Squid Ink: The Book of Costa Blanca – a Spanish travelogue

Curso Dos

Mallorca

A year and a half later, we go back to Soller and rent a small finca called the Casita Establo. To translate, I'm sleeping in an old sheep barn or maybe an old donkey stable converted into a rural guest house. I'm not sure if this counts as improvement over sleeping in the back of our VW van, but it is shades of things to come. I've been coerced back to Mallorca, of course for the climbing and by the promise of blooming red poppy fields and sunny spring weather.

The first morning the sun tries to get through the steaming window of the Finca Establo and it's a good opening for two weeks of sunshine. The island air feels like a cool California morning in Lajolla despite the mountains and desert cactus. Promises are delivered and fields of brilliant rojo poppies scream for an artist's paintbrush every day that we travel around the island.

The sun rises over the Serra de Tramuntana and lights up the orange valley of Soller and the rows of trees are heavy with lemons. Small black and brown birds flit between the branches of the trees in the lemon groves on the gravel road into our finca. The birds look feather light compared to the large, heavy lemons making the branches droop. An incredible loaf of juicy lemon bread begs to be baked here. A fat gray cat waits at our lamp post and he stays there all week watching those feathers fly in the lemon trees. Potted geraniums line the porch and as the morning lulls into its Spanish rhythm, it feels like you could stay for a long time watching the donkey go round and round the dirt field pulling its orange cart. Why does that donkey go around that small dirt plot? That is a burning cultural question that I have no one to ask. I never go on those trips where the cultural guides are included. I will guess he is a donkey in training or maybe this is some kind of Balaeric seeding method.

Mallorca charms me this time and I am lulled by lovely days climbing and hiking in the Mediterranean sun and by long Spanish dinners. I try fish in every variation, grilled derada with flaky almond crusts and lenguado, a sole like fish, with a butter and garlic skin. Meals go down heavenly with the deep earthy Crianza and light tempranillos. The salmon fillets get bathed in a simple sauce of naranja, with the oranges from the valley. The salads come out of the kitchen made with incredible glops of Roquefort dressing that I'm sure are meant for islanders like Michael Douglas and Claudia Schaeffer. In the spring, the thick white asparagus melts on your tongue marinated in deep yellow olive oil and garlic.

I am beginning to see why the Spanish royal family summers at their palace in Palma. We may be looking for the least expensive restaurants and sleeping in an old stable, but the postcard perfect cobblestone trails and steep limestone crags make us feel like we found Camelot. Sunshine is a beautiful elixir.

We spend time walking in the narrow streets of Soller and hanging in the Placa de la Constitucio. The square is surrounded by cafes and a hardware-like store with gardening tools, assorted nails and hair dryers in the display window. The best café con leche, or maybe the easiest to obtain, is at the German bar where they happily speak to us in English. Their café reeks of an international cool and the music rocks out of place across from the church of Sant Bartomeu. I have never had naranja natural as good anywhere. This makes the fresh orange juice in Phoenix in the winter taste like Orangeade. In the Soller Valley, the pastel zumo de naranja tastes more a like strong tangerine juice with a Starburst kicker. I don't really spend much time at the covered market where the locals shop. It smells too much of the fisherman's catch and I'm not yet used to the reddish slabs of sausage and Spanish ham hanging at eye level. Old European fish markets still smell like dead fish-call me American. I'm sure a good chef would dig this market.

The vintage electric Orange Train brings tourists from the port at Palma, the capital of Mallorca, to Soller, and every time it empties, the square gets noisy and crowded with English speaking voices. This is a surprise as it seems that the island has been overrun by German tourists, rather than Brits. No Americans in the lot, but the train to Soller is a perfect activity for package tourists. They head for the gift shop and keep their heads down reading their brochures before they hurry back to the wooden open air train. They do make me feel that I'm missing some vital piece of historical note, but alas, I admit I travel for the quality of the light and sun and get my history happenstance when I come upon a Virgin Mary Shrine dug into the side of a hill or find an ancient carved stone table and chairs in the middle of the forest. I like to feel it. I don't understand the Spanish or the Catalan that the islanders speak, but lucky for us the islands are a magnet for mass tourism from northern Europe and waiters often speak English or French as well as Spanish.

We spend a blissful family day at Sa Gubia because there is a mix of hard and easy routes and there is a mix of sun and shade. The hike in takes patience as short legs wants to stop and play or take a little snack break. We follow a track through an olive grove and through a dry arroyo. We hike so slow, we discover an old stone table and carved chairs set up in the bosque hidden by tree shadows and the slope of the hill. The history of these islands takes tomes of reading to comprehend, but this table conjures up all sorts of mystery meals. Romans lived on Mallorca and later moved to the neighboring island of Ibiza. Pirates roamed and raided the sea channels between Menorca and Mallorca. The Moors ruled for several hundred years before a Catalan King took over in 1200. Everybody has been here, Jews, Muslims, Christians, pirates, crusaders, farmers and fisherman. The idea of who might have carved the stone table elicits a great discussion of the simple life on the island. When you eat lunch the Mediterranean way-outside because it is primavera, well you just need a proper table.

The fluffy gray cat welcomes us home every night after climbing and he seems to have a few friends. It turns out that stray cats are emblematic of Mallorca much like the feral cats on Hawaii. I'm guessing they too came over by ship. In the small town of Deia, the beach becomes our bay of cats and we go back almost every day to look at the skinny black kittens living their lives near the fishing boats at Cala de Deia. Only the complications of flying with cats keeps me from bringing them home to the good American life. We sit under a bamboo roof overlooking the beach and drink something lemon and refreshing that must be the Spanish version of limoncello. Mostly, we watch the cats scurry under the boats. I do a steep hike out of the bay and discover the trail leads all the way back to Soller. It's a six mile route up and over groves of twisted olive trees and terraced walls with springs and shrines along the ruta.

Every day as we leave our establo, we pass a German real estate office. The temptation is just too great for the land conquering Americanos and we get maps and listing books. Next thing, we have an appointment with a real estate agent. My husband goes once without us and returns smitten and sure that he wants to buy an old ruin. The idea is to get land with a small structure that we could renovate or add onto. Does everyone have this same dream? Is it planted into our genomes? This was before the euro had taken over in Spain and real estate prices were low, despite the German expat scene.

We can't afford a villa, we can barely afford a new tent, but the house we fall in love with actually has the chance for water and electricity. That's a bonus, I'm sales talked into believing. There is a stone building with high walls and the outlines of terraces and the land is flat on the Felanitx side of the island and full of cactus and oak like trees. All you can hear are sheep bells and a little old man herds his flock across the street in the tall grass. How cute is that?

The real estate agent is British and has family on the island and makes us feel all warm and fuzzy about that part of the island. All you can see are hilltop towns with whitewashed houses and the requisite church on top. So naturally, I want to buy something on that island just to feel like family and always have a view of the sea. We look at lots with dubious wells. Two adjoining lots have incredible views of the sea on a picturesque olive grove, but two sisters who own the other lot own the well. Maybe they will give us rights to the well, maybe not. You can never tell until the papers are made and the regional government has ruled on the property. We look at more lots thick with the tallest cactus I have since I visited Saguaro National Monument in Tuscon. They look magnificent next to the twisted olive trees and the fields of poppies. They also cover the doorways to the buildings that we peer into. Some of the buildings are no more than sheds and some are ruins turned into garages where you can see old tin paint cans, cracked pictures and maybe a rusty sink waiting to be reinstalled.

We leave Mallorca shortly after our real estate tour. We spend a few nights sleeping in a beautifully renovated olive mill and found some restaurants near Orient where we sit for two to three hours a night eating incredible dinners and chatting it up in English with restaurant owners. The conclusion to that learning excursion is that the Spanish take their meals very seriously. Just as you have always heard about France and their love affair with food, the Spanish cling to their food traditions too and it is a reminder of how hurried we become as Americans to dine quickly. Lunch is the epicenter to the rhythm of the Spanish day. At lunch, and again at the late dinner, waiters bring amazing tapas while you wait for your food and find you the best bottles of wine for your price and then they leave the room and leave you to slowly enjoy every bit, every sip and every moment of your family or your dinner comrades. It takes a very long time to get the check, which is so difficult for the way we are trained to wait as Americans.

We have pined for that house on its cactus ridden lot ever since we left that idyllic Spanish island. And, of course, I would like to go back to that restaurant that I cannot remember the name of in Orient.