Marbella Day 8 - Trip to Mijas Pueblo

A few nights ago we asked the owner of the local restaurant we were dining, where she would recommend we visit to get a flavour of the area away from the beaches. She advised a visit to Mijas Pueblo, the original mountain village that is part of current day sprawling city of Mijas which is now the richest town in the province with a 40% foreign population.

It was a 40 minute drive from our villa via the local roads to avoid the tolls. The last bit was very steep (flat out in gears 1, 2 & 3) finally arriving at a beautify "white town" plastered on the face of a mountain. Very clean and tidy and picture perfect!

Narrow cobblestone streets but absolutely beautiful boutiques, galleries, shops and cafe's. Despite the narrow roads, it has been discovered by some tour busses but there were not too many to make the tour crowds oppressive.

We walked around for a while then at mid afternoon, decided to have some lunch and found the Hidden Garden Restaurant. A real gem of a place and we ordered tapas and a drink. Fabulous place!

Rejuvenated, we walked some more and found the local bull fighting ring which we believe still hosts the odd event even though it has been converted into a sort of "museum". We had fun looking around and could feel the ambience of what a bull fight would be like.

We had an opportunity for some more overviews of the surrounding area.

We drove some more mountain roads on the way home and settled in for a home cooked pasta supper.

Marbella Day 7 - Trip to Gibraltar

We decided that today was the best time to do our road trip to Gibraltar about 70 km west of here. All of our research indicated it was best to drive to the Spanish border town of La Linea, park the car and walk across the border. There is a large parking facility right next to the customs and immigration so that worked out well after we got by the guy on the street scamming tourists to pay before entering the lot. A stern no and he was gone.

You barely had to slow down to show your passport when entering Gibraltar. When we arrived, there was one low lying cloud over the rock and partly cloudy skies everywhere else so we hoped it would clear up by the time we went to the top of the rock.

Its only about 1.5 km from the border to the heart of the city with only one major obstacle in the way, the runway of the International Airport. When no planes are coming, the people and cars have to traverse the runway. More on that later.

The next step was a visit to the ATM to get some Pounds Stirling, euros don't work here. This is a British outpost complete with Bobbies, red telephone booths and fish & chip shops. One person described it as a chunk of Portsmouth sliced off and towed 500 miles south.

A lot of the history here has to do with Gibraltar's role as a defensive position. Like a lot of Iberian territory, it has Muslim roots and has been occupied by a variety of nations, Britain being it since 1713.

This is a duty free cruise ship port and there were two big ones here, thus huge crowds walking the main street which made looking in the shops a pain in the ass.

Chris did sniff out a Pandora store and now has charms from the three countries we visited on this trip.

We went for a fish and chip lunch at Clipper's.

We were putting off going up the rock hoping the cloud would go away so we strolled down to the marina, not as glitzy as the one at Puerto Banus.

At around 2:30 pm, we arrived at the cable car for the ride to the top. it was very busy what with the cruise people and we ended up waiting an hour in line.

When we got to the top, we were greeted by scores of Barbary Macaques, tail-less monkeys.

It seems that everywhere on the horizon the sun was shining but we were under a cloud which diminished visibility. There were lots of ships at anchor in the harbour and if you looked really hard, you could make out the outline of the African shoreline in the distant haze.

Rather than return via the cable car, we elected to take the return trip via a downhill 5 km walk through the nature preserve. There were monkeys everywhere. When we were passing one of the feeding stations, one jumped from the roof of a parked van onto Chris's head then onto a railing. She didn't scream too loud but did provide entertainment for some of the other tourists.

Along the way we stopped at St Michael's Cave, a huge natural underground cavern that is now an auditorium. This had been fitted out as a hospital during WWII. It is illuminated by an LED light show to music!

We continued down the hill to The Great Siege Tunnels. These were excavated from the rock during the Great Siege of 1779-83 and provided elevated cannon positions protecting an advance by land into Gibraltar.

We continued on down the narrow road, always on guard for tour busses and Kamakazi scooter drivers who like to hurdle themselves down the hill well in excess of 100 kph.

Now, if only I had some black powder and a cannonball, there would be one less nasty cruise ship.

Finally we reached the Castle Steps, I'm guessing at least 400 stairs leading back down to Main Street.

It was now time to stop for a wine and beer before walking back to Spain.

As we were approaching the airport, the gates were closing on the road to Spain so we got to watch the drill for takeoff and landings. First, stop the pedestrians.

A few minutes later drop the gates and stop the cars.

Cue the Zamboni to go and sweep up the road where it crosses the runway.

The plane taxis to the end of the runway...

And away it goes!

Gates up and away we go, back to Spain. Another walk through at Customs and Immigration. We clocked around 23000 steps today so it was simple in house tapas night.