Fog and apes
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Wednesday 9th
& Thursday 10th July 2008 Moved
yesterday to Queensway Quay Marina which is soooo much nicer and far more
secure (Marina Bay had no security at all, allowing any Tom, Dick or Harry to mooch
along the pontoons), it even puts up a boom across the entrance to the marina
at night. Perhaps this is also to deter non-payers escaping in the early
hours? But like the majority of Gib, it is also a building site. Water is
metered here as it is de-salinated for the Rock, so Serafina is likely to stay
dusty until we move on now. She is now sporting a well-laundered, polished
and re-inflated set of fenders which took hours! We have also
decided that we are not going to view the fleshpots at Puerto Banus. The
pilot book implied it was a fairly cheap stop (which did seem unlikely); it would
probably cost £200 for a night’s berth! We have been working out the
next few stops, particularly in the light of height of the season prices and
reckon we can get to Palma for the Mastervolt engineer in 8/9 days, and possibly
to Sicily within a fortnight, winds allowing. We have also
decided that Gib is not as bad as we first reported: we took the bus (very
small mini-bus) up to the World War 2 tunnels. Normal buses/coaches cannot
get up the Rock and, as a lady on the bus pointed out, if you can drive in Gib
you can drive anywhere! The roads are really narrow, parking is at a premium
so cars are abandoned anywhere and everywhere, masses of suicidal scooters;
but there is a lot of evidence of some less than successful drivers around.
The narrow streets up the Rock are often very picturesque and the views are
unbelievable, particularly today when there has been fog covering the lower
levels and the sea, with the occasional mast or crane sticking up out of the
fog. In fact we wondered whether Cathy and Richard’s plane would be
able to land (it did). The fog was announced very early by incessant fog
horns from the harbour at 3 am onwards!
Localised
fog We didn’t
do the whole tourist experience; it either involved a lot of hot walking or a
very expensive taxi trip (£65), but went for our own personal guided tour (nobody
else turned up) into the WWII tunnels which were extraordinary and beautifully
cool. Drilled out by 5000 troops between July 1940 and November 1943, there
are some 33 miles of tunnels which housed all the troops, 3 hospitals (treating
casualties from N Africa), fuel water and RAF personnel in a small city
underground (or rather halfway up the Rock). The men worked 3, eight hour shift
systems, hot bedding with 2 others and for 6 days out of 7 never came into
daylight! Incredibly the Germans didn’t find out about it. And we saw
a Barbary ape at the entrance accepting peanuts from the taxi drivers, standard
routine by all accounts.
Barbary
ape Rob has
treated himself to a smart new (duty free) camera to increase the likelihood of
wildlife photos, probably just as the sightings become fewer as we leave the
Atlantic, but spurred on by the whale spotting and me, once he gets to work out
how to use it!. He also invested
in a personal mosi repeller. Much to his great disgust, after 28 years of
relying on his own decoy (me), he has become delectable to mosquitoes. And I
am happy to report that I haven’t been bitten yet. Is this the best
side effect yet of HRT?! |
