Vam anar a Mallorca, Day 11: El Castillo de Sa Duaia de Dalt, Sa Calobra and Torrent de Pareis, Gorg Blau, and Es Canyaret
Good morning from El Castillo de Sa Duaia de Dalt! I took a few pictures of the building before heading down for breakfast. Laura came down separately, and couldn't find the breakfast nook. Luckily she somehow remembered the spanish word for breakfast, "desayuno", and caught up with me. The innkeeper kept asking if we wanted x, y, or z, and we ended up with way too much food!
KLEE! KLEE! KLEE!
Those high-pitched notes came ringing down from the top of the tower. We soon found the origin of the noise. A trio of young (common or lesser) kestrels were nestled in a hole in the wall and they were huuuuungry! I spotted the adult kestrel come back to feed them, so I set up a tripod and waited. She soon returned, gave them breakfast and headed out. Unfortunately, I missed the quick shot. So again I waited. The nestlings (or lazy fledglings) were quick to demand more food. But the adult didn't return.
Several of my friends are into wildlife photography and they tell me that they just don't have the patience for all that landscape and long-exposure stuff that I do. Twenty minutes just to get one shot?! But I was reminded how much patience wildlife photography can take. After maybe 20-25 minutes, the adult hadn't returned, but I could hear her calling and saw her fly by a few times. I was alert and ready to push the shutter the whole time. Far less relaxing than long-exposure landscapes, if you ask me.
Soon I realized that the falcon wasn't returning because she had spotted us. We shifted positions and she almost immediately came in. This time, I caught the meal delivery!
We drove west to Sa Calobra, one of the other major natural tourism destinations on the island. We had been told that it was pretty crowded, and that the drive was hectic with lots of cars and buses on narrow, switchback-strewn roads. We had left the Castilo late due to the birding event, so tried to get in the right mindset for a crowd. We stopped along the way for a few roadside pictures.
Then we got on the Sa Calobra road, which has almost no shoulder, narrow lanes, these reassuring guardrails, and 12 turns of 180 degrees or more. As buses approach the turns, they honk and traffic has to stop. I saw a few buses make 3-point turns on the sharper switchback curves.
We arrived at Nus de Sa Corbata ("knot of the tie"), which is a spot where the road coils right back under itself. I took a few pictures. I knew better, but was jumping across rocks in my flip flops and blew one out. Wasting away in Mallorcaville, I guess.
We were getting hungry, and still had a lot of descent to cover, so we ate at the restaurant right there. It was a fortuitous choice. We watched a bevvy of buses and cars come up the road while we ate. When we got to the bottom, the bus parking was empty!
After Laura's modeling, we took the short, stone-and-pavement-lined walk to Torrent de Pareis, the main attraction. But first, we had to pass along an illuminated tunnel through a cliff to get there.
Similar to the torrent at Cala Pi, this is a flowing river during wet periods, but was not flowing when we were there. The torrent had carved these steep cliffs to the sea over geological time.
Laura was starting to get used to this whole topless sunbathing thing!
The beach did have a lot of people relative to the space, but it wasn't overwhelming. There was still plenty of space to spread out further back from the water if one wanted to. We, as usual, just wanted to get in the water.
I saw something relatively large moving by in my peripheral vision and caught this cormorant diving 20-25 feet deep and swimming along the bottom. So cool to see a bird diving in this clear water!
We headed back and Laura stopped to use a formidable automated, robotic, talking lavatory. It seemed out of place on the coastal path, appearing more like something from Tokyo. As she got yelled at by the cartoon computer characters, I photographed flowers.
Laura took a few bumpy videos on the drive back up Sa Calobra road:
We caught Ma-10 and drove by the reservoir, Gorg Blau ("blue gorge"). The lighting was stunning, coming across the water onto the hills on the far side. We also saw a few waterfowl on the far shoreline, but they were too far away to ID.
We checked in at Hostal Nadal in Sóller and then headed down the coast. We were finally on the west coast and it was our last sunset on the island, so there was no time to waste! After some confusion on where to park (on the side of the highway wherever you could squeeze off the pavement), we found a path that we though would lead us to Es Canyaret. It got us going the right way and we found the infrastructure in the next photo to lead us down to the water. The "waterfall" that had served as our draw was really just a trickle of runoff, so we skipped the famed mud baths and just watched the sun set.
Walking up through the romantic roads of Llucalcari, on the hike back up the hill.
I knew that there would be a partial lunar eclipse that night, so after dinner in town, I dropped Laura off to sleep and I raced back out of the valley to capture it. I didn't quite figure out the settings for a composite of both the view and the moon, but it was nice to be there.
The hostel locked the main door and Laura had the key, so I had a firm deadline to meet her at the entrance. I was a few minutes early, so I set up for this nightscape.
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