The last few weeks of my Spanish adventure flew by! I had written two posts on a long bus ride back from Tarifa, but they got deleted somehow and I got a little discouraged. However, I want to continue to document my trip.
The weekend after visiting Granada (we went on a Thursday) Stephan, Anne, and I went to Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a British overseas territory that is only 2.6 square miles on land and has about 30,000 people. This place was definitely on the list of must sees being that there is an ongoing dispute between the British and Spanish. In addition, it is known for the monkeys that inhabit the Rock of Gibraltar.
We parked on the Spanish side of the border and walked across. This was the best way, because the line to drive through customs is pretty long.
We parked on the Spanish side and this was our first view of The Rock.
We had to walk across the runway at the airport to get to the town. This is the only place they could put a runway so it is for the most part open for crossing. (They shut it down for planes to land.) We simply showed our passports and off we went!
Being that it is a British territory, this phone booth was right across the border.
The town of Gibraltar.
We took the trolley up to the visitors center and decided to hike the way down.
Seeing as the monkeys are wild animals, people aren't allowed to feed them. They recommend taking as little as possible with you because the monkeys are known for stealing people's bags in search of food.
Right when we got to the top of the lookout this little guy was sitting on the railing. As you can tell, I was pretty apprehensive. The monkeys are very accustomed to humans and tourists (and supposed to be disease free,) but I didn't want to take any chances!
We didn't go to the very top, but the highest point of the Rock of Gibraltar is behind me in this photo.
We continued to hike down to the bottom of the rock and saw quite a few monkeys along the way.
The government of Gibraltar feeds them a balanced diet and monitors their health.
Naturally, I looked up geocaches (
Here) beforehand and we were able to find this one on our way down. It was so cool!
The geocache was located in the wall at a stopping place and we actually missed it on the first go round. We hiked back up what seemed like 56465321 stairs and got it. As you can see, they were quite steep!
We grabbed a bite to eat for lunch, crossed the border back into Spain and off to Playa de Bolonia we went!
La Bolonia is a very small beach located in the extreme south of Spain. It is known for ancient Roman ruins and is actually on the Atlantic ocean! The majority of the time we went to beaches on the Mediterranean so this was pretty cool!
You can see the sand dune and the spot where the ancient Roman ruins are located in the background.
The water was clear as glass, but pretty chilly!
A majority of the beaches we went to were rocky, but this beach was sandy. The sand was so fine that it would get in your eyes if the wind blew too hard. The weather was hot, but because it was so windy the temperature was perfect. This place was like paradise!
On our way out we saw nearby beaches covered in kite surfers. This area of Spain is well-known for this sport because there is so much wind. Thousands of tourist come to this area for this.
We made a quick stop back in Marbella on the way home. This city is famous for being ritzy and within 20 minutes we saw 5 Ferraris and 4 Lamborghinis--pretty cool!
This day was so much fun and I am SO glad we went. This post has so many pictures and is so long, so I will post later about La Ferria de Malaga.
