The Rock

A few quick facts to start... You can think of Gibraltar as a finger sticking out of the south of Spain with a big limestone rock at the tip of the finger. The first photo is taken from the southernmost tip looking back toward the rock.

The rock is extremely porous and laced with caves, both natural and man made. The second photo is of Doug in St. Michael's cave which has been used since neolithic times. Many of the caves here had been used by neanderthal man for over 100,000 years until about 24,000 years ago.

Gibraltar is 3 miles long by 1 mile wide, has 30,000 residents, is an independent country and part of the British Commonwealth. It lies only eight miles across the Mediterranean from Africa, not much different than the distance from Maui to Lanai, except that these are two different continents. The third photo shows Morocco across the straights. We had the tastiest lunch today at a Moroccan restaurant in town. The things they do with unusual flavor combinations kept our tongues entertained.

Gibraltar is so small that the airport runway is a street when jets are not landing or taking off. We crossed the runway a couple of times today while exploring and it felt kind of strange. There is a stop light which turns red when the runway is going to be used.

The only monkey native to Europe lives in several colonies on the rock. Here is one posing with Doug.

Doug just came in from the other room where he is reading "The Assault on Reason" by Al Gore. He was raving about the book, ranting about the current administration, and says "Read it!" I'm not very political, so I may or may not get around to it.

Thanks for your comments. I did not even discover them until today.

Well, we're off to Portugal now.