Gibraltar and its many monkeys.

Gibraltar is a British territory that lies in the south of Spain. It's super small and the Brits just won't give it up. Recently the territory put it to a vote and decided pretty overwhelmingly they'd like to stay a British territory. Take that, Spain.

Anyway, since we were so close to the line, our group parked the cars in a nearby garage to walk into Gibraltar. But not before we saw this awesome sign. If you can't read it, it's at a German restaurant and reads, "Last sausage before Africa"

We were pretty led down when we walked across the border and didn't have to show our passports or anything. We kinda wanted a stamp. Alas. After this border "check" the first thing we saw was a bright red telephone booth. So very British.

(Sadly though, they don't change driving to the right side when you cross in; I think it's the only British place that doesn't.)

So, Gibraltar has this rock. You may recognize it from the Prudential Financial logo, which is actually what it was based off of.

Gibraltar also has monkeys. A. lot. of. monkeys. One person in our group, let's call her Joyce, really doesn't like monkeys at all. In fact, she wasn't too keen her husband insisted on going here at all. We'll come back to her later.

When we walked into town, a cab driver approached us and offered to take us on a tour of the rock. At first we were skeptical but in the end we agreed. We had to go to the bank though, to get some British pounds out of the ATM. Soon we were on our way up the rock.

We stopped first at the southernmost tip of Gibraltar and took some pictures in the wind. That land mass in the distance? That's Africa.

I was having a great hair day, can you tell? (The truth was, I didn't want any monkeys to think it was neat and jump up on me, so I had it tied back most of the day.)

Captain Matt.

Next we stopped at the Pillars of Hercules before going up farther...

Within a few minutes, we were greeted by monkeys.

These were taken from inside the van. Joyce was the least pleased person in the van, if you can believe it. These guys hung on with ease.

Luckily for us, our tour guide was seriously hands-down, the Monkey Whisperer of Gibraltar.

When we got out of the van a little ways up to check out St. Michael's Cave, it took Joyce some convincing to get out, especially when this was happening on the hood of the van.

She stayed inside a bit longer because then this happened:

Inside the cave, it was so so pretty! They use it as a theatre sometimes because of the acoustics, so that's why you can see a stadium style seating and stage area.

 Matt on the stage.

Then it was back in the van time, and up the rock we went. This is where the monkeys got out of control, and Matt was in charge of the camera.

I snagged it back briefly to capture his special moment:

Matt was really into capturing all the different expressions:

This guy was the leader. Can you tell? He's a giant, and we were only there because he was kind enough to allow it.

Anyways, we hung out there for awhile, mostly because we were going to see a plane land at the airport, which is quite a feat. Gibraltar isn't that big to begin with, and to have an airport literally next to a giant rock is ambitious. It's actually on the list of the world's scariest airports. This is the first half of the runway.

Here's a (borrowed) photo from Wikipedia to show the entire thing. That road in the middle cutting across the runway is the road we took in our bus from the border. It's a main road that they obviously shut down whenever a plane comes in or leaves.






After coming back down the rock, our tour was coming to an end. Our guide told us which restaurant served the best fish and chips, so we headed right over. We had, after all, a Kiwi with us who as far as I'm concerned has enough British in her to make sure we were getting the good stuff.

I'd never really had fish and chips before, so I ordered one along with everyone else. I just hung out with monkeys all day in a van that was winding up a huge rock - why not carry on with this adventurous streak?

Here's my plate. I'm sure my mom was jealous.

Pretty tasty indeed. After waiting out the downpour outside, we got up and walked around and stumbled upon a little shop that had a coffee and cake deal in the window for 4.50 pounds. Considering Matt and I had exactly 5 pounds left, we thought it was perfect.

Mmm, cake. Another person got the butterscotch cake and I'm a little sad we didn't, but this was also good.

A fine way to end the day.