Diario
de España!
- Parte Tres
ESPAÑA
Albums "Gib" or
Tarifa
Saturday
– June 16th - We start our tour of the Costa Del Sol by traveling
to Gibraltar
Or
as our sister-in-law says, “Gibalta”.
Why that is so difficult for someone from Boston to pronounce correctly
I’ll never know – at first I was not even sure what she was talking about. The point of entry into Gib (as Gibraltar is known by the locals) is
from the town of La Linea - a new
town for us, - a new opportunity to go in circles, trying to figure out where we
were supposed to go. After a
creative turn, the wrong way down a one-way street, we discovered the local
McDonald’s and then we discovered beer at McDonald’s
- what a wonderful idea, and it costs no more than a “Coqua Cola” –
excellent! On the other hand, Ms.
Trekker was devastated to have to finally accept that Pepsi is a rare find in
southern Spain. Gib and La
Linea form a peninsula and are separated at the beginning of the peninsula by an
active runway which you must cross in order to enter or leave Gib. We were told they stop the flow of tourists when an airplane
needs to depart or land - the lumbering giants seem to have the right-of-way.
Of
course the visit with our cousins, the Brits, requires a border crossing –
they just waved us through – in fact we had to ask to have our passports
stamped on the way out. We opted
for a “personal” guided tour supposedly costing 7000 pesetas each, but in
the end we would pay twice the amount because our tour had taken us through the
“Upper Nature Preserve”. Each
of us silently suspects that perhaps our cousins, the Brits, have just reached
into our pockets for private expropriations over the Boston Tea Party or
whatever.
While the history and the tunnels were spell-binding, the highlight of the trip were the ice-cream stealing monkeys – it is not the least bit surprising that they are agile, clever thieves. As I alighted from the tour van with my hardly touched ice cream, I was immediately accosted by a cute little beggar who jumped up and grabbed the arm which held the bounty. I shook him loose and took a step back toward the shelter of the van, being totally unaware that one of the little beggar’s clan had mounted it’s roof. This new thief carefully measured the distance as I unwittingly closed the gap for him – there were shrieks of joy from all around (except me) when he leaped on my shoulder and reached for my refreshment. When I wouldn’t give up my Hägen Das, the little miscreant simply slid the mess up and off of the stick. He then proceeded to redecorate my shirt with his chocolate covered hand. In the meantime, the scoundrel on the ground continued to pursue the now mostly denuded stick, which I submissively surrendered.
Since Ms. Trekker carried no food, the driver worked to entice a monkey onto her shoulder and in one of life’s real shames, we managed to collect only a few bad photos. Next it was our sister-in-law's turn, against her protestations the driver maneuvered a small primate up onto her shoulder with the promise of food, which of course instigated a larger rogue to jump on top of the small rascal. Our companion's head was in the midst of a primate dispute - which I found both fitting and rather amusing.
For some reason, I was surprised by the softness of the hands and bodies of our distant cousins. Wild things are supposed to rough and tough, these small creatures definitely were not. We all had managed to survive our close encounter with the wild side of the family tree without being bitten.
Our next stop was Tarifa, the southern most point in Spain, providing you don’t count Spain’s African or island possessions. Tarifa is a quaint little fishing village and a port for ferries to Africa. We stopped to talk to one of the tour operators who claimed that the port was closed to Americans and other non-Europeans. European nationalities can utilize the ferries from Tarifa, but the rest of us are supposedly excluded and must travel to another port where the costs are higher and the transit time is longer.
Tarifa’s other claim to fame is that of being the Wind-Surfing capital of Europe. The constant winds of the region also provide “fuel” for Spain’s only windmill electric generation farm. As we drove along the coast I was reminded of the windmill farm outside of Palm Springs, an old world adaptation of a new world technology - the wind driven electric generators are on a hill above an old bridge which may date back to the days of the Romans.
On the return trip to our resort, we briefly visited the resort city of Marbella – the Mediterranean destination for Europe’s rich and famous. After walking along the Paseo Marítimo for a while, we elected to eat supper at one of the beach cafes – my food was terrible, but the atmosphere soothed any disappointment. We were concluding our first day of touring by eating on the beach in the heart of the Mediterranean’s Costa del Sol - surrounded by Europe's elite.