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Gibraltar, November 9, 2007
| I set an alarm for 7:30 so I could see us approach Gibraltar. For some reason I woke early so picked up my camera and went aft. Peaking at me through the haze (and minimal light) was this lighthouse. I have since checked the navigators charts and this is Punta Carbonera. Since it's such a poor picture, I've left the copy I got from webshots on the lighthouse site but present this one here. We also got a good photo of the Europa Point light, but I present that on the webshots site. |
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As expected, "the rock" was impressive. Even more interesting was that there is a boat you can see that didn't make it 4 weeks ago. It has a tug attached in case something goes wrong, but the plans are to cut it up for scrap rather than trying to float and repair it. |
| Europa Point looks like it has a range light on it. That's incorrect; the tower behind belongs to a Mosque that was given by the Moroccans. It looks like its a ceremonial mosque, we saw no sign of activity there. |
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We got a
taxi tour (6 people per taxi) of the rock. The first stop was Europa
Point; this was at our second stop.
The rock is well over-run with monkeys. Best guess is that the Moors brought them in 711 either for pets or potentially for food. They actually feed them on the top of the rock to discourage them from coming down to the village. They also sterilize some of the females each year to prevent over breeding. When we were on top, one of them jumped off a rock and tried to steal my name badge. He probably thought it was edible. A simple duck and elbow discouraged that practice. |
| This stop was a section of natural caves that had been expanded during the war for emergency usage. This portion was originally a hospital. It has now been converted into a concert stage but can only be used during the dry season. It's a natural limestone cave, and limestone is porous. If there's water on the hill it drips in here. |
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Our taxi took us all the way to the top of the rock. From here you
get a very different perspective than from the boat as I showed you at
the beginning of this page. It's a long way down, and this side
probably is unclimbable with any defense on the top. But today
rock climbing is a favorite activity and is allowed. Parking up here is a challenge. The road up is a single lane and there's one spot for pull off. Thus the drivers unload you, let you walk through the queue of waiting taxis to get a wonderful view of both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, then prompt you to be timely when your driver gets to the front of the line. |
| Our final stop was the military siege tunnels. During the great siege (1779-1783, one of many attempts by the Spanish to retake the rock), a general promised £100 to anyone who could put a gun where it could fire on the invaders. One of his lieutenant's had been a miner and suggested boring holes to that point. As they were digging the smoke got too bad so they broke a hole in the wall for air, and said "damn, that will work". Range from here was 5 miles. As the Spanish got close they needed special carriages to point down and at 1400 yards the accuracy was 94%, pretty good. We also suspect that deafness was highly likely. Here is the view of the town from one of the cannon placements. |
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| The legal border between Spain and Gibraltar is the center of this runway (and yes, it's an active runway). When you call for clearance to land, they will stop the highway (you can see it on the left), land (or take-off) your airplane, and then reopen the road and the walkway (yes, you can walk across). The customs agent is on the Spanish side of the airport, but the highway can get congested if too many planes are using the runway. Typical closing time is about 10 minutes, and with walkers, I suspect there become times when getting landing clearance can also take a while. The runway is short (1.5 km) so you need to be good if your plane is fast. |
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Our stay here was leisurely and I had time to get some sunset pictures before dinner. I tried to get some departure photos, but that really was too late to be effective. |
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