7th March 2017. Gibraltar, UK.

We walked across the border into Gibraltar today.

We caught the No. 5 bus once we’d crossed the border.  The Scottish bus driver couldn’t have been more helpful if he’d tried, he spent a good deal of time telling us where to go for the cable car and which bus to catch to the lighthouse, I don’t suppose the passengers would be quite so patient on a bus at home.  Our first port of call was to see the Barbary Apes so we caught the cable car up the mountain.

They were very entertaining, we watched one try but fail to steal a lady’s can of coke (years ago when my parents lived in Brazil we all went to a hotel situated in the rainforest where a small monkey rushed up and stole Austyn’s can of coke out of his hand, before we could stop him he raced after the monkey and snatched it back, the monkey sat and chattered at him excitedly, it sounded like he was swearing!) as we went into the cafe there was a notice on the door saying ‘Please keep the door closed’  unfortunately the Barbary Apes can’t read and we watched one push the door open and then sit holding the door open while he checked out what was going on inside, he didn’t move until someone needed to leave the cafe (he returned again later to sit in the open doorway).  As we got off the cable car the steward told us to put our backpacks on our front, we saw why when a lady walked past an ape and he jumped on her back and started to unzip her backpack until someone chased him off!  So naughty!

We had a mediocre meal in the town however as we left the cafe we caught sight of an electrical shop and I suggested we pop in to see whether they had any of the special fuses we use in the van.  It turns out the lady had jars full of the types of fuses we needed, she said she hadn’t sold any for years and didn’t know how much to charge us, she asked Darren how much he usually paid and he said it varied from free in Norway to a few pence elsewhere.  We ended up buying 6 for £1 so we’ve now got a stock for the next time my laptop blows the fuse.

We caught the bus to the lighthouse, this bus driver was Welsh and again he was very friendly.  We arrived at the lighthouse and sat there enjoying the view across to Morocco for ages before we decided we needed to get off the island before rush hour began.

We were a bit perplexed to watch a No. 2 bus drive past without coming down to the lighthouse.  We decided to stand at the stop we’d got off at (which was a stop too early) and 10 minutes later the same Welsh bus driver drove up to the bus stop.  He then drove over to the Lighthouse bus stop, picked up a load of passengers, drove round the roundabout back to the stop he’d just picked us up at and back to the Lighthouse bus stop again, we were rather surprised as was the man whose car was parked at the side of the road, he gave the bus driver a real old fashioned look as we passed.  I was very impressed with the bus drivers skills as we entered the town, he had to squeeze that bus through gaps that were barely large enough for the bus to get through.  A nice thing I noticed is that everyone getting off the bus thanks the bus driver.

We wandered through border control and back to our van where we sat outside in the sun looking at the boats.