Day 31

We arrived at Gibraltar after a long drive and wait to get over the border, we were expecting good bargains, cheap things etc- god knows why, just what folk said it was like tax free etc. An hour & half driving around desperately looking for a parking space that didn’t say there was a 1.2 ton limit to park or be towed away, let alone a space long enough to park in. Driving through the narrowest of roads we tackled bumper to bumper traffic. We stopped at a Police Station and they said “oh we don’t always enforce the rules so you’ll just have to take a risk”- no thanks! A large group of traffic wardens in one car park we asked said “yes it’s ok to park on this car park as they don’t really enforce the weight limits”, we found a spot parked up and just as we were getting out Lee turns round to see one of the wardens writing a ticket! What! Out he hops, and she says no you can park on this car park just not now but after 3pm because they were cleaning it today (did the other traffic warden really forget to tell us that? Or were they all on commission as they were writing tickets out for the entire car park!), by this time we’d had enough, so off we headed out back through the manic town and across the border into Spain. Half mile up the road, we found a stop to park, paid 5euro and WALKED through customs to Gibraltar, hopped on a bus into town. We then continued to walk for ¾ hour up the roads to the cable cars to see the wild monkeys at the top of the rock. Hooray! Hang on look at the queue after 10mins a guy comes out saying it is an hour or more wait to get in, plus hour walk at the top to the caves, then hour or more wait to get back down! We had 3 hours till the ticket on the van a good hour or so away in Spain ran out! It wasn’t meant to be, we admired the rock from the base, looked at pictures of the monkeys and bought a few postcards, and headed to the van after a quick shop in Morrison’s. We arrived in Marbella on the evening, just in time to collapse into bed.

Kim