Longest Day of Travel Yet + Apes Doing Bad Things

First thing’s first. Neil was correct about my location in the last “Where is Ross?” game, but he was beaten by several people who actually emailed me the correct answer. At the time, I was in Tarifa, which is the most Southern point in Spain. The “geographical uniqueness” I alluded to was for a few reasons: it’s actually the most Southern point of continental Europe, you can see Africa (Morocco) from where I was standing, and you can see both the Mediterranean and Atlantic. I for one thought that was pretty cool. So congratulations to Michael “Mike” Wier for getting it right first. I just hope he works up the courage before the end of December to actually take a guess in the “comments” section of my blog.

The coolest thing about being in Tarifa was that it was very close to Gibraltar, less than a 1-hour bus ride. I didn’t know much about Gibraltar or its famous Rock, but I was determined to go check it out. On Monday I did just that.

I was thinking of taking you all on a Virtual Tour of the Rock, but really there’s only one important thing to talk about. That would be the famous Barbary macaques--tailless apes to the lay person. Apparently they are the best known of Gibraltar’s attractions and roam freely throughout the rock. There are signs all over the place as well as on the piece of paper they give you when you enter stating not to feed the apes. They also warn that the apes are known to sniff out food in coolers & backpacks so it’s best to leave any food in your car. Well, what if you don’t have a car? I happened to be walking around with a backpack full of food.

I stumbled upon a few of these cuddly creatures early on when climbing up the rock...

...But it was when I reached the “Apes’ Den” that things really got interesting.

I refuse to put into writing what this next ape was doing, just see for yourself:

I’ve never been so thankful for lucky timing as this next moment because I got to see an ape sitting on top of a car...

...But then he climbed into a slightly cracked window while the 2 passengers jumped out. The ape grabbed their soft cooler from the back seat, climbed back out of the car, unzipped the cooler...

...And took 2 or 3 chocolate candy bars out of it. He proceeded to run about 15 feet away and then start devouring the candy--probably even ate some of the wrapper.

Predictably the woman from the car was hysterically laughing while the man was totally pissed off. I was dying of laughter. How lucky was I to be about 5 feet away from this entire situation? Then I thought about all that food in my bag and cautiously walked away.

I’ve seen baboons climbing on cars when I was maybe 10 or 11 and we were at the Safari Land at Six Flags New Jersey, but this is now my favorite monkey/ape/baboon moment. That alone was worth the 10 Euro admission cost for the Rock. In the ongoing debate of who's smarter, man or ape, score 1 for the apes!

One other noteworthy thing from this day. The buses from Gibraltar back to Tarifa are apparently infrequent, and I knew when I was roaming around the Rock that 1 bus left for Tarifa at 4pm and the next one wouldn’t be until 8pm. When I was finishing up my hike/sightseeing around 3:20, I decided I would make a play for the 4pm bus. I estimated what time I had to be back to the customs area (Gibraltar is apparently a British colony and therefore I had to pass through customs between the bus station & the Rock). At 3:30 I literally started sprinting down the mountain, through the main parts of the city, and was going to get to the bus station with about 3 minutes to spare--except I forgot there is a military airfield that crosses the main road where the customs office is. A couple times each hour, the road is closed off for 15 minutes while military jets are either taking off or landing. I was running towards that airstrip as the gate was closing & did not make it. I was stuck watching stupid planes take off for the next 12 minutes, and of course I missed my bus by about 5 minutes. If only I had taken that possibility into account…

Anyway, one reason why I really wanted the 4pm bus was because I knew I had a very early morning today (Tuesday). Today I had to make my way back up to Madrid for my flight to Lisbon, Portugal (which I’m on as I type this).

Here is a brief recap of my day so far:

-5:45am: wake up

-6:05 - 6:20am: walk to bus station in the dark

-6:30 - 7am: bus from Tarifa to Algeciras

-7 - 8:05am: wait inside the bus/train station

-8:05 - 10:15am: bus to some town I’ve never heard of (surprisingly I thought I was supposed to be on a train at this point)

-10:15 - 11:08am: wait inside train station (eat a piece of bread with olive oil as that’s all the cafeteria in the station had to eat)

-11:08 - 2:15pm: train to Madrid

-2:15 - 2:50pm: leave train station to get food (doner kebab) & go to ATM

-2:50 - 4:30pm: sit inside train station

-4:30 - 5pm: take metro (3 of them actually) to Madrid airport

-5 - 5:20pm: check in & security

-5:20 - 6:50pm: sit at gate in airport

-6:50 - 7:25pm: boarding the plane

-7:25 - present: flying to Portugal

-8:30: landed

-8:30 - 8:50: bathroom & baggage claim

-8:50 - 9:15: bus

-9:15 - 9:30: walk to hostel

Nearly 16 hours of travel. So yeah, safe to say this is the least exciting/productive day of my trip so far. I guess the Portuguese operate under a similar time frame as the Spaniards so that means there’s still plenty of night left for me to do something worthwhile. We’ll see (Now editing this on Wednesday, no I did not do anything exciting yesterday). I only wish a boat was necessary for part of those travels so I could have really explored all possible means of transportation.

(Yes, I know I didn’t say a word about the week between Barcelona & Tarifa, when I was in Madrid & Malaga. But hey, I gotta leave some stuff for the book so you guys will buy it, right??)

Finally, I just want to call out Lisbon for being a bit early in their holiday decorations. Too soon right?