European Circle Tour Part 10: The Not-so-Solid Rock

Remember the slogan, "Strong as the Rock of Gibraltar"? Thank you, Prudential of America, which no longer uses such slogans but still keeps its corporate logo with a stylized picture of the famous Rock. The logo is based on a picture showing the Rock as seen from the north end and looking down the east side.

 

Here's how it looks from the cruise terminal on the western shore, which is where you find most of the people and all of the shipping facilities. It was still early morning, but unlike my last visit, the entire western face of the Rock is pretty much visible. The weather got much clearer as the day went on.

 

Our guide, a long-time Gibraltarian like most of the tour guides here, related how many visitors will ask questions like, "How many people live on the island?" Since there is ocean everywhere you go, it's easy to forget that Gibraltar is attached to the mainland area of Spain. A reminder: here, just across the Bay to the west is the Spanish port city of Algeciras.

 

 

Here's a map to help you see the whole layout of the Rock and the Straits area.

 

 

For myself, I got a bit of a chuckle out of a member of our small tour party who kept asking, "Where is the Rock? When do we see the Rock?" It took him a fair chunk of the morning to finally catch the concept that we had been driving and walking all over the Rock for the entire time. 

 

In ancient myth and lore, the prominent limestone crag of Gibraltar was renowned as one of the two "Pillars of Hercules." The other, a much taller mountain called Jebel Musa (the Mountain of Moses) is on the south side of the strait. The two Pillars are marked on the map with the red blocks.

 

Since it's all limestone, the Rock of Gibralter is very porous, full of natural cracks and crevices and caves. Many of these were expanded by British Army Engineers during the centuries since Gibraltar came under British control in the early 1700s as part of a peace treaty. More tunnels were excavated during World War II, and still more opened up since the end of the war. The latest one is a tunnel that plunges down under the single runway of Gibraltar airport (which is parallel to the border with Spain), coming up on the other side in Spain itself. Last time I was here, the highway link to the Spanish border was still on ground level, right across the runway, and had to be closed every time a plane landed or took off!

 

Our ship itself encountered a similar problem when we were ready to depart at 5:00pm. The problem: there was a plane scheduled to take off right about that time, and it was basically impossible for the ship to move and pivot away from the pier without getting right into the flight path and just off the end of the runway -- which is actually extended into the ocean on both sides of the peninsula. Wherever you go in Gibraltar, space is always at a premium and the damn Rock keeps getting in the way!

 

Most of the highrise buildings you see in my photos are built on filled land. More fresh land is being created all the time (our guide showed us another rock-fill project just beginning). The only way for Gibraltar to grow is for the land mass below the Rock to expand. In this picture, you see two ships at the cruise port, some highrise apartments on the newer part of the reclaimed shoreline, and a plane lifting into the air from the runway (look at the cropped second picture to zoom in on the plane).

 

 

Our tour began with a scenic drive all around the Rock, with a couple of brief stops for photos. Driving south on the west side we got a good view of the entirely artificial harbour. Several of the ships appearing here are actually waiting for their turn to be drydocked for repairs.

 

After passing through a bit of the Old Town area, we headed on south, and soon had to go through a couple of very old and very tight tunnels. Good thing that tours in Gibraltar use mainly British sized 24-passenger mini-buses. A regular highway coach would never get through this one.

 

Beyond the tunnel, we passed by a sizable Lido, one of several artificial beaches on the west side of the Rock. It's a popular facility with locals and tourists during the warmer summer months.

 

Nearby was this spectacular but artificial waterfall, which our guide said was used for the unnecessary overflow of water supply from a water distillation plant. Like other places built on seaside limestone formations, the entire underpinning of Gibraltar is permeated with caverns full of salt water, so fresh water can only be obtained by manufacturing it from the sea.

 

Soon afterwards, we arrived at Europa Point, the southern tip of Gibraltar. The lighthouse, now automated, remains an essential navigation aid through the Straits of Gibraltar, the link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It's also an excellent place for peripatetic retired teachers to take selfies.

 

 

It was at this point that the real lucky breaks began, as the clouds south of us slowly lifted away to reveal a serious glimpse of Africa in the distance. The hill behind the left-hand ship is in Ceuta, while the dark slopes rising into the clouds above the chimney are the lower slopes of Jebel Musa.

 

If you turn away from the view of Africa, and look north, you see the southern end of the Rock, and a stately mosque. It's as true in Gibraltar as in Ceuta, that you can't visit a community in the area of the Straits without encountering Arab and Spaniard and English and Christian and Muslim and Jew all mixed together. And they're not the only ones.

Driving north up the east side of the Rock (the sheer-cut side with near-vertical alignment), we had to drop into a lengthy tunnel to pass under or behind a sizable scientific establishment embedded in the rock faces.

 

A little farther north, we came to a beachfront community whose brilliant colours give it a distinctly Italian look. Again, not surprising. This Italian community may be small, but it's been in Gibraltar for centuries, and the local population love their little bit of their original homeland which they've created and sustained here.

 

Also on this side are some more areas of reclaimed land, and some sizable residential towers, which are deliberately planned by the government of Gibraltar as a reduced-cost housing measure to help younger people get into a highly-inflated housing market. As our guide explained it, the government advances half the cost of the unit while the buyer puts in the other half. At sale time, each takes half the proceeds of the sale. I'd be interested to hear in 20 years or so how this strategy has worked out.

 

In no time, we were back at the north end, and crossing the narrow strip of flat land between Rock and airport to get back to town on the west side. There, we attended the highlight of our tour, a "wine tasting" of three different wines from nearby Spanish wineries. "Tasting" in quotation marks because they were pouring the wine with a generous hand in all three glasses. I think I likely inhaled somewhere in the area of 15-16 ounces in 45 minutes or so! The restaurant also provided plates of cold meat and flavourful Manchegan cheese to buffer all that wine, a real delight. This event took place in a new recreation and cultural centre built into an old and disused fortification, the King's Bastion. After the tasting, we got a quick look at another part of the facility. The tasting took place in a similar barrel-vaulted hall.

 

With that, we headed back to the ship and a quiet afternoon aboard. But there was one more treat in store as we sailed at 5:20 pm (after waiting for that plane to take off!). This was something I'd never seen before, and I suspect many other visitors never have seen either: Gibraltar, fully visible, in blazing sunshine. What a bonus!

 

It got even better, as ships must move fairly slowly in these busy waters, for safety reasons. I'd gone back inside to get dinner. When I came out on deck after dinner, we were just gliding nicely through the middle of the Straits, with the two Pillars of Hercules slipping slowly away behind us: Gibraltar to starboard...

 

 ... and Jebel Musa to port, as we set course for the open Atlantic.

 

 

 

Cruising to the Sun Part VI: Scenic Highlights Beyond Grand Cayman's Resorts

If and when you get beyond the shops of downtown and the lavish resort hotels of Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman has some fascinating secrets to share with you. We got to visit a few of them on the tour I took two days ago. 

Right off the bat, Grand Cayman is probably the busiest port I've ever visited where all ships still have to get their guests shuttled to and from the shore. Thankfully, since my last visit in 2018, the shuttles are now provided by a fleet of two-decked tenders operated from the island. The last time around, we had to use the smaller and slower ship's lifeboats.

With as many as four ships in port at once (today) the ships have to be anchored offshore from the capital of George Town in a fairly orderly manner. To me, it resembles a row of cars in a parking lot with angle parking. Today, the resemblance was spoiled a bit when the first of the ships was anchored at a different angle. Anyway, here they are. Our larger fleetmate Nieuw Statendam, and Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas in the first picture ...

... and then Brilliance again, along with Carnival's Carnival Horizon and our own Eurodam partly concealed beyond the loaded tender at the pier.

So many ships, of course, means bigger crowds everywhere for the day. The  tour I chose, covering the scenic highlights of the island's East End, was operated in small European-style tour buses with only 20 seats or so. This trip turned out to be an inspired choice -- we got clear away from all the mass market tourist "attractions" and stores and out into the parts of the island where you can still get an authentic Caymanian cultural vibe. 

 

As we headed south and then east out of George Town, we still had to make our escape from the big city as we passed two surprising examples of Canadian genius at work. The first one is financial...

 

 ... and the second one, well...

 

We found out that the majority of the passengers on our coach were Canadian, when a chorus of voices urged the driver to pull over and turn in! The driver laughed -- the first of many hearty laughs he would give during the day. As he explained it later: "I love my job. That's it. I love my job!" With an attitude like that, I'm sure a lot of people come away from his tours smiling. 

 

Our driver/guide, John, explained to us that with a total of eight buses operating the tour that day (between four ships), we had to vary the order and we'd been asked to start with what was supposed to be the third stop -- lunch. So there we were, climbing out of our bus at the Eastern Star Bar and Fish Fry at 10:00 AM! Mind you, having had breakfast at 6:30, I didn't consider lunch at 10:00 a huge imposition or disruption of my day -- especially in surroundings like these.

The meal was a choice of fried chicken or fried grouper, with pasta salad and rice & beans, and the fish was lightly coated and tasty. Iced tea or lemonade were included, with bar drinks for sale. It was the setting and the view around the broad patio that made this lunch special.

From there,  we drove on to the historic site dedicated to the "Wreck of the Ten Sail." The name is a holdover from the days when a fleet would be described as "ten sail" instead of "ten ships." This was a usage which the British Royal Navy kept up long into the nineteenth century, abandoning it only when those newfangled stink pots, the steamships, finally drove sail out of the Navy for good. At this site, we  learned the story of how a fleet of ships came to grief on the offshore coral reefs, but it was hard to make the connections with that wild, stormy night on such a placid day of sunshine and breezes. 

This artifact, looking rather like a partially-rotted log, is actually a sizable weight of lead which would be placed along the inside of the keel of a tall ship. The lead weight helped to balance off the pressure of the wind against all the sails and keep the ship (reasonably) upright.

Our next stop, a short distance back along the coast towards George Town, was at a roadside viewpoint where the right wave conditions would produce a fountain of water out of a blowhole. I got one so-so photo from closer at hand, but the best one shot up after I had gotten back up to the bus. Naturally.

Our next stop was, oddly enough, the least memorable. The Tortuga company, a distillery and rum cake maker, gave us all free samples of their rum cake and their rum. The rum was rum, the cake was bland and ho-hum, and the tour facility (a small one) was completely overrun by getting hit with three bus loads at once. The crowding was severe, and I was grateful to get out and back on the bus in one piece.

 

 

On the other hand, the arrival of a small family of mama chicken and her babies entertained us for a few moments in the outdoor patio area. Grand Cayman is another one of those places, like Key West and Kauai, where the chickens run wild all over the island, and the song of the roosters runs on "Repeat Play" nonstop from an hour before sunrise and all the way through the day.

That was the official end of the tour, but as we headed back to the pier, John explained that he had gotten permission to add on an additional stop at the end for anyone who really wanted to go to Hell. I wasn't quite sure what this might entail, but I'm always up for an adventure so why not? In the end, only three of us hung on -- Chris and Terry, from Saskatchewan, and me. The rest of them chickened out. Their loss.

A little quote from George Bernard Shaw, just because. 

 

 

"As saith the poet, Hell is a city much like Seville." 

 -- Man and Superman, Act 3. 

 

 

I just threw that in because it's been ages since I quoted Shaw, so why not? And here we are in Hell.

The post office will gladly stamp your outgoing mail, or your passport (Chris got her passport stamped).

 

 

And this yellow shirt would certainly be a, well, unique clothing item at any and all future occasions. If it were a bit more orange in colour, I might have bought it for the Orange Party that night, haha!

 

 

In reality, once you get past the kitschy post office and souvenir shops, Hell does appear rather sinister.

It's not a volcanic formation (in case you were wondering and didn't bother to read the sign shown above). The Cayman Islands rank among the very few non-volcanic islands anywhere in or near the Caribbean Sea. It's limestone formed under water from ancient corals at a time when there was no island. I've seen similar rock formations, although only by the seashore, in Bermuda -- which is actually very like Grand Cayman with hills added. That's Grand Cayman's defining characteristic for me. It's flat. The highest elevation is a resounding 60 feet (18.2 metres) above sea level.

All day, I kept getting reminded of Bermuda. The stuccoed and colourful houses, the white or grey painted roofs which looked so reminiscent of the white stone roofs in Bermuda, the beautiful matching walls along the roads, Grand Cayman and Bermuda certainly share some similarities among their many differences. 

 

That little private tour to Hell added an extra hour to John's workday, but he plainly loved every minute of it.  So did we. If there were any jokes about travelling to Hell, experiencing Hell, returning from Hell, which Chris and Terry and I didn't crack and then laugh at, I can't imagine what they might be. We were still laughing about it the next morning!

And so to my favourite night of any Holland America cruise -- Orange Party night! You know it's time when the daily newsletter, at the heading, solemnly states:

 

Dress Code: Casual, with a splash of orange.

 

Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands. The long-standing Dutch royal family is called the House of Orange, and that's the origin of the colour and of this tradition on the Netherlands' national cruise ship line. It's the only time you'll ever see me wearing a T-shirt into the Dining Room in the evening! 

 

There's always an Orange Party with music and dancing later in the evening. It was up at the Lido pool on this warm weather cruise, but after my bedtime. The real feature of the Orange Party evening for me is the Dutch menu at dinner. Dutch menu? Even the table napkins are orange! Many people dress in orange clothes. If you don't have any, you can get a silly little orange hat or other orange accessories in the gift shop. I didn't see any orange hair this time, but several ladies went that route on my last Holland America cruise. People who are familiar with Dutch traditional cuisine can spot the Dutch dishes here and there on the bill of fare.

 

 

For the record, I started with the traditional pea soup, then went on to the Bami Goreng (an Indonesian/Dutch fusion dish), and finished off with the Tompouce. And it was a great meal -- especially the Bami Goreng!

Desperately Seeking Sunshine # 4: Amber and Silver

Due to unexpected technical difficulties, I was unable to carry on blogging while I was on the ship. Now that I am back in Canada, the blogging has begun and will continue until I’m all caught up.

 

 

The second port of call for this cruise was at Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic. It was a first-ever visit to the D.R. for me. Amber Cove is a fairly new cruise terminal and event/entertainment centre, purpose-developed by Carnival Corp. to supplement the limited docking facilities in the harbour of Puerto Plata (“Port of Silver”), some 15 or so kilometres to the east. Probably the best viewpoint for the mountain scenery around Amber Cove would be an outdoor upper deck of a cruise ship docked here.

Given the location, the tours the ship offered were a mixture of varying experiences in Puerto Plata itself, or trips to various beach locations nearby. I opted for a traditional sightseeing tour by coach, with one extended stop in the city centre and one shorter stop on the waterfront.

 

After the usual lengthy hike along the pier and through the obligatory duty free shop, we were greeted by this colourful sculpture of sea life on the seaward side of the cruise terminal.

 

 A good tour is made or broken by the quality of the guide. Maria, who quickly asked us to call her “Mama,” was one of the better ones in my experience. She had plenty of historic detail about the country and the city at her fingertips, and shared it during the drive in. 

 

One detail which I certainly absorbed (and it surprised me) was that the Dominican Republic, unlike many of the Spanish-language countries in and around the Caribbean basin, did not win its independence from Spain. In this case, the colonizing power was the aggressively-minded Haiti, which shares the same large island, taking the western end. 

 

 More than one ruler of Haiti styled himself as "Emperor" due to large egos and larger expansive ambitions.

 

As we approached the city centre, we drove along one section of the waterfront drive to let us view the 1500s-vintage Fortaleza San Felipe. It was a reminder that the city's rarely-used official full name is San Felipe de Puerto Plata.

 

By the time we arrived at the main plaza in the centre of town, we’d absorbed enough to be ready for a colonial city with almost no colonial buildings left – this due to a catastrophic burning and destruction during an attempted recolonization by Spain which took place in 1863-65. 

What was definitely still colonial about Puerto Plata was the narrow streets, and their total inability to cope with waves of modern traffic. A traffic policeman on control duty at the intersection on the plaza was blowing his whistle continually throughout our entire visit. 

 

The plaza was dominated by the city hall on the east side, decked with long banners employing the colours and crest of the national flag….

 

 

…and the Cathedral of San Felipe on the south, dating from the 1930s, and presenting a simple, stylish Art Deco interpretation of a traditional Spanish church. 

 

 

The cathedral’s interior carries out the relatively plain promise of the exterior – not ornate, not encrusted with gold and gems, but attractive in its own quieter, less frantic way.

 

Over on the west side, the white wooden building with the shady front porch is the one surviving building from before the destruction of the 1860s to be found on the plaza.

 

 

Also on the square was this small outdoor stage, which Mama told us was the setting for popular shows enjoyed by whole families after mass on Sundays.

 

Nearby to the plaza, we walked into this narrow, crowded pedestrian street, colloquially known as the Umbrella Street. 

 

 

Like many other tour guides I've met, Mama was more than happy to take a picture on request.

Here we visited a gift shop where we were enticed by a small taster cup of hot chocolate (very tasty and chocolatey, not just all sugar as in Canada), and where I bought a bag of Dominican coffee. Can’t wait to get home and try that out!

 

We then crossed back over to the other side of the main east-west street and into another shop where we were softened up for the sales pitch by a sampler of locally-made rum (day drinking before 11 am again!). From there we made our way back to the plaza, where we had a rather lengthy wait for our bus driver to make his way back through the madhouse traffic with the coach – which he had been forced to park well outside the centre.

 

From there, we drove down to the waterfront, where we saw this elegant sign…

 

 

… and a whole string of waterfront bar/eateries like this one. 

 

Mama explained that these beach bars along the miles of beaches were popular with local families to grab lunch on beach outings since no plastic or glass is allowed on the beaches -- which makes bringing your own picnic much more of a challenge.

 

We took one more quick stop at a spot where a number of vendors were set up roadside, and there was a good view out to the statue of Neptune poised on a rocky outcrop in the ocean. No more shopping for me, but plenty of others on the tour dived in with a will.

 

 

From there we drove back out to Amber Cove after an interesting, informative, and very cramped and crowded experience. It was the crowding in the streets and sidewalks more than anything else which persuaded me that, colourful and exciting as the city can be, one visit to the old central area of Puerto Plata was quite enough.