Gran Canarie

I am sitting at a McDonalds in Palma de Mallorca, using the speedy WiFi to post some more blog pictures from the last week. YES - don't judge - I am an American and sometimes I need my fast food fix just like you do...

Okay, so I was on the island of Gran Canarie - one of the Canary Islands - a little over a week ago. It was spectacular! The first picture is of a flock of sheep in the mountains who make excellent cheese.

The next is a statue of Alfredo Krauss, a famous opera tenor, who was from the island. He is seen as the traditional tenor pose known as "the claw". As you can see, he overlooks the beach - where surfers floated around like lobster bobbers. Behind his statue is the beautiful performing arts center named in his honor (you can't see it).

The next picture is of a gothic style Catholic church...

Next, is a shrine to "Maria of the Pine Trees" from a different church. The people of Gran Canarie believe that Mary appeared on top of a pine tree right outside of this particular church. They will come to this church to ask for Mary's blessing when they have special occasions in their lives - like buying a new car, or starting a new soccer team, or having a baby.

Then, I am standing near the top of the mountains - among the famous pine trees - with cool rock formations in the back.

Then we have a little village in the middle of the mountains... they farm figs, almonds, citrus, avocados, all the wonderful things we can't grow in Wisconsin.

Please appreciate the excellent driving skills of the bus driver on the turn. According to the knot in my stomach, there were about 1,037 of these precarious turns throughout the tour.

And finally - sand dunes! YAY!!!!!

Gibraltar

Today, I stepped off the ship, traded my dollars for pounds and headed into the British territory of Gibraltar. This is quite a developed area with great shopping and restaurants. My friends and I stopped for seafood paella and fish and chips before jumping in the cable car that took us to the top of “the Rock”. The cable car climbed quickly, swinging a bit in the wind, and we arrived at the top in 5 minutes.

As soon as we stepped out of the car, we were greeted with signs saying “don’t feed or pet the apes… they are wild animals and may bite you…” Yes, wild Barbary apes live up there! These are not very big, but boy are they clever! A little ape was actually waiting for us to get out and followed us around, posing here and there and letting us take his picture.

I nearly made a disastrous mistake when I set my backpack down to take in the breathtaking landscape of Africa and Spain in the distance. When I turned back around to my friends, I couldn’t figure out why an ape was running towards us. When he reached us he made a sudden lunge towards my backpack with his sticky little fingers, but I beat him to it by a split second. You can see me trying to turn this little guy from his sneaky ways after his valiant, yet failed attempt. Afterwards, he just sulked off to bother another tourist.