Beer Around Town

Hang in there, only one more country after this, and there is a microbrewery involved in the next one. Next on our trip we found ourselves headed about an hour outside of Tarifa towards Gibraltar, home of the… well rock of Gibraltar.

Maps, not needed, Gibraltar is a Brittish territory composed of a big old mountain and a town situated on a peninsula off of Spain. Gibraltar has been hotly contested for almost all of it’s history, being a strategic point at the entry of the Mediterranean this allowed the mountain to be hollowed with miles of tunnels and cannon port holes into a nearly impenetrable fort. Over it’s history it has been controlled by almost everyone possible at one point in time, but the English have controlled it for the last 300 years… although Spain is pretty pissed about that and wants their land back.

The town of Gibraltar is a duty free shopping paradise for cruise ships, but shopping not being my thing, and the exchange between the dollar and English Pound left things far to pricy for my taste.

We headed up the rock to see what the fuss was about. First you enter the mountain into these giant natural cavern chambers, 80 foot tall ceilings of stalactites hang above while stair cases guides you through it. Previously this area was a bomb shelter triage facility, now converted into a large open concert hall… which must sound incredible. Ok, cool and all, what next?

Well, as we headed up the mountain more we discovered those Trunk Monkey commercials aren’t a joke or even original…. no the rock of Gibraltar is in fact guarded by monkeys, ferociously cute little buggers that you really don’t want to piss off. I mean, look at this guy..

All was good though, our guide gave us some peanuts to keep them happy, that is until they ran out, then my guide thought it was a good idea to trick the monkey, so he told me to act like I had one in my hand and let the monkey tried to get it. Lets just say the monkey didn’t like looking, well like a monkey, so a monkey bite I received. Yah, I’ve seen Outbreak and 28 Days Later, I should have known not to trust Brittish people. The other interesting thing about the Monkeys is they are only on Gibraltar, none reside off the peninsula in Spain. Originally they were brought there as pets and now they flourish there but never found any desire to cross over to Spain.

Next we toured the cannon tunnels, which I belive our guide claimed 3.5 miles of tunnels in the mountain, only about a quarter mile is open for tours though. I’m still not entirely sure why you would ever attack this place, probably just easier to cut it off from their food supply, but if you wanted to take fort the hard way this would have been quite a feat.

Anyway, upon completion of the “Rock” tour we headed back to town. I noticed a number of traditional English pubs, even doing a double take on one that I thought said the Horse Brass at one point, just ignore the Fosters umbrellas out front, I’m not sure what the heck is going on there. It was however confirmed that there were no breweries on the peninsula, so sadly Tetleys, Bass, and the like were about all you’d find here.