Bread or hairstyles – it must have been a difficult decision. A cabbage cost 2½ days’ pay for a soldier, so the choice between hairstyle and food was probably an easy one. All the paving stones in the town streets were taken up so that a cannon ball would fall harmlessly onto dirt and not ricochet off causing further harm to buildings. Towers and steeples along with land marks of any sort were taken down by the English themselves to prevent the enemy using them for guidance for the bombardment.

This was a great exhibition for interesting details and also for the visuals, which included a dead couple loaded in a cart while their child cowered in a corner holding a cross and crying. The bodies had rigor mortis and lay stiffly with their knees unable to be bent so that their feet could not fit in the cart. I had to remind myself that they were mannequins, for whom rigor mortis is not an issue. Scurvy was a killer, and General Eliot ordered that everyone plant vegetables in order to prevent further disease which could weaken the English and force them into surrendering. The sign said that he was a vegetarian, which was unusual for the times, but no doubt it was the bigger life and death issues that led him to promote planting veggies.

We whizzed past the World War Two Tunnels entrance, which was closed, pausing only to feel the hot air coming up from some bunkers and to peer at the armoured vehicle parked in the tunnels. The clouds were gathering right above us and the rainy day promised looked like it could arrive any moment.

Our last stop was at the castle which had been originally built by the Moors and last rebuilt in 1333. Of course it was taken over and used by every successful invader. All that remains is its tower, and it was fairly spooky climbing up, knowing that so many others had been here before and not as tourists. A section had been allocated to bathing, and care had been taken with the details, such as the star shaped vents. We imagined that originally there would have been more ornamentation, given the Moorish buildings that we had seen.

This tower was the last resort in an attack, and the incredibly thick walls could give you a sense of security, even with canon balls flying around. We had wonderful views from all over the rock and the walk had been a very enjoyable one. We didn’t go right up to the top in view of the time and the clouds but it would be well within the capacity of reasonably fit walkers. We made our way down a myriad of stairs that led through some back streets. This was very quick and easy and saw us crossing the runway and waving our closed passports in no time at all. When we parted, we exchanged details and we hope that Lorna and Graham will visit when they are in Australia.

It was then that we realised that we had no idea where the bus station was, since we had been talking to Ran and had not paid attention earlier. A passer-by helped us out and we were soon in the bus being driven through the rain in the dark back to Algeciras. Many people hopped on at the megastore stop with enormous bags of goodies, bought at what I guess to be the after Christmas sales. The rain was not too bad when we alighted and walked to buy some bread, but once we were safe inside and up the beautiful stairs, it came pelting down. We indulged in some reading of the Rough Guide to Morocco; a little different to the format of the Lonely Planet Guides that we were used to, but just what we needed.

not London; Gibraltar