Las Islas

My last trip: Balearic Islands (Spain): Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca

our intention: small group backpacking through the islands.
what happened: 8 people urban camping/being homeless for 6 days, this is our story.

June 13th, 2008-Day 1
6/8th of our group went to a Radiohead concert on the 12th and didn't return until late that night, so getting up on the 13th at 5am sucked, especially because I was in charge of the troops, mom status. Anywho, we rallied the troops and made it to the bus station by 630am or whatever time it was and fell right back asleep on our 5 hour journey to a town south of Barcelona named: Valencia... rad city. We spent the afternoon hangin out in the cool park and picnic-ing and all that, until catching another bus at 9pm to a city 2 hrs south of Valencia called: Dénia. This night was interesting, basically we just needed to find a place to sleep for a few hours until our boat left for the first island: Ibiza. (Still following me?) If you didn't know already... Urban Camping=WAY TOO HARD with 8 people. Three troopers ended up on the beach illegaly and the other 5 of us found a sketchy little spot, on unoccupied land in between 2 houses in the middle of a bush. literally. Adam and Josh had found this place and when they came back to get us they tried not to freak us out too much but did mention that we might have some neighbors, aka bums sharing the bush or the next one over. well, paranoid as ever, I didn't sleep much and clutched my passport and wallet in my hand all night.

Flag on top of the Valencian castle. Just showin some love to my favorite country ever =)

That's my friend Elyssa.. This is a really cool, oversized slide park, for adults! Super fun way to pass the time!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this already, but Europe really knows how to build parks for kiddies. I'm the queen of the playground, claro.

Arts and Sciences Museum in Valencia, really neat building!

Urban Camping. Sitting around on the sidewalk with all of our stuff while Adam and Josh searched for a "campsite." I'm sure no one suspected anything..

And that is where we ended up in Dénia the 1st night, middle of a bush

June 14th, 2008-Day 2
Waking up to sun and a wet sleeping bag isn't the most pleasant thing, UNTIL you make it to the beach and get to see this:

and this is me enjoying it:

Continuing on with day 2... We still had about 3 hours until our boat left so we got some much needed coffee and 8 lack of sleep zombies made it to our oversized and horribly utilized boat just in time....Boat ride was about 5 hours to Ibiza, we attempted to sleep a little, since we were 2 nights behind really, but only got a small nap. Here is our boat:

Unfortunately, once the island came into view, my camera's life ended. It was a sad moment, but I realized it is time to move on, just like my latest venture in life is slowly approaching it's own end. (So from here on out, these fotos are stolen from Deja, Adam and Ross) Back to cool things: Ibiza is a rad city. We contemplated doing the clubbing thing, if you don't already know about Ibiza's reputation, go look it up. So we took a bus to the other side of the city, less populated and city-like and again, the sun was setting so Josh and Adam had to hurridly (word?) find a place to sleep. This time, we got lucky, real lucky. We also got to do some rock climbing to get there... 18 years of living in Grass Valley and river hiking has repaid itself. Looky:


So we ended up camping on the top of an abandoned concrete house. Notice the pool of still fresh water, a mosquitos dream, right? so jokingly, over a bottle of tequila and some wine, the 8 of us had a silly bet of who would have the most bites in the morning..

June 15th, 2008- Day 3
Some people didn't think much of it. However, I woke up the next morning very groggily hearing Deja, Alex and Adam saying things like, man in the iron mask (like the movie with Leo-love) and elephant man. Then I decided to open my eyes......

campsite

And poor little Deja won the bet:

THANK GOD she was laughing not crying, because, for 5 hours I couldn't NOT laugh, know what I mean? The swelling went down that day and she looks more beautiful then ever, but it sure gave us one hell of an ab workout. So, finally, we got a day to relax instead of waiting around to move to a new place. We ended up camping that night on top of that house, right? Turns out we had an incredible ocean view.. so we hiked back down for another sunrise, then made our way to the beach below and spent a lovely day in the sun, where we all got pretty toasty (now people believe me when I tell them I'm a native american). So the beach was beautiful:



And that is 4 of us on a little zodiac put-put boat.. we rented one and went deep sea diving, just kidding but we nervously "cove" dived out in the sea. It was incredible and the mediterranean was blue-er then blue. Here are some fotos of us on the boat. Adam and I were both going for the wet dog look:

Hey mom and dad!

That same day, we took a night boat from Ibiza to Mallorca, which was amazing because we got a solid 5 hours of sleep INSIDE and gave our faces a safe break from the open air buggies.

June 16th, 2008-Day 4
Yet again, another amazing sunrise as we stepped off the boat in Palma de Mallorca:

This was just another day of exploring really, because we didn't really have an intentions of staying in Mallorca. It is the biggest of the 3 islands, and more big-city then the others too... we were trying to avoid big-city due to the sketchy "campsite" in Dénia (remember or are you already lost?) Anyways, Palma turned out to be a really cool city. Big, but really cool still. I took a nap on a park bench. Went to an open-air market, got some green SEEDLESS (hard thing to find in Spain) and a mango that cost 5 euro which was pretty delicious and we spent some time doing this because it was a beautiful day and we were tired of lugging all of our home around, sabes?..

So, our final boat ride left the city of Alcúdia, Mallorca at 5pm and we finally arrived in Ciutadella, Menorca a las 7:40pm. Here we had some minor complications that worked out just fine. Starting the night we were leaving Ibiza, Alex hadn't been feeling so well. So in Mallorca she stayed near the bus station and napped in a park as we explored. Then we took a bus from Palma de Mallorca to the other side of the island: Alcúdia where we had a few more hours to waste as well, so we got a weird American-Mexican meal at some place where everything on the menu had an American State attached to the end: Nachos South Dakota, and things like that. Well unfortunately for Alex she had been literally having the worst diarrhea of her life and was starting to get a fever in about 88 degree weather, so while we finally found her some shade, we were able to find an internet cafe, go purchase our last boat tickets, and email our dad's because we had all missed Father's day that Sunday. After an hour-ish at the beach, we collected our things, boarded the boat and 2.40 hours later landed in Menorca, like I already told you. Our plan was to catch a bus at 7.45 (the last bus) for a town called: San Tomás where 2 of our other friends had been camping for 4 nights, instead of traveling through the islands like us. We lost 2 people along the way so the 6 of us were on a mission to find Ross and Marc. Well Alex was starting to get really sick, so we booked her a hotel (which turned out to be a good thing, she slept for 2 days straight, her fever broke twice and she had a bathroom all to herself). We missed the last bus at 7.45 so we alternatively took a bus to a differente town that started with an F and from there took a taxi to San Tomas where Ross and Marc were waiting for us. Then, as the sun was going down, they took us on an 1.5 hike through the mountains to their perfect campsite. They kept explaining to us how awesome this beach was (beach camping without tents= perfectly legal in menorca) because it was pretty much their private beach minus a few hikers throughout the day and yadiyadi. Finally, an hour and a half later, tired as hell and sweating like a beast, we arrived to our final destination. But at night time, we really could only see the cove by moonlight:


June 17th, 2008-Day 5
And so happily we all threw down our things and went night swimming in the beautiful waters. Then in the morning we woke to a surprise of how beautiful really, our cove was:



That day was nice and relaxing finally, a day without travel.. We snorkled and rock climbed and rock jumped and swam out to the deep depths of the Mediterranean. No one got sun burned too bad, we are all just a little crispy now. We spent one more night there with a campfire and all. Here is our campsite and fire:

June 18th, 2008-Day 6
We packed up shop, hiked back into the town of San Tomás, had our first cup of coffee in a few days and caught a bus to another town called: Mahón where we were to fly back to Barcelona. We tripped around, ate some lunchy and stumbled upon a gin distillery where you could take shots and taste all their flavors (chamomille, cinammon, peppermint, chocolate, coffee, etc...) for FREEEE so we did that. Looky: (That's Alex in the glasses with her tongue out, she was feeling better by the last day thank goodness.. Sebastian is the one with the gnarly beard, he is Adam's friend from home and on the other side is Hillary and then Me of course)




Lastly, Deja took a "parents" foto for me since, (if you remember) my camera's life was over. So here's me with a view of the Mahón port in Menorca.


Our plane didn't leave Mahón until 23:55h so we hung out until nighttime in the city, watched a little of the Greece/Spain EuroCup game and finally boarded our plane around 00:30h, damn airlines always running late. And by 3am we were all in a bed again, sleeping without fear of buggies landing on our faces and giving us a make-over to look like the elephant man or the man in the iron mask.

So quick review, in chronological order, here are the cities we traveled through on the Islands:

Valencia
Dénia
Ibiza City (Eivissa as they spell it)
Cala St. Vicent
Palma de Mallorca
Alcúdia
Ciutadella
F-name city
San Tomás
Mahón

The End.
4 more nights and then, as Mason Jennings says, "And there's a feelin in my heart, I can't explain, I'm coming home, I'm coming home, yaaaaaa"