Cruise Day Eight: More People Pray in His Bus Than Your Church

Let's face it, whatever else you can say about Gibraltar (and there is a lot to say, as you'll see), the nicest thing is that they speak English. Real English, that you can understand and they can understand you. After ten days of Italian, in which we could communicate barely, French, where I can communicate pretty well but have trouble understanding, and Spanish, of which we barely speak a word and can't understand a single one, it was just relaxing to be able to talk to anyone in a shop, read any menu, buy any item without a worry. (And this was having real consequences, as we hadn't actually ordered a restaurant meal since we'd left Rome--we'd eaten lunch in cafeterias or bought ice cream and bread, where we'd point to what we wanted--albeit we only had one meal a day off the ship.)

Mind you, as we learned from Wilfred, our intrepid guide, nearly all Gibraltarians are perfectly bilingual in English and Spanish (by which he meant they could think in either language without having to translate in their heads). We would hear a mother with a heavy Spanish accent conversing with her eight-year old daughter, who spoke public school English. And Gibraltar includes many Moroccans, a large and visible Jewish community, and many others.

We woke up while we were still cruising around the Rock. This was the view in the morning from our cabin window:



And this after we docked:



Kind of a world class view of a morning, huh? Our own piece of the rock. The morning was to be filled with a tour of the Rock. We began by taking a cable car to the top. It's at the top that you encounter the macaques of Gibraltar, the so-called Barbary apes. They are among the world's smallest apes, and though their origin is unclear, they probably were brought over by a sailor who thought to keep them as pets aboard ship and let them loose when he realized it wasn't so convenient to do so. He must have left a male and a female.

The first view of the apes (as they will hereinafter be called) was up close and personal.



But the views from the top of the Rock were nearly as interesting. Here it is: Africa.



For someone two of whose great-grandfathers reached Africa from Europe before they came to North America, whose grandmother was raised there and whose great-uncle was born there, a view of the African continent, even far away from South Africa and Kenya where my family had lived, was awesome. The ship was supposed to go to Casablanca next, but that was cancelled. So this was as close to Africa as I'm getting on this cruise (unless you consider Madeira part of the continent; it is off the coast). The view in the other directions were as beautiful, it not so interesting. Here is Algeciras, the Spanish city across the bay.



That's our ship in the harbor in the foreground. And this is the view to the north, including the famous airport we'll return to.



You can also see to the east, back to the Mediterranean.



That is a retirement community, or at least you have to be 50 to live there (hey, I'm fifty!); it's called "Both Worlds." Cool name, as it has views of both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, both Europe and Africa. But you're not interested in geography, you want more apes!



We got more apes!



I call the next one "But this doesn't mean I'm gay."



And this one is called "Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and never offer to pick the fleas off them."



Here's a bit of video that occurred right before the last shot.

A couple of facts about the apes: They are fed by the government. Here is the food they get.



They are also put on birth control, to keep the population at about 300. You are not supposed to feed them. Mind you, if you didn't read either English or Spanish, you might consider that all you were supposed to do was not litter.



Our friend Amparo from Mexico told us that someone in her tour group had ignored the sign, and had handed an ape a candy, then being told not to feed her, had taken it away. Oddly, the ape decided to grab the candy back (the "oddly" is meant sarcastically) and the woman ended up with a gash on her hand. And perhaps a 50 Pound fine.

The story is that if the apes ever left the Rock, Britain would leave it too. Who knows, of course, since they're not taking any chances either way.

We next progressed to St. Michael's Cave, which is easily among the fifteen best caves we've ever visited. It has some nice stalactites.



One cool thing was that a stalagmite had fallen and they had cut and polished a cross section of it so you could see the beauty in the middle.



It's also the only cave in which a preliminary to the Miss World competition is held. This is the auditorium, which also hosts classical music because of its lovely acoustics.



Outside the cave was a bathroom, and the men's room was upstairs. A man who came with me and I were joking that, since the door was open, we were expecting to go next to an ape. And look what was outside.



From there, you go to the Great Siege Tunnels. The Great Siege was the siege of Gibraltar by France and Spain from 1779 to 1783, a siege that was unsuccessful. Wilfred is British, and I can understand how the British are proud of their courage and fortitude in holding the Rock against four years of siege. But he never mentioned this: the name of that war. He described France and Spain "attacking" Britain. Well, yes. What really happened was that France and Spain were supporting the American Revolution. If I recall correctly, sitting in a cabin in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the French actively joined the Americans while the Spanish only attacked British colonies, including Gibraltar. The siege of Gibraltar kept significant resources of the British Army and Navy tied down, allowing the American Revolution to succeed. In other words, we were not rooting for the success of the British in the siege.

The tunnels were made to allow some guns to be dragged into the middle of the Rock to attack the besieging forces. It took a lot of ingenuity to do so. It took a lot of hard work while facing near starvation. Only the tunnel wasn't finished when the war ended. Later, the Canadians during World War II extended the tunnels much further in a few weeks. Wilfred said they succeeded because they were well-fed. I think they succeeded because they had dynamite.

Anyway, the tunnels:



And the guns:



Some great views from the entrance to the tunnels of the airport, which is well-known because the road to the border crosses the runway.



Wilfred says that they are finishing a tunnel under the runway so as to allow the airport traffic to expand without stopping the border traffic. Another neat fact about the border: Franco closed it for 15 years in the 60s and 70s, which threw 15,000 Spaniards, who worked in Gibraltar out of work. This meant 15,000 Spaniards were unemployed, while the British were not inconvenienced one whit. Instead, they simply asked the Moroccans if they would like to take the Spaniards' jobs. Oddly, they would. And many still live on the Rock.

The bus down followed a twisty, torturous path to the bottom. As we navigated a hairpin turn, Wilfred told the story of a Gibraltar tour bus driver and a priest meeting St. Peter at the gates of heaven. They arrived together, and St. Peter waved the bus driver right through, while making the priest wait. The priest, surprised, asked St. Peter why. The punchline is the title of this episode of the blog.

On the way down, we saw the two things in the town of Gibraltar we needed to see: a bookstore and the synagogue. We were dropped off in a main square, and walked back. We saw this van advertising its rather unusual business:



Marjorie went into Marks and Spencer to see if they had some nice socks she had found in England, and I went in search of a cash machine, having ripped in half the one five pound note I had. No dice on the socks, and on the way to the bank I found this:



Kind of a neat plaque nearby.



Wilfred had said that Gibraltar was a very accepting kind of place; Disraeli had to convert, but no need in Gibraltar.

We found a nice pub for lunch, with great Tandoori chicken and fish and chips. A couple of guys were writing elaborate Christmas cards, outside, at the next table. We also had some nice cider, which kind of got me drunk for once. And not much later, I lost my beloved Outdoor Research hat. Coincidence? I think not.

We found out that I'd lost the hat when we got back to the ship. So we decided to go out and do some grocery shopping and find me a new hat. We found a huge supermarket (we ran into Wilfred later and he told us that the chain has 155 stores in the UK, but their number one grossing store is the one in Gibraltar) and they had Dr Pepper (hurrah!), dandelion and burdock soda (which we'd wanted to try in the UK and had never gotten around to), Yorkie bar cookies, and some Bendick's chocolate for less than half what they were charging at one of the boutiques in town. We had to go back into town to find a hat, though.

On the way, this kid was running after his soccer ball and I kicked it back to him and then took this picture.



We found a nice Gibraltar hat, wide brim and all cotton, and then looked at the man running the store. The skullcap was most of the information we needed, but the tzitzit clinched it. When he gave me my change, I told him, "Todah Rabah." He smiled.

Marjorie told me she wanted to photograph me wearing it, and insisted on doing it in the store. The reason was that she wanted to get the guy in the background of the picture.

We had some nice views of the Rock during the walk. It only looks like the crane is about to lift the Rock.



And we saw climbing Santas.



We got back and sat down to Yorkie bar cookies and dandelion and burdock soda. Nice repast.



We had dinner with two couples, one half-British, half-American, the other Mexican, and a woman on her own. Amparo, the woman of the Mexican couple (an unusual Mexican female name that doesn't end in A), had a great sense of humor and kept us laughing all evening. We really like her and her husband, Antonio, an engineer from Puebla. They have six sons and no daughters, the last born 20 years after the first (Amparo called him "the surprise"). Her funniest story involved racing some Chinese passengers (whom she called "the Chinese wall") back from Monaco on a crowded train, and then racing them--walking--while in a cab with another couple from Canada, back to the tenders to the ship, and just beating them (and giving the cab driver a big tip). You had to be there. And the evening and the morning were the seventh day