Something About A Rock

We are sitting in the outdoor bar sipping a nice wine in Zahara de los Atunes gazing across the long open sandy beach waiting for the sunset to happen sometime in the next hour or so. What a life! We arrived here late yesterday afternoon and had planned to travel along the Atlantic coast to Cadiz today, but we were both taken with the endless walking beaches here and decided that if the breakfast that came with our room was ok we would stay another day. Well…it was and we did. We spent the morning driving up the coast to visit a very old and quite impressive lighthouse Just opposite the location where Nelson and his 26 ships of the line crossed the ‘T’ of the French and Spanish 33 ships of war…a place called Trafalgar. I just happened to have read a historical account of this engagement last winter, so the information is still pretty fresh. I had no idea until yesterday that we would be passing right through the area. Until I did some reading I always thought that Trafalgar was a British name as I attended an elementary school with the same name, so seemed logical. Funny how a perception, once established, can remain with you for so long. Along the road to the lighthouse we passed through a national park, and stopped on our return trip to hike out to a Roman watch tower for the views from the headland. You can see all the way down to Africa! We spent the remainder of the day swimming and taking long walks down the endless beach.

Anyway, I started this off to write about a rock. Not just any rock. A rock as familiar to most of our generation as our TV sets…remember those Prudential Insurance commercials from the 70’s? Gibraltar. The name speaks volumes. I remember when my Uncle Geoff and Aunt Mary visited there in the ‘70’s and how impressed they were at the time, particularly with the walk across the air strip and the water catchment system (my Uncle is an engineer after all). Its all still there and more! We rode bus #3 to the far end light house (have to pay with Sterling) and worked our way back from there. Up the gondola to the top of the rock…what amazing views! And the apes…quite amazing. They have photos of the better known apes on the walls with a story about each…sort of like a post office wall of the 10 most wanted. The apes get to walk just about anywhere they want, so you are never quite sure where they will pop up. As the story goes, when the apes have left Gibraltar, the British will leave as well. Short of a major health crisis, it appears that the Brits are pretty safe as the evidence suggests that there is a steady stream of young replacements up and coming!

As mentioned, the views from the top are brilliant. The amount of shipping passing through the Pillars of Hercules is exceptional, and the Port of Gibraltar is pretty busy. At some point those of us who are a bit height intimidated decide that hanging over the 1500+ foot cliff taking photos of the views and the apes should probably come to an end. So we did what most don’t and decided to walk down the road to the bottom. So water and a Snickers bar in hand we headed off down the Rock…dodging Blah Tour buses at every turn (actually called Bland, but we liked our name better!). It was a great walk down with constantly changing views and angles. We finally reached the bottom and found a British type pub for an extremely expensive (and not to brilliant) lunch. We spent our left over Pounds on duty free sample bottles of rum and Drambuie…better than candy as recommended by one of the locals we met! Had a great time walking out of the Rock, across the air strip and through customs. Then through the traffic and south west along the Atlantic coast to where we presently reside.



Tomorrow its likely up to Cadiz and onwards to Sevilla where we will drop our wheels and prepare for the early morning flight to Marrakech…just across the straights and due south from here!