This weekend, Ellen, Nicole, Melissa, Sherman and I road tripped throughout Southern Spain. Our first day we visited Marbella and Gibraltar. We rented a car in Granada and were anticipating difficulties while driving in Spain, but it wasn't too bad. We made a good team navigating and driving. We drove to Marbella first, about a 2 hour drive to the coast, to see the famous beach town in Spain. Marbella is the town for the rich and famous. Their yachts are parked in the bay, but we didn't feel out of place. It was till a very traditional, Spanish city. The weather was gorgeous! We only stopped for a few minutes, but I was so impressed with Marbella's tropical, Mediterranean feel.
We drove for another hour so and made it to Gibraltar. I absolutely fell in love with it!. It is a British territory located on the Southern end of Spain and shares a land border with Spain. Gibraltar and Spain have not been on the best of terms for years. Spain has wanted Gibraltar in order to control navigation through the Mediterranean, but the people of Gibraltar have made it clear that they wish to remain British citizens. They have voted on it on numerous occasions and have always remained true to their British roots.
Our tour guide pointed out to us, that as we crossed the border in to Gibraltar there were Spanish border agents and Gibraltarian agents checking our passports. The Spanish, technically shouldn't check our passports as we leave their country, but want to make a petty point that they believe they have some control of the territory. Our tour guide also informed us that the bay of Gibraltar is called the bay of Gibraltar by most world maps, but that the Spanish maps label the bay as the bay of Algeciras, the Spanish city that shares it's border with Gibraltar.
The contention between the two is very interesting and provides for an interesting blend of the two cultures. The official language of Gibraltar is English, but children are taught both English and Spanish. The mix of English and Spanish has created an actual form of Spanglish known throughout Gibraltar and is spoken on an everyday basis. Our guide we met shared a newspaper article with us and it was very cool! It would say something along the lines of, "The libro is muy interesante, pero in reality es un rollo." completely mixing the two languages. There didn't seem to be rules as to when to use each language, but there must be some system. This language, "Gibrish," even has it's own made words to trow in to the mix.
Now...what we actually did in Gibraltar. Walking down main street we ran into a man giving guided tours of the Rock of Gibraltar. He began to give us his shpeal on the deal we would get and were immediately turned off, but by the end, decided it was a good idea. And whether he was a good salesman or not, it was a blast and I'm so glad we did it.
Normally, you have to hike the Rock of Gibraltar for about 4 hours to see the sights we saw, but he drove us everywhere in his own van and took us directly to the best places. Eric, our guide, first took us to the Pillars of Hercules. The myth is, the Rock of Gibraltar and the mountain of Northern Africa were the two pillars signaling the end of the world by Hercules. After sailing through these pillars, you would fall off the world, because it was flat. Funny enough, these pillars are the origins of the American dollar. After Columbus sailed to the Americas, they were regarded as the port to the new world. The monument for the pillars has a scroll running through them and this is where we get our symbol for the American dollar, the scroll with the two pillars $. From the Pillars of Hercules you could see the northern coast of Africa and it was beautiful.
We then headed to Saint Michael's cave. The cave was not the most impressive or biggest I've seen, but nonetheless was very cool to see. We walked around in the caves for a bit and headed for the best part of the day.
Eric drove us to see the monkeys! :) The British sailors brought monkeys with them from Africa during the 1800s and they've been there ever since. Winston Churchill once said, "When the monkeys seize to exist, Gibraltar will no longer be a British territory." So, as you can imagine, they are a protected species and receive veterinary care regularly. Each monkey is tattooed with a number and is taken care of from birth. Eric sees the monkeys on a regular basis and knows them on a first name basis, so as you can imagine, the monkeys loved him. He called one monkey in to the car and he rode along with us until we got to our monkey destination. The monkeys are very territorial and hierarchical, so Eric had to tell us which monkey's to play with and when to be careful.
Eric would call the monkeys and they would jump up on to our back or heads. The monkeys were obsessed with my hair and wanted to see if they could find any bugs in it...thankfully they weren't successful. It was exactly what I picture monkeys acting like. We truly were their jungle gyms. Technically, they're not monkeys, because they don't have tails, but mekaks. The mekaks live to be about 29 years old. One mekak, Michael, is the oldest monkey on the island and is as old as the latest Spanish constitution, at 29 years old. There were a blast. We would have stayed there all day if we could.
Our next stop was at the mouth of a series of militaristic tunnels in the rock. There are over 72 km of tunnel within the rock. The tunnels were impressive, but the view was amazing. We were looking back towards Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar. The Strait has an airport runway along the width of the Strait. It is the only runway in the world with a traffic light for public cars to pass through, as it's the only way in and out of the territory, by land. It was very cool and very beautiful looking back over the Strait.
