sailing maloo: get out your land legs, mate!

after having done all the nescessary work to our beloved maloo, mark and i thought it was time for a little treat and time to get off the boat for a bit. so we hired a car and of we went to explore the island of mallorca - without any real plan and a rather superficial map. what a great way to go on adventure!

the first adventure was actually to pick up the car at the airport. we decided to ride our bikes out along the coast and then just to cut inland at the airport. part one( the coast) was beautiful - with a strong wind making huge seas, we fortunately didn't have to sail! - part two (cutting inland) had us going on the highway with our bikes...since then i know that what the spanish word "loco" means!

with a great new citroen berlingo we then went to port andratx, supposedly one of the nicest places in the med where all the rich and pretty are said to meet...well, not when we were there! but we saw a scary reminder of what can happen, when the seas get too high and you pull out of a bay too late. a rather new 62ft catamaran must have broken the mooring of the buoy as the swell was rocking the yacht up and down. the cat went straight on to the rocks and a couple of days of waves completely ground it to pieces.

with our heads full of horror scenarios we had to distract ourselves and went up to soller and further through some crazy winding roads full with bike riders and busses. with the roads hardly wider then our car we had a few near heart attacks there (and please mind, that this is written by an austrian girl! - so you get the picture) - bike rider meets bus meets berlingo....not good! (as mark put it)

but the landscape is breathtaking and (for me) rather unexpected to be seen on mallorca.

we went up the coast to pollenca and drove by alcudia only to find "shindig" of andrew and chele there, had a quick drink and drove back home to palma.

the next day had us explore the south west further. we drove through arenal on a rainy morning, which is a very scary thing to do! - and sat in the sun in the afternoon in calla figuera (well worth a visit) and watched the ducks.

what a great way to "waste" time!

generally mallorca is a beautiful island - even though you find those hotel-resort-bunker towns. these places however can be avoided...the only issue is: this sland is just run over by tourists!;) being part of the problem we prepare to leave!

as the winds seem to calm down and it is time to get moving, we plan to stock up on provisions and move on by sunday. at the moment we hope only to make a quick stop on ibiza, as we want to make our way down the spanish coast as fast as possible.

we hope to do a inland trip to morocco to see marrakech hence traveling fast past ibiza. at the moment we´re not sure if we travel down to rabat and leave our boat there, or maybe even leave it in gibraltar and just move over by ferry (advantage being we don't have to clear into morocco which apparently can be a bot nerve wrecking) time and winds will tell us! but till then we still have a few miles to cover!

so...sails out!