adventures in gibraltar

Imagine being in Spain for two months, constantly being surrounded by the Spanish language and culture and then walking 5ft across a border and all of a sudden you are in a mini-United Kingdom-esque place. This is the story of Gibraltar. We took a four-hour bus ride across the coast of Spain to get to this bizarre place that is a British territory with a population of 30,000. It is essentially a huge rock full of monkeys that the British brought there many years ago. There is a large port and beautiful views from the top of the rock. You can even see Africa from Gibraltar from the right spot. We had the day to explore this strange place so we went up to the top of “the” rock in a tram and explored the foggy place and played with the monkeys. The monkeys were much more interesting than I was expecting. It was incredible to see what they are like from so close. The babies were my favorite -- the way they interacted with their mothers and fellow monkeys. I thought a lot about my “Morality and Culture” seminar that I took this spring in which we learned a lot about chimpanzees and how they interact, etc. The monkeys were so accustomed to people it was scary. However, if you feed them you get fined a huge amount. Anyway we spent a few hours on the rock and then made our way down (after taking many, many pictures, almost getting attacked by a mean monkey, enjoying the views…) to the main town. We ate lunch in a park and then went to “punta de europa” where you can see Africa from a lighthouse. It was really beautiful. It was a very weird but great day in Great Britain. I mean, Gibraltar.