Mallorca (pronounced Mayorca as double LL’s in Spanish are pronouced like “y”) is one of the Balerica Islands in the middle of the Mediterranean. Knowing True East was being shipped to Mallorca we had visited the island briefly in February.
This time we returned with a goal of getting to know the island better as we first, waited for the boat to arrive and second, to wait for a weather window to cross up to Barcelona. For the first few days we stayed at the only dog friendly hotel we could find in the Palma area, a hotel full of cheap German tourists. Thankfully, we had all of our wonderful meals away from the hotel. The food here is great.
From our hotel, we first took two day trips in our rental car. Day one was around the west end of the island and up the north coast. This is the drive NOT TO MISS. Winding roads through terraced hillsides, steep cliff to the sea and wonderful small towns. The stone work is just as spectacular as the vistas. Just having visited Peru, we were struck by the similarity of the stone work and the terracing if the hillsides for agriculture. Our favorite port was Andraxt, a beautiful working harbor surrounded by restaurants and local shops and galleries. We would return there on True East a few days later. Port Valldemosa is a small seaside village with a single restaurant and one of most challenging roads we have ever seen dropping 2,000 feet in a series of switchbacks. Continuing on to Pollenca in the northeast corner we found a low end tourist enclave that did not encourage us to return.
The second day we headed across the 50 mile wide island on secondary roads returning to the Badia d’Alcidia at San Picafort. This is a beach front area with fine walkways and many British and German vacationers. On to Cap Farrutx with stop for lunch at the beautiful Cafe Casablanca in Betlam. Passing around the cape, we stopped at Cala Rajada with it’s fine harbor. Port Christo was our last stop for the day to enjoy one more Cana.
True East was unloaded on a Monday morning, we took her straight to our mooring at Pantalon Marina in Palma. Here we ‘tenderized’ in that we were smaller than the tenders of the megayachts that surrounded us. We spent the day cleaning up the boat and laying in some basic provisions. Based on the forecast, we wanted to wait a couple of days before crossing the 100 mile run to Barcelona.
Back in the car to explore the south side of the island. While there are many developed ‘urbanizations’, there are also vast areas along this coast that are completely undeveloped so it was kind of like driving the coast of Maine, out to the coast, back to the main road…over and over. We enjoyed San Rapida and Cala D’or, but otherwise found this to be the least interesting part of the island from the land side. We will return to this area by boat later in the summer.
As the weather cleared, we headed out on True East with an overnight stop at Port Andraxt and another at Soller. Both lovely ports. From Soller, it was straight run to Barcelona.
Click on the photo to see the album of this trip