We hired a car for a few days

Majorca has two mountainous regions each about 70 km in length. They are on the north western and eastern side of the island. The roads are excellent (probably based upon the need to get the huge number of tourists from A to B asap). In fact you get a feeling of overall posterity everywhere.

Going through the mountains was fun – quite a few hairpin bends and some narrow stretches - especially when coaches come against you at breakneck speed.

Ha! We ‘almost’ made it to Cape Formentor - but the road got decidedly narrow and at one point had partially collapsed next to the sheer cliff drop. We are tough hard-nosed explorers – so we decided it was ‘time to turn around’!

The views are spectacular and the valleys very fertile and full of citrus growing trees. There are even reported to be over 4 million olive and almond trees on the island. It’s is no wonder then that the markets offer hundreds of ways of serving olives! One of our favorite Chez Timeless starters ended up being Olives stuffed with anchovies and herbs.

Majorca is full of sailboat friendly coves and beaches complete with great restaurants and the interior towns have great architecture and community plazas perfect for a coffee stop. If we sound like we loved Majorca then you are right. If we wanted to settle done in a warm climate then Majorca has a lot to beat. All the towns and villages seem to have large churches over-powering (dominating even) the homes and residents, their extravagant and ornate interiors vying with the neighboring town for status (Church leaders really know how to spend money wisely, huh).

As we toured the island by car we obviously kept and eye open for potential anchorages.

We actually found two good ports on the eastern side of the island; both would well work for us we sailed closer to Minorca (Menorca).

In the end we decided to reserve a berth at Porto Colom for two nights.

The area was going to be good for walking, there were several nice restaurants and it was a short 35 sail from Palma. The sail to Minorca would then only be 50 miles.

Overall the weather as far as sailing is concerned has been very mixed. We are late October remember.

It’s been pretty well impossible to leave port so anchoring in any of the Calas was not practical.

Like Ibiza, you fall in love with this island and we could have stayed a lot longer than the 10 days. But we took the weather window to move around to the East coast before moving on to Menorca.