Word Of Mouse

It was an immensely disconcerting experience to cross the border at Gibraltar, and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by familiar things once more: Marks and Spencers, red post boxes, British traffic lights, policemen with black helmets... and traffic. A lot of traffic, all whirling round like wasps in a bottle.

We found a hotel fairly easily and with difficulty we squeezed Bramble into their narrow storeroom before going out to do some serious organization for the next phase of our trip. A priority item was getting Bramble shipped home along with about half our stuff. The tourist office came up trumps, photocopying the relevant pages out of the Yellow Pages for us (what a contrast to the bored staff in Albufeira's tourist office, who had obviously taken diploma-level qualifications in Advanced Unhelpfulness). We did some phoning, arranged an appointment for the following day along with the possibility of doing some diving the day after, and celebrated our arrival with a good old fashioned curry.

The next day: Packing Bramble up was less traumatic than expected, but still took up the whole morning and part of the afternoon and left us over two hundred pounds lighter in the wallet. We spent the rest of the day shopping for bits and pieces. A key discovery was that for less than ten pounds we could buy reasonable quality small backpacks: at that price it was an easy decision to send our larger pair of Ortlieb panniers home with the bike (our pannier converters would have transformed these into functional, but actually fiendishly uncomfortable backpacks, and having proper packs will make the next couple of months much easier).

The day after we had planned to go up the Rock on a cable car in the morning, and go diving in the afternoon. We arrived at the cable car station with around ten minutes to go before it opened, but decided that a single morning would not do it justice and to defer it until we return to Gibraltar after our time in Morocco. We filled the morning very pleasantly going around a small conservation project housing animals rescued from illegal smuggling into Europe: monkeys, parrots, iguanas, small birds and the like.

Returning to town, we suddenly spotted a monkey beside the road. He turned out to be part of a large troupe of monkeys which one by one descended from a fig tree, crossed the road and shinned up the drainpipe of a nearby apartment block onto the roof with gravity defying ease. A woman in the apartment block had a shock when a monkey shot past her open window on the way up. Windows slammed down across the building. Presumably monkey invasion is part and parcel of life on Gibraltar...

In the afternoon we went round for our appointment with Steve, the loquacious and intensely mustachioed owner of the dive shop. We explained what we wanted. He took us (eventually) for a very good dive (which to Ali's relief was a shore dive involving no boats whatsoever). A straightforward swim over sand at 6 metres, occupied by "stargazers" (largish fish that bury themselves in the sandy bottom with only their two eyes above the sand to betray their presence) led to a wreck sitting in about 15 metres of water. Steve had decided to accompany us on the dive, and I was very happy to let him look after Ali while I tagged along behind. He took us on a short swim through a hole in the wreck: it is always a slightly eerie experience but very memorable. Over to Ali...

Although I was a little nervous in anticipation, i really thoroughly enjoyed this dive - quite a relief to me and Malc who has been looking forward to our diving together for some time. we saw more stuff in the first five minutes than in all four of my previous dives and what gorgeous things too. I am going to have to learn a bit more about what is what, but for now there are lots of pretty colours and interesting shapes.
back to Malc...

The following day was the start of our Morroccan adventure. Leaving my much loved but ultimately leaky and worn out tent behind in the hotel for disposal, we caught the bus to Algeciras, made the ferry after a last minute scramble to get some Moroccan currency, and were able to relax in the sunshine as the ferry left the Algeciras terminal. Ali quickly fell asleep, knocked out by her seasickness pills. The waves, well they must have been, ooooh, whole centimetres in height. The Spanish coast gradually receded into the haze, and ahead I could make out the misty shapes of mosques and minarets....