Day trip to Gibraltar

The alarm woke me at 7.30, I ate a cake, and trundled out the door to the bus station. I took the wrong street, but a nice man guessed I was looking for the Estacion de Autobus, and helped me on my way. I found the right window, establishing that the last bus back was indeed 4.15, and somehow bought my ticket to La Linea (pronounced leenya) from a man who spoke no English. It was €30 and left at 9am as advertised. I found stand 22 and the bus came in soon after. I took my seat (22) next to a man and we set off. I ate half my banana. The man next to me started to speak to me in Spanish but I apologised and said I couldn’t speak it. He asked if I spoke English, beginning a long conversation, all the way until he got off nearly two hours later. He was Venezuelan, with Spanish parents. It was interesting to speak to him, and he wanted to practice his English with me, having learnt it in the US 20 years ago. There were Brits sitting behind me and Australians across from me. The trip to La Linea was around 4 hours, and parts were quite winding – we went though Tarifa and Algeciras.

We arrived with the rock clearly in sight. I walked towards it and found the laughable border control. I flashed my passport, went though ‘customs’ and was back on UK land. I got on the €2 all day red open-topped bus and we crossed the airstrip and headed into the city centre. There was a Safeway and ridiculous British pubs called ‘Pig and Whistle’ etc. It was very crowded and high rise. I got off and walked through the main shopping area, seeing M&S and all the other English shops. What a joke. I couldn’t find a tourist office, but found the cable car fairly easily. It was €13.50 for a return with an audio guide. I went up in the cable car with a funny little English man who did a little commentary, warning us not to touch the monkeys etc. At the top I paid €11 for the privilege of some not very nice pasta and salad and ventured outside. The view was amazing and this strange mist was coming off the ocean and being split by the moored ships.

The rock itself was great. Spain looked very sunny all laid out, but Morocco was extremely misty. The monkeys were a bit weird sitting around, but were mostly minding their own business. It was a bit scary when they sat where I wanted to walk – some stupid people touched them. I went to get an audio guide as I’d seen some interesting ruins I wanted to explore. I had to hand over my passport for the privilege and got in trouble for taking it where I wanted to go. I went back up onto the decks to listen to it. Turned out to be fairly useless anyway. It just talked about the monkeys, a bit of general history, the tunnels, the Queen of Spain’s seat, Queen Elizabeth offending the locals etc etc. I took it back, then went to explore the interesting-looking ruins. There was no explanation at all, making them not very interesting after all – just a heap of crumbling concrete.

I’d been going to walk down, but time was getting short, so I took the cablecar. I was a bit sorry to miss other things like caves, but I just couldn’t with the stupid bus times. I walked back through the town, seeing the funniest sight yet – two beat bobbies, dressed in full British uniform with fluorescent pinafores, speaking Spanish, in 33 plus degrees!! How ridiculous! I found the bus stop in time for the 3.45, waited for what seemed like ages, then the red bus turned up at 3.55. It left promptly thank god, and got back to the border in less than 10 minutes. I marched off, managing to ignore Spanish border control (I went back and apologised and showed my passport) and kept marching/running to the bus station, getting on the right bus just in time for 4.15. The trip was quite pleasant this time – I didn’t get sick, I was in no hurry, and I listened to the Beatles. I took some photos of the windmills.

With some traffic, we got back to Sevilla at about 8.10. I was exhausted, so headed around the corner from the bus station to the tram line for dinner. On the way, a French/Moroccan guy picked me up on San Fernando and wanted to go out for a drink at 12.45 that night after he finished work, so he could practise his English too. He suggested a romantic bar playing flamenco music near the river, which sounded quite good actually. He kissed me on both cheeks, which was a bit of a worry. I got a sausage roll and cheese and bacon toasty thing with some gelato, and headed back to the hotel. I think I was dehydrated, so drank lots of water. I didn’t meet the guy, because I was too tired, and a little scared. He had bad teeth anyway. I decided to leave Cádiz until Tuesday. I turned the light off at 10pm, intending to doze, but slept heavily all night.