I rode through the night for two hours through what appeared like un-populated land on the GPS but the roads lead me through fenced grazing land with “no trespassing” signs. I was about to trespass until I found a little path that only went 30 meters away from the road and didn’t offer much cover but it had to do.

Surprisingly there were huge number of mosquitoes there so I used my mosquito head net and together with my biking clothing I didn’t get bitten a single time. (Maybe though it was actually because they were scared of me because I looked like a nightmare from a horror movie.)

In the morning I saw that my location really wasn’t covered very well but like before nobody had noticed or cared about my presence.

When I was searching for a camp spot I had to rely on the head light of my bike. It’s a strong light but centered on the road. It didn’t illuminate a big area and made the search difficult in the pitch dark night. To make the next search a bit more convenient I adjusted the angle of the headlights a bit so the light would go further ahead. A minor adjustment that did make a big difference.

However it is still not ideal. I decided that I would get auxiliary lights for my next trip. A great side effect will obviously also be being more visible by other drivers on the road. According to accident statistics the big majority of accidents not caused by a motorcyclist himself are caused by the other driver not seeing the motorcyclist.

My next stop would be yet another country. Gibraltar. Gibraltar is just a tiny spec on the coast of Spain and it is part of the UK. The official language is English and the currency British Pounds.

 

I was just under two hours away from Gibraltar and approached the border in the afternoon after having stocked up my supplies and filled up my tank.

Contrary to what I had been told the border crossing went very fast without any waiting time whatsoever. I felt right at home with my British license plate.

Gibraltar is basically just a big rock. There is very little space which makes for a very interesting dense city/country layout. The main road of the country that leads from the border to the center is shared between cars, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians – and planes. An airfield goes straight through the road. It’s not a little one either. It’s a full scale runway. When a plane is approaching or taking off traffic is closed until the last pedestrian has left the road (which sometimes takes a while) and then air traffic occupies the road for a few minutes.

My trip to Gibraltar had one particular purpose. Seeing the monkeys of Gibraltar. The only place in Europe where monkeys are native in the wild. I was told that this is from a time when Africa was still connected to Spain. The monkeys live up on the rock so you have to either walk, drive or get the cable car to get to the top. Although as far as I know you can’t actually go all the way to the top.

I chose the road which was not for the faint of heart. Very narrow and with a deep drop on one side it did however offer a great view.

In fact the unique look and flair of these roads would be worthy of a Bond action sequence – which they were. In “The living Dailights” Bond (Timothy Dalton) is parachuting from a plane onto the mountain to find out that the training exercise he is part of took a deadly turn.

(You can see the same mountains in the background as in my photo above)

Half way up the mountain I found what I was looking for.

The Monkeys are used to people and come close if you are in their path. I had been told to be careful with my belongings as they are known to borrow tourists equipment they fancy. But I had no problem. I watched the monkeys for an hour and then kept going up as far as I could. The highest accessible point for non doubble-0 agents is the entrance of a cave system that was dug into the mountain centuries ago to fight against the Spanish and other threats in multiple battles.

The caves were not very tall.

They had multiple window like openings to the face of the mountain where cannons were placed making it an ideal battle station position. From these holes in the walls you can see all of Gibraltar – and I am not even exaggerating. Spain begins roughly at the top half of the photo.

You can see the main road intersecting the runway on the left. The busy field on the bottom is the cemetery. People of all religions are burried right beside each other for lack of space. Considering how tiny the country is there is a huge amount of football fields. I counted eight.

After visiting the caves I ate my dinner at the top and took in the beautiful view.

Exiting the country a little while later I regretted having filled up my tank before entering as everything turned out to be extremely cheap here. I think the taxes are a lot lower if there are any at all..

I was back in Spain and heading for Sevillia.