tourist heaven

Looking for an international experience, without leaving all the comforts of home? A place where everybody speaks your language, whether it be English, German, French, or Italian, where you can bake on the beach and then eat fish-n-chips while listening to all your favorite radio stations from London, where you won’t even miss the Freiburg-Frankfurt football (soccer) game, or the Ryder Cup in Wales? Where there is an abundance of cheap hostels, run by friendly locals? Then come to Cala d’Or, Mallorca’s exotic Cove of Gold, only an hour away from Palma’s international airport!

Choosing Cala d’Or as a place to launch, mainly due to its abundance of cheap hostels and the lack thereof in Santanyí and S’Alqueria Blanca, I arrived on Saturday, October 3^rd, and have since been livin’ it up, tourist-style.

First on my agenda: find the beach.

To get down to the water, I have to run the gauntlet of bars, restaurants, cafés, lounges, travel agencies, adventure sports tour operators, and kitsch shops.

Just what I was looking for!

Er… I thought we were in Spain?

Every town needs an Irish pub or three.

Aha! I spy water!

It’s for sale. I think I wouldn’t mind owning a yacht, especially one that’s been christened the Princess Tata.

The Wunderkind looks a little more spacious, though. I’ll take this one.

Another Cheeki Tiki lounge, after passing two more Irish pubs and a Deutsche Küche? Am I going in circles?

A tiny little passageway, but I think I see the ocean…

¡Bienvenida al mar mediterraneo!

There’s the beach, way down there. How did I walk past that? OK, walk back around the cove…

Amazing prickly pears!

Yessss! I made it! A lovely swim, a few hours reading La Casa de los Espíritus, chatting it up with Alex, a guy who tells me several times that he’s from Africa (although he never specified where—it’s a rather large place to be from) who tries to sell me a bracelet and declares we’re best friends, and did I come here alone? Where am I staying? You speak Spanish so well. You are very intelligent. What’s your name? Are you alone? I feel bad doing it, but say I am with a VERY LARGE group, and I’m not sure where we are staying, and thanks, but no thanks for the bracelet, although yes, I’m sure pink does go with my eyes.

I only feel bad because I’m going to be here for 8 months (well, hopefully not here in Cala d’Or—I hope to find an apartment in Santanyí or S’Alqueria Blanca), and although there were plenty of creepers in Quito, it was easier to avoid them in a city of 2+ million. Here, when the tourists leave there are maybe ?? people. I ever run into him again: Alex, perdón por haberte mentido, pero no seas tan creepy!

I head back for my hostel, watch the sunset’s glow on the whitewashed walls, eat a quality dinner of imported foods (I even asked if they had peanut butter, and said that I was American and was craving it, but since there are mainly German and English tourists here, Mallorca has yet to delight in the joy of Jif), and am content.

It was a beautiful weekend, but there are even better things on the way: I started my real job on Monday, and I’ve met the teachers and some of the kids that I’ll be working with; I’ve spoken to absolutely everyone in Spanish, even the people who obviously only speak English (lots of big hand gestures are useful) so even if I’m speaking in English all day in the schools, I know I can go outside and keep speaking Spanish to everyone else; I’m super excited to begin learning Catalan; “winter” (meaning it gets down into the 50s and 60s) is coming, meaning the tourists will all be going home (YES!!!); soon I’ll be buying a bicycle and finding a place to live a little away from the coast in a MUCH quieter area, in a town that is far more “real” than Cala d’Or; and I want to find a Catalan tutor, as well as a German conversation partner (the latter, at least, shouldn’t be hard to find around here)! With all of these things, I won’t be too sad to leave the holidaymakers’ pleasures in Cala d’Or—I can always come back when the beaches are emptier J