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.