Gibraltar

Crazy to visit this little piece of rock, 5 km by 1km, right at the southern tip of this Iberian peninsula. After a 5 hour bus ride there, we arrived in this little piece of UK culture. From double decker buses, to many students running around in little uniforms (reminded me of Hogwarts), to hearing that oh so familiar language..with that slightly different accent.

We treated ourselves to some good ol´ fish n´ ships right away, and then after looking around for the best deal, within the time limit of 4 hours, we decided to take a taxi tour, which was probably the best deal. We went to the southern tip (Jews gate or Hercules pillars), and luckily we saw the coast of Africa. After many pictures of Africa, and then southern-most point of Spain to the West, we proceeded up to St. Michael´s cave. This is a cave full of staglamites and a few stalamites. Interesting the legends of these were first thought of the passage that brought over the famed Gibraltar apes (macaques I believe and they weren´t monkeys the local driver told us because they don´t have tales...whether this is true, I hope someone will let me know in the future). But the caves were very interesting.

Then we proceeded along the face of the mountain by taxi to where the macaques were. Everyone eventually took a picture with them, and a few unfortunate Canadians, had other macaques jump on them unexpectandly after the other macaque had left. Quite humourous I thought.

We then went to the final destination of the 2 hour tour, the Great Siege tunnels (there was a famous seige during 1779-1783 where the Brits held off the Spanish for control of the rock). So there are tunnels throughout the northern face of the rock, with little areas to shoot cannons out of every 30 meters or so. And this was their success to winning according to some of the history blurbs. Quite interesting though to think back to that day and age, and what it must have been like to survive around that time...

Surprisingly, this is all we accomplished in our 4 hours. That was really enough time I thought because yes it might have been nice to look around and buy a few things, but we all know that I´m not one to buy little trinkets here and there, especially not while I´m traveling. So, we hopped back on the bus for a 5 hour journey home.

I hope to get the pictures up soon but we´ll see if I have the time.
Teaching is still going well. Lessons are going well, at least in my mind, and there has been some positive feed back. This week, I´m going to venture into a few University classes, as I´ve made some contacts with 2 profs, and they´ve asked me to come speak for a bit. Will be a good experience I think, with the older ages and higher level of English..possibly.

Take care all and I hope this finds you well,
Adam