This day we headed out to see an ancient dovecote.  I thought it was so cool until I found out they raised the birds to eat them.  I figured they were used as carrier pigeons.  Apparently they were also utilized for their eggs as well as their dung.  It is in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest dovecote in the world with 7770 clay nests.  Active until the 18th century, now it was mostly empty.  I learned something else new as well; I had always heard of the Rock of Gibraltar but had no idea we were fairly close.  Never having been on British soil, I wanted to visit.  I remember being so excited to get another stamp on my passport and they didn’t even do it!  It seemed so out of place to see the Union Jack flying everywhere, double decker buses, and people driving on the left side of the road.  There were police with their high, rounded hats and others with large guns at the border.  The highest point of the rock rises almost 1,400 feet above the strait.  Approximately 40% of Gibraltar’s land was declared a nature preserve in 1993.  I so wanted to see the famed Barbary macaques but we ran out of time.  We did get to admire the peaceful botanical gardens which were both quiet and cooling.  English novelist Graham Greene said:

“The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun.  Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped.”

As our driver took us back to Vejer along the high, curving roads that lined the sea I realized that although my actual passport stamp had eluded me, I now carried with me the stamp of being forever changed and I looked forward to what else this trip had in store.