Tuesday 12 August 2014

It's not all Beer for Breakfast around here, you know

cala barca iberostar santanyi porto petro mallorcaToday we had one simple plan: do the 2 hour boat trip in the morning and put me into the 'Maxi-Club' for the multi-sporting session in the afternoon.
cala barca holiday reosrt santanyi majorca family holiday resortSo we filled up on breakfast (I had salami, carrots and the usual fry-up) and got our 52 euros ready for the boat. I watched something called Magnum PI which was dreadfully corny but very funny. I also saw the A-Team dubbed into Spanish which simply does not do it Buford T Justice.
In good time we got to the headland where the boat stops. The 'Starfish' glass-bottomed catamaran was due to land at 1030 so we got there early and Jof waited by some Germans while us boys jumped rocks.
starfish glass bottomed catamaran boats mallorca balearic islands holiday reortWe discovered a whole new sea cave and saw the water-taxi arrive. We boarded by the gangplank shifting treacherously in the ocean swell and noted cheerfully that ex-premiership footballer Mr Robbie Savage has found a second happy career as boatman, plying the coasts of Mallorca.
It chuntered round 1 headland (a journey we could have walked in 11 minutes) and stopped at Cala Mondrago which is a double-headed inlet in a nature reserve. It has 2 decent beaches and the ship moored up in the middle and the waterslides were put down!
It's got 2 fixed ones at the back and a big inflatable one at the front. The queue for the blow-up one was way too long so we did the small ones a few times and then did some snorkelling. We went under the boat (it's a catamaran, remember) and saw the viewing windows.
starfish glass bottomed boats porto colom to cala figuera majorca spainstarfish glass bottomed catamaran mallorcaIn fact, we could see right through the inner and outer windows of the viewing room to the legs of the swimmers coming back from the inflatable slide on the outside of the boat. Then we snorkelled through a sea-tunnel which came out the other side of the promontory.
But the boat hooted its intention to depart so I got a tow from Bud and we got our stuff and disembarked, Mr Robbie Savage telling us to be ready at the mooring point at 1420.
This gave us a good couple of unexpected hours on the wide sandy beach so we snorkelled once more and made sandcastles and marvelled at the forgetful sunbathers without their costumes and had ham and cheese baguettes at the beach bar and got to the boat dead on time.
limestone arch sea erosion mallorca snorkel from starfish boat toursOnly it didn't go back to our hotel. It accidentally went west to attractive traditional fishing village Cala Figuera. Oh well, we said, we'll get off when it goes back again. And indeed, it dropped anchor right outside our hotel inlet for another swimming session and I got to go down the inflatable slide because so many people had got off and the queue was negligible.
fixed waterslide into mediterranean sea cala mondrago parc nacionalBut then Oh No It Didn't do what we expected, and steamed right past our hotel at its top speed of 10 knots and went bleedin' miles to Cala Esmerelda which was not in our planned itinerary.
undulating devonian strata limestone karst wea erosion mallorcaThen it hopped gradually back through every little cove and hotel complex (including Es Forti with its bijou fort that Henry the 8th would have laughed at, each time doing the same little patter "Cala Gran, choo choo, Cala Egos, choo choo, Porto Petro, choo choo", hootling vigorously to get the numerous snorkelers and rubber ring merchants out of the way of the landing stage) and then I asked nicely and I got to drive the boat home.
We trundled right past some very interesting-looking sea caves, more on these later.
holiday activities waterslide action starfish pleasure boat tours majorca"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board the Starfish Enterprise which will be stopping at 17 locations you've never heard of. Your driver today will be Mungleton!"
starfish touring pleasure boats iberostar cala barca santanyi majorcaWe got back at about 430 (6 hours on the boat) which put paid to afternoon Maxi-Club. I had so much sand in my pants I got a scratchy rash (just call me Tenderloin) and had to be severely creamed and lie in a cool dark room while Jof went to eat cake, sounds like so many college experiences yet to come.
starfish boats tour cala esmeralda figuera mondrago child in pilots cocpitI watched 'Kojak' but didn't understand it so did some more water-shooting until supper. During my shower I noticed that when I closed my eyes, my brain thought it was still rocking and rolling back on the pleasureboat. Incidentally, there was a centipede on my sponge: we put it out the window.
For supper I tried out octopus and cuttlefish, won't be doing that again. Some German children had stolen (nicht stollen) our idea of piling up deckchairs on the upper terrace to watch the entertainment so we took the next spot along.
boy with giant water squirterOnce the dancing carrots (swedes?) had done the conga and given out the prizes, the Ents team had a night off as Raulo the Rent-a-Magician did the whole show himself with minimal help from his pliable personal assistant.
I liked the way he put 3 swords through the box that she was in, without once stabbing her in the box, er. Then when Jof had gone I insisted on doing the advertised disco.
It was quite dark with multi-coloured spotlights: there was me and 3 dusky senoritas of about 4 years of age, all trying to get through the curtain at the back of the stage.
So randomly we went for a moonlit stroll to the Maxi-Club, bedtime Wednesday.

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