Word Of Mouse

So we made it back to Gibraltar with a bit of a sigh of relief inspite of having enjoyed our Morrocan travels enormously. It was strangely quiet after Morocco and relaxing not to feel on guard constantly.
The journey back for me had been a bit fuzzy. I had managed to get another stinking cold in Chefchaouen and was having one of those days where the world is slightly detached and everything is going on the other side of a misted glass box. This may also account for whay collectively we were less on guard than we might have been when we made the final part of the Moroccan journey to Ceuta.
We checked in at the Canon hotel, relieved to get almost the last room. We washed our selves and our clothes (now looking definitely worse for wear) in piping hot water and set out in search of a curry. Poor malc was desparate for something with some flavour, or more particularly something, ANYTHING, that wasn't vegetable cous-cous.

Gibraltar was great in many ways: we ate curry, we picked up our onward train tickets from an efficient Poste Restante, we bought books from a selection in English that extended beyond Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy, , we restocked on a few pharmaceutical products, and generally found some breathing space from our journeying. However, after a couple of days that breathig space seemed to be disappearing and we started to find island life claustrophobic. We had explored almost every inch of the place and walked up and down Main Street more times than I care to remember. We left a day earlier than initially planned for Algeciras and the night train to Madrid, but more of that later.

Inspite of hilly winds, cold weather and fog we went on a couple of walking excursion to explore teh island's extremities. Our first took us to the southern point, a bit cheekily named the Europa Point given that Spain extends further south, but there you go. We hoped to complete a circuit but the road along the eastern side of the rock petered out into what to us has become dubbed the Tip of Europe - Gibraltar's huge and poorly managed refuse dump. Incidently, t-shirts were on sale printed with "Gibraltar: the tip of Europe", though they depicted the rock not the minicipal waste site which we felt migt have been more fitting.

Our shortcut out of the tip took us past spooky deserted buildings and a huge carpark full of imported Toyota 4x4s that seemded to have been waiting a while for onward sale. It all looked a bit spooky and I started to feel like some Famous Five character that had stumbled across the activites of dangerous smugglers. Unfortunately we didn't find anywheer cosy to retreat to and eat Macaroons and drink lashings of ginger beer to discuss this isue.

Although we had to resign ourselves to the fact we wouldn't get much of a view, given the weather, we decided a trip to the rock without climbing the rock would not do, particularly as we're not cultivating plans to return. Once we found the way up (we think it is well hidden to encourage us tourists to use the cable car or tour busses) it was a lovely and not too strenuous walk. At the top we encountered large numbers of Barbary apes and spent a happy time watching them swing from trees and groom each other. We were careful not to get too close, having heard a report of a woman being bitten the previous day. To stand up for the apes, I think she was exceptionally daft and they don1t randomly go for people. If you are wondering why I say shewas daft, well she was staying at our guest house and reports have it that she had had not tetanus jab and didn't see why being bitten by a monkey might mean she should get one. She also had no medical insurace adn no E111. She was heading for Morocco alone. I still worry about her!

One other thing that made Gibraltar relaxing was the common use of English. This tended to make things like ordering food in restaurants easy and predictable. This was not always the case, however. "Does this pasta dish contain meat?" Malc asked our British waitress. She looked wide eyed and shrugged her shoulders "I don't know what it is" she said in a kind of final way. Ok then so we decided to order it but with a clear message of no meat, just in case. ' ordered some vegetarian cannaloni number, the idea being we would share. Our meal didn't arrive for sometime on account of the "backdrop" (sic) in the kitchen. Of course, Malc's dish was crammed with bacon. We decided not to make a fuss and swapped plates.

"is everything ok?" said our waitress, between complaining it was timé fpr a fag break and letting out a long sigh (though all of this was done with a big smile). I decided not to be too English, so I said it was fine, but that we did have meat in our dish afterall. "oh", she said "but I did tell them, you saw me write it down." I didn't really think that this was the point, but decided not to persist.

Finally, it was time to pay our bill. It was about a mile long with about four different dinners on it. They knew it was wrong and a waiter came over and went through it with me item by item. the first 8 things were nothing to do with us, so he carefully ticked them. Then we got on to our stuff. After the first item he placed another tick. "But we DID have that" I said. he then changed it to a cross. And so it went on. Ten minutes later another bill came. This time it undercharged us adn did not contain all teh tems we did have as well as containg one or two we did not. I couldn't cope anymore. We added up what it should have been and left the right amount before getting up to go. They could puzzle over it I thought, but the chances are they wouldn't notice or would think we had left a generous tip on account of their excellent service. The final insult came as we left: "thank you , sir" the waiter called out giving me a warm smile. I glared back at him. "oh, sorry". We left incredulous but laughing.