The Rock
Sunday 4th July we decided to do the cable car trip up the Rock. We landed in the middle of the harbour again with the dinghy and found the station next to the Botanical Gardens. Although it was afternoon already the lady said we would have time to do the full ticket which would enable us to visit all the sites of interest, before they closed at about 6:30. So we took that option and paid £26 for two single tickets up and entry to all sites. The walk between them would lead us back down to the town.
We had computer sets for the audio-visual tour to start with but they were really a waste of time and money, there could have been better ways to get the information. Then we went exploring and found some monkeys (Barbary Macaques) who were indeed quite wicked! Dan was scared when a young one jumped onto him. Nigel had one on his shoulder but as he was encouraging me to get the camera out, the monkey started biting his shoulder, and before I could take a photo Nigel had thrown it off!
Later during our walk they started after Daniel in the pushchair, but when Dan was scared we realised that they were after the pushchair, not Daniel, so we got Dan out away from the pushchair, and indeed they seemed very interested in having a ride! They pawed at the pushchair and got halfway on, but didn’t quite
dare to get on completely! Then I had to chase them away from trying to open my rucksack, but we let one of them steal our water bottle. Although he fiddled with it for a while he didn’t really know what to do with it and it was dropped behind the hedge. I didn’t dare get it back as two of the monkeys were still
guarding it!
We saw St Michael’s Caves, caverns full of stalagmites and stalactites and incredible rock formations, then walked to the Underground Tunnels, hewn at various times over three centuries for the defence of Gibraltar. They had to design cannons that would shoot downwards!
We were very footsore by the time we got back to town, Daniel less so as he had ridden in the pushchair most of the way. A beer in the pub, an ice cream and a visit to the playground followed before we went exhausted back to the dinghy and to our boat.