knee deep in sheep (and other wildlife stories)

Palma at night:



After a couple of nights in Palma I was done with it and decided to take this antique train

up to a small town in the north of the island called Sóller, where I had what is possibly the best hotel room so far...18 euros for a double bed, a giant palm tree outside my window, and a sink. Perhaps my standards have gotten low but I nearly squealed out loud when the door opened to reveal this little paradise. I ended up staying there for four nights.
The best part (and here I'm being sarcastic) was the built in wake up call. Every morning around 7:30 or 8 two of the world's most adorable charming sweet little children went out to play soccer in the courtyard under my window. This game usually involved slamming a large red rubber ball against the ground, the tables, the chairs, the walls, the doors, the windows, the dogs, and against each other. Then the trash talk would start.
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"
"GAAAAAAAA!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGH!""
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"
And so on. Their vocabularies were somewhat limited.
After the kids went in for breakfast the dogs took advantage of a little alone time to chase each other and make strange dog sounds in the courtyard.

On my second day I did a really nice hike to a nearby beach in a cove, the Cala de Deia. It took about three hours to get there and maybe an hour and three quarters to get back. I blame this on the fact that I could not stop taking photographs and also that I took several wrong paths on the way there.
Hey. If you were at a fork in the road and one of the paths was blocked by a giant white horse, which way would you go? I opted for the path of least resistance. It was the wrong choice.
Elsewhere you have to walk through farmers' fields and pastures and someone had taken it on himself to post a sign indicating that the destination was in the opposite direction of where it actually was. Thank god for Germans on the trail with detailed maps.









Finally I found the place...I was expecting naked swimming (Lonely Planet says so! It must be true, all day every day!) but found a few hikers and families hanging out on the garbage strewn rocks. The water was beautiful and extremely powerful - you can't see from my photos but the waves were really rough and the water was pounding the rocks so hard you could hear them boom.




A couple of days later I did another hike which took me in the opposite direction up into the hills through terraced sheep grazing areas.

I walked past one field containing a giant donkey which Hee Hawed at me as I passed. I may be a farmgirl but that was a first.


At one point I found myself surrounded by sheep who were rather surprised by and unhappy about my presence. Most of them ran off ahead while some ran down the steep side of the hill. One little lamb was caught all along with me on the trail and it couldn´t get down the side. So it ran ahead of me bleating what sounded like "MAAAAAA!!!" which made me feel bad but what could I do...it was getting dark and I wasn´t about to hang out there all night. It would turn around every few minutes and glare at me and yell for its mother and then run off ahead again.


Later as I walked home I saw a duck attack and kill a duckling. It was extremely disturbing and I'm not quite sure what I saw...all I know is that the duck grabbed the duckling in its beak and shook it and pecked at it until it wasn't moving anymore. Even after the thing was clearly dead the duck kept coming back every few minutes to go at it again. An older woman walked past with two small children and they stopped to watch the ducks...I found myself cringing thinking "please don't see please don't see" but luckily this was in between attacks.

After leaving Sóller I went to the Cuevas del Drach near Porto Cristo on the east side of the island. These are a massive system of caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites and one of the the worlds largest underground lakes. It takes about 30 minutes to walk through the caves and there are probably a couple of hundred people on each tour. At the edge of the lake an amphitheatre of sorts has been set up and everyone files in to sit on benches and listen to a brief concert of classical music played by musicians on a boat floating through the lake. It´s all very Phantom of the Opera. Actually the music was kind of nice but they should not make it mandatory because Í'm pretty sure that a large chunk of the audience was not feeling the vibe. Like the Three Stooges in front of me for example...a beefy father and son team who actually smacked one another upside the head and giggled as the concert was going on. Alas nobody was poked in the eye.
After the music ended we were all ferried across the lake on small white boats and then exited. As I was waiting for the bus to take me back to Palma I was staring into space, lost in thought...I heard the ladies beside me giggling and when I actually focused on what was in front of me saw a massive peacock staring at me. Staring at me and taking a large peacock dump.
Later a bus ran over the poo and the ladies laughed harder than ever.