Day 38 and 39

I want a monkey. 

You know, like Ross in Friends. I don't even care that he's eventually going to get really aggressive and will throw things at me. I just want to look at him be all cute, and carry him around on my shoulder. 

Gibralter may have made me want a monkey, but you already know that. 

Gibralter was not only covered in monkeys but it is also a really interesting place with a really interesting history. 

There is absolutely nothing there. They have no natural resources and no agriculture. They do have olives but only the monkeys eat them. They have to import all of their food. They don't have any fresh water so they have to turn salt water into fresh water so that they will have something to drink. 

They have absolutely no use. Except to be a fortress. 

The rock takes up the majority of the country. The entire country is 2.6 square miles. The rock is two miles by three mile, and is about a mile high. So, its mostly just a rock. Its made of Jurassic limestone with a little bit of sandstone underneath. The young earth is underneath the old earth which is not normal. 

There are over 173 recognized caves in the rock because limestone is easily eroded by rainwater. 

Not only that but during World War II they spent three years digging tunnels throughout the rock. Hitler threatened to attack and when he didn't and decided to attack the east instead they decided to build the tunnels in case he ever came back. They enlisted the help of the canadians because their drills were better. People lived and work in the rock from 1940-1943. They worked in 8 hour shifts. 8 hours keeping watch, 8 hours drilling, 8 hours rest. 6 days inside with one day off to go outside. 300 women were there too, working as nurses. Although they couldn't do much because of the abundance of men. 

Hitler never came back but there are now 34 miles of tunnels that form a small city. The longest tunnel is three miles. Some of the tunnels can fit two 10 ton trucks side by side. The tunnels are naturally ventilated. Basically the entire population could go and live inside the rock. There are holes punched in the rock so that they can see in any direction. Basically, if someone is coming to get them, they will will be seen and they will be taken out. Land, sea, or air, they are done for. 

If they do come by land there is only one way to come and they have to cross an air field. 

That's right. To get into Gibralter, we had to walk across a live run way. It was like crossing train tracks. When we got there the light was red and the arm was down and all the pedestrians and cars were waiting. Then, suddenly, a plane landed right in front of us. It taxied, turned around and once it was clear the arm went up and the cars started going and we walked right across where the plane just was. 

There are between 4 and 8 flights a day which means that traffic stops between 8 and 16 times for all the take offs and landings. It is the fifth most dangerous airport in the world because it is bordered by water on both ends. 

The good news is that they have full employment and ten thousand people commute from Spain and Morocco every day. They have a really low crime rate, mostly because everyone knows everyone. There are sixteen recognized religions. They all live in peace but it is a political mess between them and Spain, which mostly just annoys everyone. 

We had an awesome tour guide named Karen that told us all of this. She was so peppy and lively and when we were all huffing and puffing climbing up the rock she was walking at full speed and speaking in the loudest voice and was fine. 

And she was the one that brought us to the monkeys. There are over 300 hundred of them that live on the rock. They keep track of all of them but they just had babies and they aren't weaned yet so they haven't conducted a census for this year yet. They are tail-less Barbary Macaques and they are awesome. They literally just roam around. 

According to Karen they are a little behind on health and safety standards and just go with the 'if it looks dangerous, it probably is, and don't do it' philosophy. 

I could have touched the monkey. But I didn't. They were everywhere and they were just chilling. They only get aggressive when you have food. Which we learned real quick. 

We watched this guy get ninja attacked from behind. Apparently he had an apple in his jacket pocket and he had his jacket balled up in front of him. But the monkey must have heard it or something because it jumped on him, was shaken off, and jumped again. The guy forfeited his jacket, the monkey went through it, found the apple, abandoned the jacket and went up into a tree to eat the apple. 

Yeah, we disposed of all of our food after that.  

We enjoyed taking selfies with the monkeys and watching them groom each other. They liked to sit on top of the taxis. The taxi drivers would feed them peanuts and have them sit on peoples hands. You aren't supposed to feed them, if you are caught the fine is 4000 pounds. 

We were sad when we left the monkeys. It was like leaving our new best friends. 

We had free time in the afternoon to explore. We got food at a restaurant and I had a baked potato covered in cheese and baked beans. Yay for being back in the land of the brits. 

We got back to the ship around 5:30 and I went to Molly's room to find out how her day of whale watching went. It went awesome, she saw pilot whales. Which are actually in the dolphin family but she doesn't believe me. 

We were both exhausted and I had to be back on the ship by midnight because I had a field lab for class the next day and that is the rules. 

So, we decided to just go out to eat something. Spain is weird though, their restaurants don't open until 9pm for dinner. At least, that is what we were told. 

We ventured out at 8:30 with the intention of finding Tapas. Tapas are basically just small servings. So the intention is to order a bunch of them and then share. 

Walking around, it didn't seem like all that many places were open. Or, if they were open, there weren't all that many people in them. 

We finally found a place that was advertising Tapas and where a bunch of SAS kids were sitting and eating. Seemed ok. 

The guy who waited on us was really nice, he didn't speak much English but he understood enough to get us an English menu and confirm that they took credit cards. We ordered Sangria and 5 different Tapas. We got a ham plate, a pot roast plate, mussels, sheep cheese plate and sausages seasoned with paprika and garlic. Yummy. 

We got our Sangria fine and sat and chatted for a while. It was damp out because it had been drizzling rain but it was fairly warm. 

We then were given two plates of food. One of them was mussels. They were huge, de-shelled mussels in some sort of sauce that Molly said tasted like extra salty salami. And they were cold. 

The other plate we got was basically a giant plate of different meats and a few slices of cheese all on top of potato chips.

Did we order that? 

There was something that tasted like pepperoni, something that tasted like smoked ham and something else that tasted like something I recognized but couldn't name. They all had a familiar flavor and yet also tasted different. The cheese was normal, and definitely wasn't sheep cheese. 

We thought maybe the food was going to come out in waves and we would get the rest soon. Molly thought that maybe they were being strategic and waiting until we finished our Sangria so that we would order more in order to finish our meal. But that never happened. 

What did happen was that the guy started to pack up the restaurant. 

It didn't seem like we were going to get the rest of our food. We decided to just accept our fate and ask for the bill. 

They charged us for all five. 

Excuse me, no. 

Molly attempted to tell him that we only got two plates of food and he basically told her that they were all on that one plate. 

If you say so. We had been there forever by that point so we paid the 21.50 euros and went into the froyo place next door that was advertising free wifi. 

In hindsight, we were definitely jipped. There was definitely no sausage, and no sheep cheese, and I am pretty sure none of the meat was pot roast. The other weird thing is that I saw two other tables receive the same plate of meat. And there is no chance we all ordered the exact same things, the menu was pretty varied. 

We definitely did not get any of our food. It was a weird situation. 

That, and he was packing up at 10:30 and we had been told that most places are open for dinner until at least midnight. Lies. 

We think that it is mostly because it was Monday. Nothing exciting was happening because it was Monday. The fish market in the morning didn't have any fish, barely anything was open, and there wasn't any night life. 

It was just a really strange experience. 

While we were sitting at dinner we kept seeing SAS kids everywhere. They were basically the only people eating at the restaurant with us, they were standing in the square, they kept walking by. It made me think about what it must be like for the locals here. I know that they get tourists all the time  but this is a sudden influx of at least 500 people. I wonder what they think? Do they wonder what is going on? Are they used to cruise ships? We know that they weren't in Ireland, we were docked in a working port. They rarely saw passenger cruise ships there and so all the locals knew that we were "The ship kids." We even made the front page of the Irish Times the day before we came in. The port we were dock in at Cadiz was a cruise ship port, so maybe they are more accustomed to large groups of tourists. 

Just random thoughts.  

I was totally ok with having to be back to the ship by midnight. I was exhausted and we had to meet at 7:30 the next morning for our field lab. 

My field lab was for Marine Biology. We went whale watching! 

We drove about an hour and a half to Tarifa. There, we met up with Pauline Gauffier who works with Circe. Circe stands for conservation, information, and research on cetaceans. They focus on the cetaceans that live in the Gibralter strait. 

We sat through a talk by her where she told us all about their research. There are only four resident species, they are: the striped dolphin, the common dolphin, the bottlenose dolphin, and the pilot whale. They also see Orcas and sperm whales, who are semi-residents. The Fin whale has also been seen, but only for migration. 

The reason that they see these animals is because the Gibralter strait is very deep. It is only 14 km across but is almost 1000 meters deep in places. This is because it is right between the two plates of Africa and Europe. Most of these animals prefer deep water and aren't usually seen so close to land. 

They track the animals in order to estimate population, growth rate, and figure out their life history. There was an outbreak of the morbillivirus in 2006 and since then the abundance of cetaceans has decreased steadily. They were hoping that the population would be able to bounce back but that isn't the case. They don't know what is causing the deaths. 

They track the animals is many ways including photo ID, biopsy sampling, and satellite tagging. 

Through their research, Circe has changed the category of pilot whales and orca from data deficient to vulnerable. They have also been able to put in place navigational recommendations for the strait. 

The coolest part of where we were was that we were only 9 miles away from Africa. I could see the mountains of Morocco both from Gibralter and from Tarifa. It was so surreal. We were whale watching in a boat in the middle of the Gibralter strait with Europe on one side and Africa on the other. And we are going to Morocco tomorrow. We were looking at the place we are going to be. And its a different continent. 

Life is awesome. 

We did see some cetaceans. We saw striped dolphins and pilot whales. For class we had to record the time we saw them, the number of them that we thought there were, what we thought they were doing, and the location of them in relation to the boat. 

We mostly just saw the dolphins from a distance but the pilot whales came right up to the boat and hung around for a while. There was a lot of them, it was pretty awesome. 

It was exciting being on the tiny boat because it was very, very rocky. I have a new respect for the rocking on the ship. It is different though, I don't mind intense rocking because my body is aware of what is going on. I kept sliding back and forth on the bench I was sitting on. On the ship, its the tiny motions that give me headaches and are not that much fun. Well, the big rocking sucks too. It kind of just depends. 

On one of the nights just before Portugal apparently it was so rocky that things were flying across rooms and people were unable to sleep. I was knocked out through the whole thing because of my cold and I brought drawer liners to put on our bedside tables so none of our stuff went anywhere. People did not have very much fun, I am glad I missed it. 

We were out on the boat for about two hours. We then went to 2000 year old Roman ruins. They had a tuna fishery there and we learned about how they would take the tuna, layer it with salt and then mix it with fish guts and let it ferment in order to make a kind of sauce. This sauce was a sort of delicacy to the Romans. There were only a few places that made it, including Pompeii, and it was coveted by everyone. 

The ruins were interesting, although I am really not a museum person so the free wifi they had there was way more exciting. We were actually able to walk around the ruins themselves, including the amphitheater that is the largest thing still standing. 

We got back to the ship at 5:15. Ship time was at 6 so I went to my room, which looked out over the gangway, and watched people stand in line and run to make ship time. There were a lot of people that were "late" and so will have dock time when we get to Casablanca. 

I found Molly after dinner and we holed up in the piano lounge again, her reading and me blogging. A group of girls came and started watching Tangled, so we joined them, and then after went back to our respective activities. We sat there for a very long time. 

So long that suddenly it was one in the morning and we were wide awake and didn't know why. We ate cups of noodles and watched The Big Bang Theory until 3:30. 

The next day is a non-day again. The knowledge that we had absolutely nothing to do and could sleep as late as we wanted made staying up late really easy. There are actually a few things going on. We are going to have a diplomatic briefing on Morocco, a talk on the religion there, the interport student from Morocco is also holding a talk. Then is cultural pre-port, logistical pre-port, and The World According to Boyer: Morocco addition. All in one day. 

At least it doesn't start until 13:30 so sleeping in will be magical. 

I do wish that we had a few more days in Spain. We aren't leaving until tomorrow evening, why we couldn’t spend more time in country is confusing to me. Something to do with the number of sea days verses the number of class days? 

We are going to be sitting in port and looking at Spain for almost 24 hours before we leave. So frustrating. At least there will be things to do.