In Mijas Pueblo, the honeysuckle blooms early in the year. Mijas Pueblo
Tey say to know the real Spain you must get out of the cit- ies and into the countryside, so we took a hurried trip to Mi- jas Pueblo, a 20-minute drive from our condo in Marbessa up the mountain above Fuengirola, where we enjoyed a fabulous view of the coast below and visited the gracious old Mijas Hotel. A quick walk through the village revealed a row of extremely hungry leather merchants who were ready to make a deal on lambskin jackets of buttery leather. Even at low sea- son in early January, the streets were thronged with tourists; it must be wall-to-wall people in the busy season.
Gibraltar Once I had mastered the highway system and its series of
traffic circles, exits and interchanges to the toll roads, we felt brave enough to venture into the countryside. Fabled Gibral- tar was high on the list, only an hour-and-a-half drive from home base. Gibraltar is a welter of narrow streets, crowded buildings and ancient fortifications. We inadvertently wandered onto some military property, reaching a dead end. As we attempt- ed to turn around, a furtive fellow came over to the car, not to chastise us for being in forbidden territory as you would think, but to offer us a guided tour of the rock. We declined, and I found my way to the gate, unaided, to
discover that the password to the magic kingdom was “69 Euros, please.” Since we were on a one-way alley with no turnaround, the only escape was to pay up and pro- ceed. Te trip up the rock was a hair-raising, ver- tical journey along a narrow track. Reaching the almost top of the headland,
we trod on hallowed ground, where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip had once stood – at least according to the plaque set on the edge of the cliff. It overlooked a panoramic view of the Strait of Gibraltar far below, filled with ships and bustling with commerce. You could almost see the dollars floating on the ocean as each vessel paid to ply these historic waters. We learned later that those dollars are in the billions, many of them generated by the drug trade. Gibraltar is the premier
44 • Spring 2015
The Rock of Gibraltar: it’s a hair-raising, vertical journey to the top.
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How to get there
gateway for cocaine into Europe. Te authorities probably in- tercept only about 10 per cent of the billions of dollars’ worth of drugs smuggled in each year, and the biggest problem the drug smugglers have is not police, distribution or find- ing markets – it’s money laundering. Much of the excess cash ends up in the construction of lavish villas and apartments all along the golden mile and beyond. Tere is a glut of these develop- ments along the coast now, and prices are down 30 per cent. Now high above all this on the rock, we opted
to take our BMW a few dozen metres higher to the summit, only to be called to a halt by the people who run the 412-metre-high cable car and a small café there. Tere was no room to turn around and I simply
couldn’t face backing down the hill, but a member of the local family was kind enough to get me out of my tight spot.
The Hub
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