Day 32 - Tuesday, 12/10/24 - Gibraltar
With our late departure from Cagliari, Sardinia, we were not expected to arrive into Gibraltar until 4 PM. So today is pretty much like a sea day. As such it started in our normal fashion by attending the interdenominational devotional time and followed by the coffee chat. One change this morning was that the coffee chat was held on the main stage as it featured all eight members of the Repertory Company who is doing the singing and dancing shows for the ship. Nick interviewed them in his customary fashion, and most of the cast is from the UK, but there were members from Republic of Ireland, Australia, and Italy. And two of the cast members are a couple which is a little bit unusual as one is a dancer and one is a singer. Their talent agency is called Blackburn which is a new agency for Holland America Line and this cast was put together especially for this voyage. In all they are learning 15 routines as the shows will be presented on the upcoming Pole to Pole cruise which starts January 25, 2025.
After the coffee chat, Howard Krug gave his presentation on democracy and Tunisia. There were certainly some hard lessons to be learned from Tunisia's experiment with democracy, and the key thing that came out of it was that if a strong man takes power to his head, bad things result. Nick then came back and presented his final port talk on Cadiz, Spain. I snagged a quick Lido lunch and then joined Angela up in the Crow's Nest for the rest of the afternoon. We had the comfy front row center chairs, which was nice. And, yes, we sipped on Coke Zero as is our custom.
We watched the ship sail into Gibraltar and at one point I think I counted 34 ships around us on my MarineTraffic app. What was especially interesting on the sail in was that even though we were two hours away from the rock of Gibraltar it looked like we were closer. That gives some sort of perspective on how large the rock really is relative to us. Just before 3 o'clock the pilot boat approached, and the pilot boarded our vessel for the sail into the harbor. We had to maneuver around a number of anchored vessels, and then through a very narrow opening in the breakwater before the captain and his crew skillfully turned the ship 90° and brought it alongside the dock bow first. Across the dock from us was the Marella Explorer, which is a former Celebrity Galaxy ship. That ship was one of the Century class of Celebrity ships and we had the opportunity to sale on the Celebrity Century back in 2012. Later during our tour, we saw the umbrella Explorer leave on its voyage to Tanger.
Securing the ship to the dock and going through the clearance process went fairly quickly and soon we were able to scan off the ship. We walked through the little terminal and out to the short excursions area and found our bus (White 5) and we were greeted by John our guide. Allie was our driver in this fairly small bus larger than a minivan but smaller than the typical motor coach that Holland America uses for excursions. The reason for the small size is that the roads and tunnels here are very very narrow. John is a local who came here when he was seven and then left for a bit and came back because he really likes the area. He was a great guide with lots of information and eager for questions and always up for a good joke. We wandered through the city and headed out to Europa point where we could see Africa only 8 miles across the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlas Mountains in the far distance.
At the point is also a Muslim mosque that was contributed by a king from Saudi Arabia and the distinguishing feature of this mosque is that instead of a crescent moon on top it's a full moon designating that it's a royal mosque. Also at the site is a memorial to an airplane crash which occurred in 1943 by a Polish airplane. All 23 people on board, including General Sykorski were killed.
We wandered up the hill in our coach and made a stop at the ape area where we were able to take lots of pictures of of macaque monkeys, and we were cautioned not to get closer than a meter to them but they were running all over and around us and through us and also perched on railings primoing themselves and clearly being good photo objects. We then took the coach on up the hill to the siege caves. From the coach, we needed to hike up the hill about 300 yards and there were vistas of the sea city and from there we entered the sea tunnels which were dug over a course of six weeks by 13 men. Later, the caves were expanded with additional workers and 3 of us explored the full length of all of the tunnels. There are exhibits in the caves and our guide,John, gave us lots of little details about the use of the caves and the like. Three of us selected to go down to the very, very end of the tunnel and snap some pictures there. We of course were the last ones back to the bus, which is pretty typical for us. I should add that we previously visited these caves some years ago on another voyage that stopped at Gibraltar. This Holland America excursion was just under $90 per person and I highly recommend it as an introduction to Gibraltar.
John was not sure whether we could take the cable car up to the top of the rock but in the end it worked out and we rode the cable car up with all 30 some of us from the bus in one car. At the top, John took us on up to viewing points on the very top of the mountain, and it was quite scenic. I was able to shoot some pictures of the moon as well as Mars and Venus. Of course it was dark and a little bit of wind so it got a little chilly up there and the temperatures are expected to drop tonight because it was such a clear night. In fact, John commented that this is the best day that they've seen in weeks and he was really pleased that we brought the good weather with us.
Leaving the cable car station we headed back into the city and there was the option to be dropped off in town but one would then have to walk back to the ship which is about 30 minutes away. We had one couple that did elect to do that, but Angela and I decided to stay on and go back to the ship. At the terminal, we did a little shopping in the terminal building but didn't purchase anything. We scanned back onto the ship and then made our way to the Lido and were among the last people served as the Lido shut down at 8 o'clock. I enjoyed a nice light dinner of some Roasted chicken along with some Asian noodle soup, which was quite good and I appreciated the warmth after being out in the cold.
By returning so late, we missed the feature movie in the main stage, but seeing the sites was more important to us. All aboard tonight time is 10:30 PM and we are expected to set sale around 11 PM for the short trip over to Tangier, Morocco. The captain indicated earlier in the day that he expected to be alongside the dock around 2 AM so that he can get through the traffic that runs through the Straight of Gibraltar. We have a private excursion scheduled for tomorrow with our friends that we have done many excursions this voyage with and this will be the last tour with them this voyage, but we are looking forward to it.
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