The rock (of Gibraltar) dominates our landscape. It’s
impossibly steep cliff is just there, all the time. So today, after checking
thoroughly that there was nothing useful I could do - HS is on his third day of
trying to fix the navigational computer – a job I can’t help with - I took the
afternoon off and walked up it.
I stopped half way up and took a couple photos.
The first one is of one of the apes that are everywhere on
the rock. They live there, in caves, and can often been seen sunning themselves
on the tops of houses, walls, and towers.
The second one is of the view out over the bay. You can see
several interesting things from this second one. You can see two countries. To
the north, the top of the photo, is Spain. The town of La Linea and the marnia
we are currently staying at are there visible in the photo. To the south, the
bottom of the photo, is Gibraltar. Part of the town, also called Gibraltar, and
the marina we stayed at there are visible too. Gibraltar is a British overseas territory but is also its own country (I think), and is tiny. It is composed,
entirely, of a rock and a town clinging to the base of the rock and several
marinas and an airport. That’s it. To get into the country you have to go through customs with your passport then drive,
or bike, or walk, across the airport runway (you can see this in the photo) and when a
plane is due to land they stop traffic for a few minutes. Note the three
playing fields beside the runway. They are placed here because this is the only
flat land in the whole country!!
The temperature here is lovely at the moment, mid-twenties
during the day and mid-teens during the night, not too hot for working during
the day and perfect for sleeping at night. It was, nonetheless, a pretty warm
walk up to the top of the rock. From the top you could see a whole whack of
Spain to the north and the hills of darkest Africa rising to the south just
across the strait.
I cheated and took the cable car back down, walked home along
the street of shops aimed at cruise ship shoppers, and cooked chili for
supper. The nav computer still isn’t working but I think HS has diagnosed the
problem so he is going to order new parts off e-bay and tomorrow we are going
to start rigging.
