Gibraltar, a little bit of Spain, and Marocco!

We had a beautiful sailing from the coastline of Spain until we arrived in Gibraltar. Only the last couple of nm we had to start the engine. A lot of dolphin was following us and we also saw a moonfish, for the second time. Many big tankers is anchoring east of Gibraltar so we had to go on the inside of them. We could see the “rock” from a long distance.

On the east side of the rock there is a couple of hotels and some nice beaches. It is a huge different in the water temperatur from the Mediterranean to the other side of the rock. It is cold on the west side.

This hotel looks really nice, but there is no sun in the afternoon/evening.

There is a tunnel system inside the mountain and someone has built cabins there. Some looks new, but there was also some old ones.

We had to use our other big camera with a better linse to zoom into these buildings.

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And here is on the west side of the rock.

And the whole rock. I had a plan to do a hike up there one day!

We went to the Spanish side of the border, La Linea, and anchored outside the marina there. It was a really protected bay. But compare to how quiet it was on the east side of the rock, here it was really windy! That suprised us.

The airport is between Gibraltar and La Linea (on Gibraltar side) and here a plane is ready to take off!

The marina is in walking distance to Gibraltar, so we took the dinghy into the marina, paid 6 eur to do that. Then we walked to Gibralter. You have to go through the passportcontrol and cross the runway. You can of course drive between these two countries but the road is going around and through a tunnel.

If you are going to UK (yes, Gibraltar is UK) you have to taste fish n` chips. It was perfect! We ordered only one portion and that was enough to share!

It was a really special colour on this building. It is blue, and together with the sky it was amazing.

Gibraltar was founded as a permanent watchtower by the Almohads in 1160. Gibraltar has a long history, so if you like to know more about this country, check it out on different web sites.

Here is a short video from Gibraltar:

The next day we planned this hike up to the rock. We moved into this marina because of the weather forcast.

First we had to walk to the center of Gibralter. This day we took our bikes over, we saved a lot of time to do that. And in a UK country you can find this telephone boxes, I am not sure if it is still in use.

It is easy to find the trail, and the beginning is a lot of stairs… many stairs…

On the way you can see many paintings on the buildings.

The first long stair is done! You can also take the bus up here…

The story of Gibraltar is very special and you can see canons and batteries over the whole rock.

And as soon you are up in the hill you get an amazing view down to Gibraltar, the airport and over to La Linea.

Before you enter the Gibraltar nature reserve you have to pay 19 EUR to get in. But that include everything you can explore in the reserve.

The first thing you will see after the entrance is the Moorish Castle.

Here you can see people walking over the runway from Spain to Gibraltar.

I didn`t walk inside the castle. Here you can see Astor on the roof.

The next thing is the World War II tunnels.

With the entry of Italy into the War, and a powerful Germany dominating Europe, the strategic importance of Gibraltar grew. The problem of storage was urgent and vital; space became even more valuable; stores, food, and equipment had to be built up and protected, and siege accommodation was required for the troops. A tunnel system would meet these needs, and would give full protection from the then known types of air attack, as well as from sea and land bombardment.

At the start of the war, the civilian population was evacuated and the garrison was greatly increased in size. Numerous new tunnels were excavated to create accommodation for the expanded garrison and to store huge quantities of food, equipment and ammunition. The tunnelling was carried out by four specialised tunnelling companies from the Royal Engineers and the Canadian Army.

We had to use helmets walking through the tunnels.

The tunnels accommodated what amounted to an underground city. The entire 16,000-strong garrison could be housed there along with enough food to last them for 16 months. Within the tunnels there were also an underground telephone exchange, a power generating station, a water distillation plant, a hospital, a bakery, ammunition magazines and a vehicle maintenance workshop. The total length of the entire tunnel network inside the Rock is approximately 34 miles, 55 kilometres.

Some places it was a bit scary, you never knew who you met..

Through the tunnel you came out at a balcony where you can see over the airport and to La Linea. In front there is a gravyard.

Jock`s balcony!

Me on the balcony.

Our next stop was City Under Siege Exhibition. It is actually difficult to see this from the road, because there are no signs about it. But it was amazing.

It was much information about the history here.

And when you enter a room it was music and storytelling to listening to.

It was a dramatic history to listen to.

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I believe it was a hard life to live here many years ago.

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One of the batteries.

As higher we climbed the rock as more amazing view we got.

And it was time to met the monkeys. Gibraltar is the only country in Europe with wild monkeys. These 230 Barbary macaques is known scientifically as Macaca sylvanus and is listed as endangered by the IUCN Red list and is declining.

Some of them looks a little bit scary, but just stay away from them and they will not hurt you.

On the west side we could see down to the hotel we saw when we arrived with the sailboat from the east.

It was sometimes hard to see that they had babies.

On the top of the rock it is an amazing view. This is the view to the northern part.

Have you seen such a cute little thing??

This is at the viewpoint on the middle of the rock and the view is to the southern part.

It was a lot of traffic here, the cars was waiting in a line while the tourists checked out the view and the monkeys.

The monkeys has a great view up there!

You can`t be in a hurry here. Last time we were here we also had a car like this, but it was out of the season so it was not so crowded.

Our next stop was Saint Michaels cave. Can you see the angel?

Astor tried to say that he hasn`t been here before, then it is a good thing to have another blog post where I have writing about this 🙂 You can reed more about this in my other blog:

https://lailasturblogg.blogspot.com/2016/05/pa-tur-cadiz-gibraltar.html

They played music and had lightshow, so we had to sit down for a while and enjoy!

Gibraltar has a huge harbour and many boats are anchoring around.

Astor saw this beautiful butterfly.

On one of the trails there is a bridge you can walk over. You can also walk around, on the inner side, if you don`t like the height… I wanted to try it, even I am so afraid of heights. The bridge was hanging so when people walking on it it was a bit scary, so I wanted to wait until we were alone.

It was always someone on the bridge so I had to go… Uh… it was scary. I stared straight ahead. I was really shaken… But it went well, I survived!

And Astor; “what was the problem??”

It is hanging there, with a stunning view of Gibraltar.

Another monkey on the way back to town. She is taking good care of the small one.

We walked further down, and took a shortcut down to the city center.

Devil`s gap battery

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This was an amazing hike and when we came back to the city center we wanted an icecream. For me it was this amazing milkshake. OMG!!

Here is a video from this hike:

In the evening we walked through the old town of La Linea to find a place to have dinner. It is many ways to decorate the streets!

This is more of what we need in our hometown, umbrellas!

When we came back to the marina we had a beautiful sunset from the beach.

Me in my new dress my mother knitted for me!

When you are in La Linea you are really close to Africa and because we had to wait for better weather we decided to take a boattrip to Tangier, Morocco. The boat is leaving from Tarifa so we had to take a bus there, first to Algeciras and then further to Tarifa. That was the easy part…. When we arrived in Tarifa it was so crowded to go onboard. And because Morocco is a different country you have to get a stamp in your passport on the boat. That line took all the trip over!!

Astor went outside when the boat left Tarifa and took some photos of the harbour.

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Finally Africa! We had ordered a guided trip because we thought it would be easier to see much of the place when we only had some hours.

It was many buses together, one for englishspeaking people, one for spanishspeaking people and one for frenchspeaking people. (the language in Morocco is french)

It was suprisingly nice and clean everywhere.

The first stop was the elimentary one, to ride on the camels. I don`t like this, it is just a “tourist thing”.

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In Morocco you will see many cats and also kittens.

Next stop was a place with many tombs. Not that interesting really…

Included in the price was a 3 courses lunch. OMG, so much food, and it was sooo good!! (worth the whole trip)

And then we walked around in the streets through Medina (old town). We walked in the line so it was not easy to stop up for shopping.

Our guide told us everything we had to know about Tangier.

Nice decorated walls.

We visited a shop for carpets, homemade of course, but that is too booring for me. I am not going to buy anything from a place like this. Even if we need a carpet for the boat….

You could easily see who is going in a group.. (red sticker)

It was nice to make this trip to Tangier, but there is one thing I would have done different; I would have rented a car from La Linea to Tarifa instead of taking the bus. From Tarifa to Algeciras it was a bus from the ferrycompany, and that bus didn`t match with the bus to La Linea. It was two hours waiting in Algeciras, so we had an evening meal there. Totally it was worth the trip, I am really glad we did it.

Here is a video from Tangier:

The next day it was time to leave La Linea and Gibraltar. We went to Gibraltar to fill up our fueltanks, because Gibraltar is a taxfree zone and have a really good price for fuel. We paid 0,9 £ pr litre. And we needed all of that because we expected a lot of wind against us along the Portugees coast. We had a plan to sail a bit the first day, but the stream was against us, and it is really strong around this peninsula so we had to anchor on the southern side of Algeciras, on the other side of the bay of Gibraltar.

The next anchorage was in the river of Sancti Petri, right before Cadiz. It was so quiet to anchor there. The next morning it was thick fog and we had to wait for a bit before leaving the river.

The last anchorage in Spain was the river of Guadiana, which actually is the border between Spain and Portugal. We anchored on the Spanish side. This was also a nice place to anchor, but it is hard to get ashore, so we left the river early in the morning.

Here is where we anchored between Gibraltar and the border between Spain and Portugal. We had to stay close to shore because of the orcas. The “rule” is less than 20 meter. But of course you need to check all the time, and there is also many fishnets around so it is not the easiest sailing area.

Next post is from a new country for us, Portugal!