Mallorca

For getting all of an hour and half’s worth of sleep last night, today has been stellar. The dearth of sleep was due to the fact that I slept in the Palma de Mallorca Airport and the stellarness is due to a variety of things. I finished my book, a map of the Sierra Nevada Mountains arrived after three weeks of waiting, and most of all I just finished up an awesome weekend; Miguelito, Pato and I accomplished a lot…a Thursday evening departure and a Monday morning return (with a taxi to class) helped make this three day weekend to Mallorca just top notch.

Saturday evening found us checking the bus schedule in the minuscule village of Lluc in northwestern Mallorca…and what do you know the last bus out just left and tomorrow happens to be Sunday…always a slow day in Spain, only two buses will be coming to Lluc and not really in the direction we hope to go or by the time we hope to leave this one horse village. But we are relatively wiped out after a mondo day in the Serra de Tramuntanas, a mountain range that seems to rise right off the coast, reaching elevations as high as 4,300 ft. We’d trekked from the mountain village of Sóller with the plan of either staying at a mountain ‘refugio’ or making the full 25-30km trek via the GR-221 trail to Lluc. The first refugio we saw was a ‘bring your own food to cook’ type location, and all we’d brought to eat was lunch + snacks…a scrumptious array of Mallorca produced cheese, ham, fresh baguettes, apples, peaches, and bananas. OK, so the bananas and maybe the melocotones (peaches) could have been imported to be sold at the local ‘mercado’ where we purchased breakfast and lunch Saturday morning in Sóller.

In any case, we were going to walk all the way to Lluc because we had not purchased dinner materials and were making good time on a gorgeous day through some freaking cool mountains.The climb up from Sóller was steep; a stone walkway with hundreds of other seemingly hand created stone walls and walkways covered the valley as we ascended. You don’t get the same atmosphere hiking the Whites. We consistently saw sheep throughout the day roaming the mountainsides along with cattle. I’ll mention this again, there were heaps of rocks!

Being stuck in Lluc, we choose to do the only thing anyone seems to be doing and reserve a three bedroom room for $46 euro at the local tourist hub; a monastery! Don’t see any monks. We wake up to $6 euro breakfast buffet and decide to get a quick dayhike in before the first bus comes at 1. Not much to do in Lluc as it turns out. However after about 30 minutes of walking we see the GR-221 sign posted with ‘4 hours 45 minutes’ to Pollensa, the next pueblo (town) on the northward track of the ‘Camina per Mallorca.’ Miguelito and I jump on the idea and convince Pato it’s the only thing to do. This day is close to as long mileage-wise, but it’s almost all downhill valley and flat country road walking. My feet are certainly feeling it as we amble into the small village around 3 and find the bus stop and a convenient bus to Palma at 3:30!

First night we spent in Arenal, a German and Dutch tourist dominated Hampton Beach type suburb of Palma, and stayed at the quality ‘Hostal Tierramar’ where we were provided with a bar and some solid information about the island. Friday we explored the city around the Catedral de Palma and even walked out of the main city a bit and climbed up to the Castillo de Bellver to catch some views and check out a castle. Yesterday evening was spent along the coast of the city.Over dinner Pato regaled us with stories of geology and the good life in Kansas. So awesome.

-Nick