Rock of Gibraltar, Days 70-71; Do you smell what The Rock is cooking? It's probably a monkey.

To get to Gibraltar from Granada, we had to take a 5 hour bus ride to La Linea, Spain then walk across the border to Gibraltar. The only road and walkway into Gibraltar crosses Gibraltar Airport's one runway.

View from the bus.

View from The Rock into Spain of the roadway (N-S) crossing the runway (E-W).

Crossing the runway. There are gates and guards to stop traffic if a plane is using the runway, but we never saw a plane takeoff or land.

We stayed at the Rock Hotel, which is probably the nicest room we have had so far. The balcony had a great view and was larger than most of our past hotel rooms. It was a favorite of some of the apes as well. They are actually monkeys (Macaques in fact), but are called Barbary Apes.

This one had just jumped through our open balcony door. Steph bravely protected the bed in our room by jumping upon it and screaming "monkey!" This photo was taken once the monkey was thwarted from the bed, exited the room and sat on our balcony wall. Warning: there will be a lot of monkey photos in this post.

The view from the top of The Rock is amazing. Normally one can take a cable car to the top, but it was closed due to high cross winds. Rather than pay 50 pounds for the "guided tour taxi" to the top, we walked. It was only about 6km, but it was very steep.

Yes, it was very windy and we understood why the cable cars were not running. And Todd needs a haircut.

And of course there were monkeys at the top too. This little guy had an injured arm.

Most of the monkeys were very well behaved.

Cleaning time.

This one did not appear to be very impressed with the view. Or he might have been tired of tourists taking his picture.

The sign warns of biting, but this one just wanted to nap. Do not wake sleeping apes.

This girl must not have read the above sign. Shortly after this photo, the little ape nipped her hand. Of course, if she had good judgment, she probably would not have worn that outfit.

They like climbing on cars too.

The closest we were to the apes until the one entered our room.

And one more monkey.

Halfway up the Rock is St. Michael's caves. It was an incredibly beautiful cave system and it had a stage and seating area in it where shows are performed. Apparently, there are great accoustics.

Always well prepared. Even though we had a headlamp, it was too dark for most photos.

This is the cable car that was not running. It would have been an interesting ride, but a lot less exercise.

We also visited tunnels that the British military had dug to install canon. These were begun in 18 and expanded through World War II. Very impressive.

One of the commanders here designed a new carriage system for the cannon that allowed them to be fired downward.

During the siege of 1789-92, soldiers were flogged for offenses. It apparenlty was important enough to create a wax figure. Approximately 300 died from battle during the siege, but even more died from disease, mostly scurvy.

The Moors built this citadel on The Rock in the 1300s.

In this photo, you can see the openings where the cannon were placed in the tunnels.

After several hours exploring The Rock, we headed downtown to a pub for lunch. Gibraltar is very small, but has a lot of tourists. There are a lot of stores as well as it does not tax most goods and most of the tourists were shopping. We were happy to sit and watch as we ate. There is not a lot to do here, but we were very glad we came and it was a lot of fun.

View from our hotel.

Off to Tanger, Morroco.