Rock My World

From Nerja we took another painful bus ride to La Linea, the Spanish town right outside of Gibraltar. (The moral of the story is that bus travel is not for me.) All the guidebooks say that Gibraltar is expensive (and not just because they use the Pound) and annoying (and not just because they use British electronic prongs). To get to Gibraltar from Spain, one has to pass through La Linea anyway, so we just booked our hotel there. Our first night, we decided to walk over to Gib (as the locals call it) for dinner. The sunset cast a beautiful soft light on the Rock as we approached. Now, if you have a US passport, you can pass through customs with just a flash of the blue cover, but J (being J) wanted a stamp. The middle-aged British man kindly stamped our passports and gave us a recommendation for dinner. Quote: Me and missus eat foº about tweny-firdy quid. Dinner was surprisingly good. We had tasty, cold beer for the first time in weeks! And J had something called Beef Viagra (which was a curry dish). Yumm. It was a late dinner and I knew we were getting up early to see the Rock, but I had a feeling that something special might happen the next day, so before I went to bed, I made sure to pluck my eyebrows....

Iºm going to skip Rick Steveºs Self-Guided Bus Tour and get straight to the good stuff. We rode the cable car up the rock (which reminded me of Hong Kong), were greeted by the famous Barbary Macaques (teeny tiny baby monkeys and all) and started wandering up. The views at every turn were incredible. We could see all of Gib, half of La Linea and into the Spanish port towns farther down the coast. It was hot and sticky and we hiked slowly towards the southern tip. I canºt even remember what we were walking towards. But we got to a sign which said "Moor View Point" and a long stone staircase. I remember this because I made a bad joke (Look! More moor views). J took off and I slowly made my way up the old, cracking staircase. The rock was smooth, but breaking apart after hundreds of years of use (I imagine) and hundreds of thousands of feet (I imagine). The Moorish View Point was an old stone building (bunker?) built half in the ground. J was on top of the building (and Iºd seen plenty of views at that point), so I wandered down into the building itself. It was an ancient building with small rooms, low ceilings and what looked like a prison cell. There was modern graffiti and trash all over. J hollered down at me, inquiring about what I saw. Nothing much, so I made my way out of the building. As soon as I got to the top, he got down on one knee and pulled me close to him. (Side note: Weºd been talking about getting engaged for months. J would make jokes about "when we have kids" and I would reply before we did that we had to get married and before we did that we had to get engaged and before we did that one party had to purpose to the other party. Iºd purposed at least twice, but J said no. He made it very clear that he wanted to wait until after Caitlinºs wedding and that he had some grand romantic gesture planned for our trip this summer. He actually made a joke about purposing on Gibraltar. When he actually did purpose, I was overcome with joy and love and other emotions, but surprise was not one of them.) He said some stuff about choosing Gibraltar because it was a meeting point, a place where oceans and continents collide (my word, not his). Then some stuff about the Rock standing through tempestuous weather and calm weather. From there he went to a metaphor about intermingling currents. (Which got a HEY-O from the peanut gallery.) At which point, we brandished the place-holder ring and finished off with the traditional "Kali Robinson Eichen, will you marry me?". The night before I was planning a hilarious and snide reply, but in the moment, I forgot and just said yes. There were kisses and tears. Then some Canadians came up to the view point and we told them that we had gotten engaged, only moments prior, and asked if they would take our picture. The man said that it was good luck to get engaged on a former Miltary base - that he purposed to his wife on one 35 years ago. And thatºs how it happened. In a British Colony, with Africa in front of us and Europe behind us. The view was gorgeous: the Straight was glassy blue belt opening to Africa, a not-so-distant land mass(land massive is more like it). We were on top of the world.