Mallorca, Day 14, The End Is Near

Think this will be the last post via my inofficial sponsor Playa Santa Ponsa and I don't wanna miss to thank them for letting me crawl into their network/wifi sometimes. They may not even know about it, but hey...thanks Dudes!!!
On my last night at the beach I noticed that I missed 2 events that I think I shouldn't have missed:

Booze Cruise (A Catamaran Sailing with free beer and sangria...)
Foam Party (in a local disco, but I am not sure if they would let old aged in...)

Everyone who knows me, will know how much I will miss those events...and how perfect they would have been for me....heheeee

Damn...have to put that on my list of things to do next time here...after arranging a trip to Sweden!

Mallorca, Tag 14, Das Ende ist nah

Wie ist das für euch wenn das Ende der Urlaubsreise naht? Traurig das es vorbei ist aber glücklich wieder nach Hause zu kommen??
Bei mir ist es immer so, das ich nicht unbedingt traurig über das Ende der Reise bin aber generell traurig bin das es wieder in den Alltag geht. Mit jedem Kilometer der Heimreise werde ich trauriger und würde am liebsten sofort auf dem Hacken umdrehen und irgendwo anders hin fahren. Fernweh oder Unruhe? Egal, Julia ist da anders. Die freut sich imemr darauf in ihr trautes Heim zurück zu kehren. Also kann sich wohl jeder vorstellen wie gegensätzlich unsere Stimmungslagen auf morgiger Heimreise sein werden.
Ein ziemlicher Trost für mich ist diesmal allerdings das wir nur 2 Nächte zuhause sein werden bevor es weitergeht zur 2ten Urlaubsreise, diesmal nach Wangerooge.

Mallorca, Day 13, ¿habla español?

As if we were expecting it, our little Jale got sick last night. No vacation without some health troubles. Last night at the beach she did not want to play on the playground or anywhere else, just wanted to sit near me, telling me how much she was missing Grandma & Grandfather.
After all JJ had some temperature at night at 38,5°C and a little throat ache. I went to the „Pharmacia“ and bought some drugs for her.

I did not sleep at all that night and for Julia it was not much better I am afraid. But I can get along with less, bad or without sleep at all when I am on holidays. One of us always had to stay home today to care for JJ and the other one enjoyed the day as good as possible.

On one of my freetime shifts, I went to the „parrot park“ here...a nice place with some shadow places, perfect to read and just relax. I did not really begin to read when an old spanish man took his seat near me and immediately asked me suspiciously if I was german or english. German seemed to be he right answer cuz he was very friendly and talked to me for about an hour. Talked to me in ...spanish! And I talked to him in denglish. He knew only 1 german word and my spanish vocabulary isn't much better. There it was again: the conversation with hands and feet...funny...interesting...I loved it!! When I got back to our flat, I told Julia about it and when she asked me what we were talking about, I noticed that I understood pretty much of all this improvisating conversation. Of course I am not a 100% sure if I got his words right, but...hey-that was fun and now I know what I was missing on my last vacations: the improvisations, the things aside of perfect organization, the surprises!

Now it is 10.30h p.m., JJ got her medicine and I am ready for another sleepless night.
Adeu (mallorquin) Adios (spanish)

Mallorca, Day 11, Geocaching

After being in a state of dizzyness (nothing else but beach, eating, beach, sleeping, beach...) for a few days I went all the way to the last reachable cache for me. It was the one that I couldn't reach on day 5. And I can tell you that all the sweat and energy have been more than worth it.

I had some 2 kilometres to walk (one way) and half of them went straight uphill but since I started only around 7.00 p.m. it was not too hard and I was nearly alone in that archaeological park. The last 400 metres however were leading me higher and higher on a small stone covered path..a steep climb towards the top of the hill. The cache was hidden off of the normal path and I had to do some kinda acrobatic hill climbing, 1 m away from the abyss. One wrong move and I would have fallen 50 m down! I even found a several Tb's in the box but took only 2 of them. They are competing in a race to Denmark and I think I should give them a 1500 km lift.

After signing the logbook I sat there for about half an hour and enjoyed the silence and peace of this place. None around and the wind was gently stroking my face. Since we stay in a tourist centre, we are usually in a huge crowd and the stay on this rocky hill was like a holiday from holidays to me.

Mallorca, Day 10, Observing

Observations on Beach Life, Part 2
Since I had the opportunity to look at even more people from different nationalities, I must add something today and I hope that none of you takes my words serious....did anyone ever take them serious??

It sems as if all the Dutch people on this beach want to prove that the prejudices about them are false. Have not seen any Dutch with pale skin here.
There can be a several reasons for that:

• They all love their solarium at home
• They are here like consant residents
• They are all only making a stopover here on their way from the carribean back to Holland
• Or...maybe Dutch are not pale at all and a smooth brown tan is their normal skin colour and we just have met only the few pale Dutch in our life.

Swedish people are not too different from the average but they are all blonde. I even saw blonde women who obviously dyed their hair even more blonde. Maybe they wanna be a 100% sure of their „blondness“...
They may act as the average but I tell you that the Swedish women are definately the most beautiful women on the beach!!! Without an exception. I won't go into details but I desperately have to prepare for a trip to Sweden...alone!!

Mallorca, Day 7, West Coast

We still had the car today and made a little excursion towards the north of this island – the only place that we have never been to before.
First surprise was already after only 10 minutes of driving: Camp del Mar! Wow, a rough cliff-lined coast with very few hotels around, clear blue sea and a very relaxed atmosphere because no beach around. It was possible to swim though, between the rocks there always were small spots of white sand to reach the sea. To me, the nicest place on the West Coast of Mallorca!
Then we went further on to Port d'Andratx. I was a bit disappointed of this place. Said to be the romantic port where only the rich and beautiful live, I found it to be very common, narrow and unspectacular. A nice view anyway because of the many many sailboats in the bay.

I found another place to be much more exciting and adventurous: On our way back home our way lead us through the mountains of the „Sierra de Tramuntana“ and we went for another geocache there. And this really was kind of a lost-place that I liked. „El Molino Escondido“ is situated only 100 metres from the street. I think it must have been kind of a mill in former times because I saw some old mill-stones around. It is a huge building, built on a mountain side and we really had to climb up pretty high. The search was not easy, because we had no GPS signal and no spoiler-photos with us. But after some 20 minutes of climbing and searching, I saw the very „obvious“ hiding place.
This time even Jale was excited and loved the „cache-hunt“ because we were playing as if this was kind of an old castle where we were searching for the gold treasure of those knights. FUN!!

Mallorca, Day 6, Cuevas del Drach

Beach Life was getting boring now. So we rented a car and visited the „Cuevas del Drach“, situated about 90 km from here at the East Coast near Porto Cristo.

Those caves are really fascinating. We have visited them twice before but even the 3^rd time now made us shut up staring in awe at this wonder of nature. Founded in 1835, there were excursions being organized already since 1878. When you enter this underground world, you walk nearly 1 kilometre. You will see Stalagmites and Stalactites of tremendous sizes. At the end of the way you reach Lake Martel, one of the worlds largest underground lakes. Thre are seats for about 1000 people and a classical concert is being performed on the lake. In total darkness, the 2 violinists, 1 cellist and 1 pianist are being carried on illuminated boats across the lake. The beauty of these caves is considered to be exceptional. The combination of illumination and classical music make this underground stay a geographical-romantic adventure. Even Jale was whispering like „how wonderful“ all the time.

After that, it was time to switch on the GPS unit and I found out that there was a cache only 2 km far. The description of the location was like „...a bay perfect for families to enjoy a day with waves and swimming“. So off we went there and really it was a bay there like taken from a picture book or a painting. The waves were about 1 metre high and we spent all day with wave-jumping. Funny enough, but we discovered that here on the East Coast there is much better and clearer water with a lot of waves while on the West Coast, where we are staying there ain't a single wave in sight.

Mallorca, Day 5, Geocaching

5 days on this beautiful island already and not a single cache. Hmm...not that this fact was really bothering me but what will my fellow geocachers say?? Maybe like „haha...vacations on Mallorca Island...drinking and sunbathing!! That's no vacation“! So, to not look like a typical german, beerdinking, sunbathing tourist, I turned into a typical, german beer drinking geocacher.

Seriously, I was prepared to do at least 3 caches here that I could easily reach by bike. Today it was again hot hot hot at 37°C and I went by bicycle to the first cache: MOLI DE VENT, a very beautiful mill and had no problems with discovering the well hidden box but if I would be 10 cm smaller, I would have had no chance...must be disappointing for those who make it here, discover the hiding-place but cannot reach it. The Mill was giving me a nice shadow place where I drank my first litre of water today.

The next cache was said to be only 2 km away. I made it uphill and uphill and uphill while my shirt already got so very wet from sweat that it seemed to be pulling me down. The cache location was situated in kind of an archaeological park, that meant: again uphill! My GPS said: 150 metres to the cache when I noticed a lot of noise coming from the top of the hill - the cache direction: workers everywhere around the cache location doing some kind of re-organizing there :-( So I turned around and went downhill downhill downhill without logging the cache. I was really pissed off...150m only!!!!

That was it for today. The third cache would have been 3 kilometres far on a cliff near the sea with Terrain 3,5, but I had no water and energy left anymore.

Caching on Mallorca Island in summer during the daytime is for idiots!! So, it is maybe perfect for me, but I think I won't go again...maybe by our air conditioned car that we wanna rent tomorrow to make a trip to the „Cuevas del Drach“.

For today I will close the day as I am expected to: drinking beer, sunbathing. Cheers!

Mallorca, Day 3, observing

Observations on beach life

Today I was able to go on with my observations on beach life and I found out some very trivial but still very interesting things. You don't believe me?? Right u are...but I'm gonna tell you about my very subjective observations anyway:

1. the most stylish people on the beach are spanish. No matter if they look good or not, they just act, dress and behave cool. Not that high-headed kinda coolness, but very relaxed and kinda stylish...

2. you can spot english people easily from others. They have a skin mix between pale and red...and it won't change, no matter how long they stay here. Must be some kind of pigment thing at them.Besides that, they also drink alcohol early and in unbelievable amounts...now I know why I always felt well in GB...

3. the germans have themselves under control. They try to control everyone else too (didn't they try that in former times before??) but over here they only earn a stylish-high-headed-spanish smile and probably get kicked out of a row in the supermarket by a red-skinned, loud and drunk english. Did I mention that the spanish are stylish? Yes?...oh!

4. Russians are said to be everywhere on this island. Over here I have not met more than 1,5 Russians so far. From this minority I can tell that they are loud too, eat strange food and drink far too less alcohol!!

5. French people on spanish beaches never smile. At least I have not seen any of them with a smile on his/her face. They always seem to be bored and whenever they see someone having fun, they seem to slightly shake their head in disbelieve.

Mallorca, Day 2, Swimming

Today I we got up at 8.00h and went straight to the beach for some refreshment. In our flat, without aircondition, it was hot all night and we all sweated a lot.
Later on, we checked out the near surroundings since we noticed that we need some stuff for our meals. A fact that we hardly paid any attention to so far.
Prices over here are just strange...fruits and vegetables are expensive as can be while alcohol, cheese and meat in a supermarket are appoximately the same or even less expensive than in germany. In a holiday region like this I would have expected it to be the opposite.

Oh yes...we also went swimming a several times today. Besides the cold showers in our flat, the only working way of cooling down a bit. I had an inflatable mattress with me and Jale and me played as if it was our boat or island or something. That was really fun, until I realized that we were already in an area where our feet could not touch the ground anymore. Pretty brave for a non-swimmer, ey??

Mallorca, Day 1, Travelling

I am an „early bird“ ...generally. But 3.30h in the morning is unusual to me too. Today was our leaving day. We started our 2 weeks vacation to the Balearic Island of Mallorca and our flight was scheduled for 6.00h a.m.

I was sure that I would get into a lot of troubles with my girls since they hate to start their morning before 7.00-7.30h a.m. But again I was wrong. Now that I am writing this, they both are still alive and well, had a lot of fights during the day (just the usual girl to girl fights...) and now looking with sleepy eyes into some imaginary time-holes.

We arrived here as scheduled and were in our flat already at 10.00h a.m. After unpacking our stuff, we went to the beach to test the water of the Mediterraenian Sea and...it's warm...unbelievably warm...too warm. For me, water of the sea has to bring some refreshment with rolling waves to me. But over here air temperature 35°C, water temperature +26°C. Nearly no difference.

We went to the beach 2 times more today and I must say that it is not as crowded as I expected. You really can have a relaxing time at the beach...I never thought that this was possible anywhere on Mallorcan Island at all.

Shame on me:I had to realize today that the longer I stay here, the less I want to do. I am already in a state of unbelievable lazyness and my curiousity about new things to discover seems to be somewhere far.

Oh yes...I discovered some wireless network hotspots here. They are protected ...but not too well protected :-)