Gibraltar: Land of Monkeys

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So two weekends ago I escaped from the chilly rain of Córdoba to head six hours south on a bus to the famous town of Gibraltar (pronounced He-bral-tar in español). The English poet Laurie Lee once described Gibraltar as looking as if “it had been towed out from Portsmouth and anchored off-shore still wearing its own grey roof of weather.” Well that was definitely the case when we arrived there.

Gibraltar is a British territory in Spain (trust me, it’s complicated). Everyone there is a British citizen and they use British currency, not the euro (a pain in the butt); everyone speaks English, Spanish, or both, usually mixed together, making it the perfect destination for the fluent Spanglish speaker (ME). As a tiny hub of English culture in the Iberian Peninsula, it has become more of a thorn in the side of Spain than anything else.

You literally have to walk across the border and through customs to get into Gibraltar. It is a very small town, and most of the space is taken up by the enormous, vertical Rock of Gibraltar. It is located almost as far south in Spain as you can get. In fact you can even see Morocco from the Rock. A curious mix of cultures, Gibraltar is an interesting place to visit, at least to say that you’ve been there.

Gibraltar is a very well-known city in Europe, especially for big history dorks like me. It has been the cause for several wars for over 2000 years. It is strategically important because it guards the entrance to the Mediterranean. Basically, the area and caves around the rock of Gibraltar have been inhabited since the Phoenicians (I’m talking 950 BC here people).

In antiquity it was known as one of the Pillars of Hercules, but it became even more notorious in 711 as the gateway for the Arab invasion and conquest of Spain led by the general Tariq ibn-Ziyad. In fact that is just where the name comes from. Gibraltar is the Spanish derivation for the Arabic for Jabal Tāriq (جبل طارق), meaning “Mountain of Tariq”. It gained even more notoriety in 1704 when it was captured by Britain during the War of Spanish Succession. Sneaky bastards.

However, if you have heard anything abroad Gibraltar (or remember anything from your high school world history class) you probably know it in conjunction with the Battle of Trafalgar and Lord Horatio Nelson (1805) during one of the Napoleonic Wars. Or if you have been to London and seen Trafalgar Square will overcompensating pillar commemorating Nelson. Anyways, it was a fantastic naval battle with the outnumbered patriotic British defeating the combined naval fleets of evil France and Spain, with the British leader Nelson dying appropriately at the end, of course. Anyways, since the UK got a hold of it, they have held on for dear life and won’t let it go, and let’s just say that 200 years later, well, Spain has still not gotten over it yet (to put it lightly).

So going to visit this infamous place, I had really high expectations. I met up with my friend Jen and her friend Becca visiting from the states for a weekend away. We decided to stay in La Línea de la Concepción, the town right next to Gibraltar because it was super cheap and you can just walk across the border and back. Gibraltar is extraordinarily expensive, especially for property, because there is such little space, and its a huge tax haven for the fabulously wealthy elite of Europe.

This meant we booked a rundown little hotel on the beach in La Línea. And man, La Línea is one of the sketchiest places in Spain, hands down! At the risk of sounding racist (like everyone in Spain is) this part of Spain is the closest to Africa, which means its the gateway for migrant workers coming to and from Europe, which means there is more crime here than in the rest of Spain because of its ports. I won’t even repeat here what Spanish people say it about. Let’s just say it is not as suave as what I said and would probably get you shot if you said it in the US. Anyways, moving on, La Línea is mad sketchy.

So we all met up and then decided to walk to Gibraltar for the afternoon. It’s really cool because you walk right across the border and even through customs. Bit it is a complete joke because they don’t even open you passports, let alone stamp them! UNFAIR! After crossing the border you actually walk across the runway for the airport of Gibraltar, it bisects the entire little peninsula of the city. There are only 2 flights or say a day, which they close off the runway and you have to wait to cross it.

After that its about another 10 minute walk to the old part of town. Gibraltar is full of tunnels (more than 70 km) and you have to actually cross a drawbridge and walk through a short tunnel just to get to the old part of the town. Pretty cool. We walked out of the tunnel and the first thing we saw was a British pub. Needless to say, we stopped and had a great lunch of all the greasy food we can never get in Spain. YUM! After that the afternoon went downhill after an ATM ate Jen’s debit card (F*** you Barclay’s!) and our cell phones wouldn’t work because we were technically outside of Spain. Fantastic.

Determined the next day would go better, we had breakfast and headed into town again. As we walked through customs we found out that the cable car up the Rock was out of service, so we handed over a good chunk of change to have a taxi drive us up and give us a private tour instead. As much as I loathe organized tours, this one was pretty awesome and I definitely recommend it if you ever in Gibraltar. Ask for Douglas. There was no way in hell I was going to hike up that mountain in my nice boots in the rain for hours, getting lost. We each paid 30 euros and got a private tour that included the entrances to the sites. Pretty decent to me. We also got to see parts of the town that we would have never seen on foot, pretty spiffy too. Most of the upper Rock is a nature reserve with one narrow winding road all the way to the top. We stopped first at the lowest point of the peninsula which had great views of the surrounding Mediterranean and the Strait of Gibraltar and of Morocco! Yeah that’s right, you can see Africa from Gibraltar, pretty awesome!

We then headed up even farther to St. Michael’s Cave, and when we had our first monkey sighting! Ok, so I might say that the main reason I wanted to come to Gibraltar was to see all of these historical sights, which is true, but the other big reason was that I wanted to see the apes that live there! The upper Rock is home to seven different families of Barbary Macaques that are NOT afraid of people at all. You are not supposed to feed them, but everyone does, which means if they even suspect you of having food on you, they will jump on you and occasionally steal stuff from your purse or backpack. They are very sneaky, and they also smell atrocious! They are vaccinated and have vet visits so no worries for rabies, but it would still suck to get bitten by one. However, that was a risk I was willing to take. So we hopped out of our van to see a little family of monkeys patrolling around the entrance to the caves. So we snapped a few pics from a distance before heading inside the caves.

St. Michael’s Cave is a big natural cave complex and grotto that once was home to the Neolithic peoples of this area. It was really beautiful walking around the caves, with classical music playing in the background and all of the stalactites and stalagmites illuminated in different colors. Since it had rained a lot and was kinda chilly, it was actually pretty wet inside the caves and we kept getting dripped on a bunch. There is even an auditorium built inside the caves for concerts and the like.

We headed back out into the sunlight and to dry off only to be greeted by the monkey’s. With the prompting of food, one of the baby ones hopped right up onto my shoulder and posed for pics with me. However the monkeys were not so well-behaved with Jen or Becca. As soon as the first one jumped off Jen, another, even fatter one, jumped on her head before hopping over on to Becca. Moral of the story, don’t bring food and DO bring hand sanitizer with you and be prepared for monkey attacks.

After that we headed to the very top of the area on the Rock where you have a spectacular 360° view of the Mediterranean. Be warned that most of the apes are located up here. We got out and walked around with our mouths open in awe for about 20 minutes. It was incredible, like we were literally on top of the world. The water was so blue it looked fake. Just another reminder of how much I love this part of the world. It was funny to watch Douglas our guide shooing the monkeys off his taxi with a stick. I think I could have sat up there for hours watching everything.

After that we headed into the Great Siege Tunnels inside the rock to explore for a bit. There several attempts over the years by the French/Spanish to recapture Gibraltar from the Brits, but I mean, come on, do you really think you can capture a giant rock fortress? Let’s be realistic here. The Great Siege of Gibraltar lasted for four years (1779-1783), and of course it was unsuccessful. It is impossible to capture this place by force. One of the many results of the it was the building of miles and miles of tunnels inside the rock, which, for a small price, you can wander around some of them. It is interesting to walk down this long, short tunnels and try to imagine what it must have been like to spend years in them during a war. I bet some people went crazy. Every so often you come across an opening on your left with a cannon. And like the caves, the rock ceiling inside was dripping wet, so when we left, we had wet hair out in the sunlight.

Afterward, we headed back into where we did a little shopping. Gibraltar is awesome because they have mostly British stores which means we could find stuff we can’t get in Spain. So yes, I did buy a large amount of books in English. We sat down for another great pub lunch of fish and chips, yum yum, before heading out to explore a bit of the old town. We found one of the Battle of Trafalgar cemeteries and wandered through there for a bit, before seeking shelter from the rain.

The next day Becca and Jen left on an early bus back to Jerez, so I spent the day exploring more of Gibraltar and relaxing and reading at a cafe. Nothing really exciting happened except that I saw a family of monkeys that had wandered into the old town and one of them was carrying the baby on her back like a backpack! ADORABLE! So for me Gibraltar was a good trip, but definitely not worth spending more than one day there, and my favorite part turned out to be the monkeys!