Days 28-32: Palma de Mallorca

Sparreise 4. In German, it literally means "Travel Savings 4" and it's travel operator lingo for a tour package where you are guaranteed a four-star hotel but the actual hotel you will be staying at is a surprise. The tour operator gets a valuable wildcard which they can use to fill vacancies at needed hotels at the last minute, and the traveler gets anywhere from 10-20% off the cost of the package. Since I love surprises, I took the Sparreise 4 package and ended up at the Gran Vista hotel in Can Picafort on the east coast of Mallorca. At first I was a little disappointed that I would be about 1.5 hours away from the main town on the island, Palma, but in the end it turned out to be one of the best things that happened to me.

In my first day on the island, as I basked in the gorgeous 80 F weather with clear blue skies and fluffy white clouds, I was struck by how much like California Mallorca was. The weather was a bittersweet reminder of Southern Cali, the rugged North Shore of the island could have been a stretch of Big Sur, and I never realized just how much California borrowed from Spanish architecture. For the first time on the entire trip, I felt the pangs of homesickness. And then I realized, I'm on vacation in Palma de Mallorca - screw the homesickness!!!

If I ended up near the main town of Palma, it would've been easy for me to wander around the streets and stay in the city the whole time, but since there was really very little to do in Can Picafort besides sit on the beach, I decided to rent a bike and explore the island a little. If a mad scientist could custom design a paradise for bicyclists, he would have designed it exactly like Palma de Mallorca. With choices of flat terrain or challenging hills and trails and boardwalks that crawl lazily along the beach, biking is one of the best ways to take in the island.

With my shiny red bike, I explored up the coast to Port d'Alcudia and its craggy coastline, around Pollenca with its bucolic countryside, Alcudia with its quaint Old Town and Roman ruins, Cala San Vicente with its gorgeous private cove and beaches and all the way up to the Cap de Formentor. The latter was a grueling 20km, ~350 vertical meter climb up a mountain under the pounding sun. I have to admit, I simply was not able to ride the whole way and had to switch off walking parts of the way. But one way or the other I made it and was rewarded with a spectacular view. If I had gone home right there, the entire trip to Mallorca would have been worth it. Lucky for me, I didn't.

While it can be argued that biking around the beautiful island of Mallorca is a worthwhile activity in and of itself, it had its limitations. For one thing, the island is too big to cover on bike and many of the best attractions were at least a 2-3 hour ride away from my hotel. This meant that I only had a couple hours of daylight to enjoy my destination before I had to head back - I really didn't feel like getting caught somewhere I didn't know my way around in the dark, especially as the Mallorcans seem to have something against street signs. For another thing, there was the little matter of the fact that I haven't been to the gym in over a month and was way out of shape. The worst part about riding 50-60 miles a day is getting back on the bike the next morning when your entire butt is one giant bruise!

And so, I decided to rent a car for my last day on the island so that I could cover a little more ground and see more sights. Of course, that goal was based on two primary assumptions. The first being that driving around a lazy resort island shouldn't be too hard and the second being that I could drive an average of 70-80 kph (about 40 mph). Hmmm, sounds pretty innocuous, right?! Let's examine assumption number one.

When I picked up my Nissan Micra rental car, I groaned as I realized that almost every car in Europe is manual transmission. Yeah that's right, the type of transmission that I don't know how to drive!!! The rental agent was no help as he spoke almost no English, so I did the only thing I could and went to the nearest internet cafe and printed out directions on how to drive a stick shift. The first 5 minutes were brutal, as I had to 1) get the car out a tightly parked parallel parking spot, 2) cross the busiest pedestrian street in the whole town and 3) go three blocks up a hill with stops signs at every intersection to get to the main road. My heart raced and I was shaking every second of the ordeal as I endured kids running in front of the car, stalls on the hill and angry drivers honking at me. I finally found a quiet section of street to pull over and I parked the car, a nervous mess.

My first instinct was to walk right back down the hill and return the keys to the rental company. I mean, what the hell was I thinking - was I really going to attempt to learn to drive stick shift on my own without a mentor/coach, in a country where I couldn't speak the language or fully understand the road signs and where my insurance wouldn't cover me for a cent?! But even as I pondered the insanity of the proposition, I knew I had to. This was my vacation, and I wasn't about it to let it squeak by quietly. I gathered up my nerve and for the next half hour, I practiced starting the car, driving it 100 feet, then reversing it 100 feet. People walking by must have thought I was nuts, but I didn't care. Then I found a quiet block to drive around and around and around. After about an hour's total practice, I held my breath and headed out to the main street. Amazingly, I made out to the highway without incident and soon was even upshifting and downshifting! WAHOO! I WAS DRIVING STICK!!! I paused for a second to look down my shirt. Sure enough, I had grown a few new chest hairs :-)

Armed with my newfound virility, I was cruising the roads with a giant smile on my face, in the classic pimp pose - left palm at the top of the steering wheel, left hand on the shifter - and feeling like I could conquer the world. But the gods saw my hubris. And they were not pleased. I checked my map and saw that I was supposed to make a turn in the next town, but as I approached the town, I saw no signs for any interchange. Instead, the sparsely driven small country highway headed directly into the town and turned into a two lane surface street with moderate traffic. And then the unthinkable happened - the two lane street turned into a narrow one lane alley and I found myself at the top of a hill at a stop sign, with cars behind me. And these weren't just any narrow alleys either, these were some windy old school medieval streets with no sidewalks, designed for horses!! The next 10 minutes were a blur and I don't know how I did it, but I made it out of that impossible warren and even managed to find the highway I needed. But only to find I was almost out of gas! I drove the next 15 minutes with the AC turned off, sweating like a pig and holding my breath as I apologized to the gods for my former hubris. But I guess I had passed all the gods' test, as they finally saw fit to bless me with a gas station - PHEW! And they also rewarded my hard work with some amazing weather - the day before I was really pissed to see that the European weather system had followed me to Mallorca with clouds and thunder storms, so the perfect weather was even sweeter in comparison. A little more humble, I made it to my destination and over the next few hours, learned to pretty much drive the car normally although it certainly wasn't pretty.

My first stop was the town of Portocristo in the southeast of the island. As though the beautiful rocky bay with its sandy beach and topless sunbathers wasn't enough, Portocristo is also home to the Cuevas del Drach (Dragon Caves), my ultimate destination. The caves are one of the top attractions on the island, and they don't disappoint. The effect of the caves, impressive on their own, is enhanced by world-class lighting design which accentuates the drama of the cave formations. Particularly creepy was the floor in parts of the cave which were oddly aquamarine in color. It took me a while to realize I was looking at water which was crystal clear and perfectly still. As the tour processed through the caves, I couldn't resist humming Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" under my breath. At the end of the tour, you come to the shore of a huge subterranean lake (something like 500 yards long, one of the largest subterranean lakes in the world), where they perform a classical music concert. When I first heard about the concert, I thought it would be tacky tourist drivel, but it was really very well done. Not only was the music well-performed (and not to brag but you're talking to someone who has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, so I know my stuff), but the presentation created a surrealistic and magical ambiance. I highly recommend the caves to anyone visiting Mallorca.

My next stop was the Torrent de Pareis, on the North Shore of the island. According to the map, it was about 70-80km away, which should take about 1.5 hours max to reach by my second assumption, right? Of course my assumption didn't take into account the fact that the last section was 20-30km of harrowing hairpin switchbacks up, over and down the island's northern Tramuntana mountain range. We're talking about something straight out of a BMW commercial. In a car I just learned how to drive. The mountains would end up taking me an extra hour to drive over and I soon approached a point of no return. The problem was, I had to return the bike by 7pm and the car by 8pm. With my late start and driving lessons, I found myself at the top of the mountains around 6pm with signs showing about 10km left to go. If I kept driving, I probably would not make it back in time and the worst part was that my flight left at 8am the next morning so I wouldn't even be able to fix things in the morning. Do I play it safe and turn back or keep going and get in who knows what kind of trouble? I took a deep breath and thought about how much pain I had been through that day and I was damned if I was going to be denied. The adventure continues!

I arrived at the Torrent de Pareis at about 6:30pm and rushed through, snapping pictures like mad so I could say I had been there and get back on the road. But the Torrent de Pareis doesn't care if you're in a terrible rush, it refuses to not be admired in its full glory. And so I stood at the mouth of the Torrent and stopped snapping pictures for 5 seconds. But in that five seconds, time stopped and a tear almost came to my eye as I witnessed the wonder of the place. The absolute scale and majesty. The perfect tranquility and spirituality. When I travel, I enjoy many attractions, from cathedrals to bridges to rivers to towers to statues and memorials. But I always reserve a special place in my heart for wonders of nature, and the Torrent de Pareis went from being an almost-missed attraction to one of my top all-time natural wonders. And then time started again, and I rushed back to my car with yet a new challenge - get out of the mountains before sunset! Those narrow switchbacks weren't something you wanted to be navigating in the dark. I finally made it back to Can Picafort at 8:30pm and it turned out the car rental place was still open and didn't blink an eye that I was half an hour late. The bike rental place was a little more annoyed but I weaseled my way out of any charges.

The next morning as I sat on the bus back to the airport, I felt true regret to be leaving. Of all the places I had been so far on this trip, I never had a problem leaving, but I hadn't even left Mallorca yet and I was already missing it. There was so much more to see, and I wished I had a few more days. In the end I was comforted by the intuition that, yes, I would be back here someday.

Sparreise 4. In German, it literally means "Travel Savings 4", but for me it now means a whole lot more.