Been out of touch - now out of fuel

Our homeward flight arrived at Gatwick in the small hours so I checked into a hotel for a few hours sleep before driving home this morning. Traffic seemed bad. Turned out a fuel blockade started whilst I was in Gibraltar, but I was blissfully unaware. Just had enough fuel to get back to Yorkshire. Welcome home!

More grumpy monkeys

Today we had lots of free time before the flight home, so I took the cable car back up to the Nature Reserve.

More grumpy monkeys, including a pair grooming one another right in the middle of the path.

The early mist cleared so I got great views of the highest point of the Rock and down to the port. Must come back to Gibraltar some time with a better camera (and more skill) and snap those whizzy dolphins!

Dolphins but no photos

Well, we've been out dolphin-watching three times on a great little catamaran (including an extra trip we paid for because the others were so brilliant), and we've seen common, striped and bottlenosed dolphins, but I have no photos! The dolphins are so whizzy compared to the big, slow right whales I saw last year in Canada that my little camera's delayed shutter action just can't cope (and my still-embryonic wildlife photography skills might have something to do with it too!).
Oh well, here's a photo of the beach next to our hotel instead:-)

We meet the residents

This afternoon we went on a general sight-seeing tour, which included a visit to the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, and met the habituated (in fact downright cheeky bordering on dangerous!) Barbary macaques (often called Barbary apes). I don't think this one was offering itself as a souvenir.


Some of the mothers perched precariously on walls with the city way below them.

Had we wanted to use the telescope (below) to take a closer look at the view, tough luck - it was already occupied.

A visit to The Rock

Dolphins and sunshine sounds like a good combination, so I'm on a short break to Gibraltar. The runway at Gibraltar is quite short (only about 6,000 feet) but the pilot managed the emergency stop OK and someone remembered to hold up the traffic on the road that crosses the runway, so here we are.
I loved this sign on the way in - it points the way to Spain as though it's just the local hospital or supermarket!