(Mallorca is way back in the Balarec islands so this post is a bit of a time warp)
Mallorca is the “middle” island of the Balearics and it is the largest island of the chain. Porto Colom was the only port city we stopped at on the island of Mallorca. (Pronounced “May-York-ah”). I previously posted a quick video of the dancers and Friday night party in Porto Colom. My salty dog story also took place on this island.
I included some pictures of the cliffs surrounding the entrance to Porto Colom. The coast line was made of up sharp cliff drop-offs to the sea with a plateau at the top of the cliffs. Most of the shoreline was built-up with houses sitting on those cliffs. There is a great lighthouse at the entrance to the port, we did not get a chance to go visit that one.
One day we decided to rent a car to see the rest of the island. We walked to the car rental place after parking the dinghy. One serious mission we had in this port was to do laundry. We looked and looked and finally started asking where the lavanderia was. Everyone we talked to told us there was none here and that we had to drive to Manacor (big city about 50 kilometers away) to do laundry. We all found this pretty hard to believe because Porto Colom is a fairly good-sized town. At one house there were quattro matronly ladies sitting on a porch playing cards when we walked by. Surely they would know where the laundry was… We had a nice chat with them but in the end they told us Manacor for laundry as well.
We ended up at the car rental place and figured we could just drive the rental to Manacor to do the laundry if that was really the story. The rental place had a lot of tiny cars on the lot. Most of them did not really look like we would fit in them. We are a larger people than the average Spaniard. They had a Fiat Doblo on the lot that looked like it would fit us better. It was kind of like a mini SUV thing. They are used quite a bit here as delivery vehicles. We decided to take it. Charlie did the paperwork so he got to drive, I was the back seat navigator, Don sat in the front and operated the virtual brakes on his side of the car. The rental guy knew right where the lavanderia was (around the corner) so in the morning when we picked up Doblo, we dropped the laundry off on the way out of town. Sometimes we are just a model of efficiency.
The rental place gave us a nice cartoon-like map with three “tours” on it. One was a winery tour, one was olive grove tour and the last was the shoe factory tour. These are the things that Mallorca is famous for. When I say cartoon-like, I mean there were big colored numbers at locations on the map that corresponded to the approximate location of the tour stops. There was a handy look-up table on a section of the map that gave the address as well, so as the navigator I figured we were set.
As it turns out, each big colored number actually spanned about 7 kilometers. There were no street signs anywhere. None. Never saw anything that looked like a street sign except on major highways. But, I knew I could count on The Google if I had to so I was not so concerned.
We began our search for the olive grove in earnest by locating an intersection of roads that formed a triangle around the big cartoon number. The village the intersection was in had tiny little narrow roads with the walls of houses right at the edge of the street. If you opened a door to a house it could get hit by a passing car. We drove around town a few times trying to locate the road we thought would lead to the olive grove. Road signs just did not exist. There were no clues in town to the location of the road on the map or anything that looked like olive grove. Finally we gave up in town and headed on down the road. We were in farm country now and I happened to glance a small wooden sign near the ground with one of the words of the name of the vineyard hand written on it. It was right by a driveway-like road so I figured we may have somehow stumbled onto the right place.
The road started to wind it’s way up a valley passing many houses and farms. We eventually passed through concrete gate posts and the road narrowed to single lane double-track gravel road. It began a series of switchbacks climbing up and up. Charlie was doing a great job of not getting us killed. The road dropped off steeply on one side and had rocky outcroppings on the other. I don’t know what we would have done if we had met another vehicle. Eventually, we began to see olive trees!
We were still climbing and climbing up this hill and going past many groves of olive trees now. The “soil” they were growing in was basically small rocks on the surface. It reminded me of large stone gravel. An extensive system of irrigation hoses, cisterns and pumping stations were in place to support the olive trees.
The road continued to get more narrow and more steep and Doblo was brushing the bushes now it was so narrow. We had been driving on this road now for close to an hour and began to wonder where this place was. We found out soon when we ran into a giant padlocked gate. We checked the clock. 1:10 PM, dang, siesta time. Everything in this country shuts down for no reason except a nap at 1 PM. We missed it by 10 minutes. We could either wait for three hours on this gravel road or go try to find the next one. We voted to attempt a turn-around and keep moving. The turn-around was easier said than done but we made it and slowly worked our way back down the mountain.
We got back onto the main road and continued our journey. The road took us up the other side of the valley that we had just climbed very slowly. We stopped and took some pictures of the distant olive groves we had just visited. The lighter colored trees in the next few pictures are the olive trees. The hills are all terraced to help retain the growing fields.
The road continued to lead us further up into the mountains. We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant located at the top of a major pass. It was a great little pizza place with fantastic views. The terrain changed to steep, rocky and very rugged mountains as we neared the coast. The views from a little ice cream stop dug into the side of the mountain were fantastic.
Originally we intended to make it to a town with a monastery in it as a goal for travel in this direction. The name of the town is Lluck. After Charlie explained to me that the name was pronounced “Yuck” I lost some desire to go all the way over there, I don’t know exactly why, I just did. We took a slightly quicker route and bypassed Lluck.
We still wanted to find an olive processing plant, I am very curious about the process of preparing olives for consumption. I’ve heard that it is complicated and involves a lot of harsh chemicals. We headed South towards Soller in search of Olive grove number seven on our cartoon map. Fornalutx was our target village. We arrived to a beautiful old town with streets not much wider than Doblo. I’m glad Charlie was driving. Again, we drove all around on these tiny roads looking for some sign to the olive grove. There were no street signs anywhere.
I had the address from the map so I fired up The Google to get some help. It was one of the first time that Google has failed me. They were probably having the same issue with street names that we were. I have no idea how the mail works here. Needles to say I was a bit disappointed with that situation. But it was a fun drive around a neat little village. The only time I got a little nervous was when we had to pass a guy on his horse on the narrow roads. I think the horse did better than me.
Continuing South we drove through the big city of Palma. It is the largest city on the island and is a real city with a downtown and everything. We did not stop and just drove around the marina area and checked it out. We left Palma on a major road heading across the Southern edge of the island. We hit a couple of the bigger cities along the way and the salt plant was part of this leg of the drive. (Previous post).
Overall we had a great tour around the island even though we never found an olive processing plant. We still have not found one and the productions of these wonderful olives is still a mystery to me.