Day 46: Palma to Ses Salines

April 4, 2025

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Ten jammer breakfast buffets may be becoming a too familiar opening topic for each day's blog, but my brother continued the breakfast dialog by commenting that while the last one was nice, it lacked a live chef preparing eggs to order. So today the Horizonte heard the complaint, and put forward as many as three chefs at once.

Here is one of them:

And not that we want to go into details of the other Horizonte breakfast offerings, but the did have an olive and sausage bar!

We said a nice goodbye to the staff at the Horizonte desk. They had had to come and clear some hyper expensive Reise Mueller belt drive ebikes from in front of ours in the storage room. Horizonte was a really good place, except that for next time we need to make sure they put us on the water view side. The other side (our side this time) we might call the tenement view side.

It took a few kms on the sidewalk to reach the current start of the seaside cycle path. I read in a local paper that the deadline for finishing the road/path work over those kms was today. I'd say they still have another year to go. We'll come back and check on it!

The current start/end of the cycle path.

We got on the path and ran past the now familiar spot where the Cathedral is in clear view. I didn't bother to record that again, though it is a great spot. But I did record the beach bar called "Animal Beach". I had been thinking about that name, as being somewhat appropriate for the stretch of beach beyond. That stretch was abandoned in today's cool, pre 9 a.m. breeze, but yesterday it had been liberally sprinkled with beach bodies, lying seal-like in the sand.

Something I had noticed yesterday, that I also have had time to think about, was the flowers by the trail. Today we began to think of Mallorca as an island of flowers, and these below were just the first to attract our attention.

Another feature of Mallorca that it is impossible to miss, is the popularity of cycling. In the photo below you see some ordinary folks and some lycra warriors. And looking down the street, you see that there are a lot of cyclists in general. This mix is because we are still at the beach. Later, when we had progressed to the inland roads, there were still dozens (hundreds, actually) of cyclists, but most were fast moving guys in peletons. Listening to them speaking among themselves, we realized that many were German. And in a peleton many had the same jerseys. We guessed that they are cycling enthusiasts that have brought their bikes, jerseys, and friends, to cycle the wonderful roads here.

This is the scene all along the beach front.

Sailing is also big, and just as you see the same cycling jerseys in groups, you see the same sails in groups.

Another part of the beach scene is the fact that in parts it is lined with souvenir shops, and strangely, little supermarkets - often with the "Spar" brand name. These can me almost next door to each other. It's reminiscent of the "OXXO" stores in Yucatan and the "ABC" stores in Honolulu.

Here is a generic supermarket, a souvenir store, a jewelry store, and another supermarket.

There are naturally many restaurants, with seating on the beach. We noticed that a lot of these have menus in German, and some with German dishes. Here is one offering fruhstuck. The ten variants seemed interesting as well. "Sucuk" is a kind of sausage.

And here is a flat out German offering: kaiserschmarrn, and variant of pancake. "Zwetschgenroster" we take to mean fruit compote. ... and vanilla ice cream!

At Arenal beach we turned inland. We found ourselves at first in a rather crowded urban environment, and heading uphill.

But we knew we were "Going to the Country", and soon enough we entered a magical land that stuck with us for the rest of the day. So wonderful was this that it not only established today as one of our best days of cycling ever, but it has us thinking that returning to Mallorca will be a good plan for next year and maybe many years. The two major ingredients of this magic were dry stone lined laneways, and meadows of flowers beyond. The next ten shots show what we are talking about:

Here we see the beginnings of the dry stacked stone fences.

Not all fields were yellow. Red, white, and yellow is good too..

A slight glitch came when Google suggested we would like to cycle down this:

and splash through this water. In fact it was really easy to route around it.

Our route today was very sparsely populated. Here however is one farmhouse.

We snapped these trees in blossom because they were so colorful. But a second look showed they were not some standard fruit or nut tree in blossom.

What are these things? and why were they planted in such numbers?

Here is a field of flowers, not yellow or red or white!

We noticed several of these unusual windmills.

The dry stacked walls were interesting. In places where they were fallen down, or perhaps not completed, the jumble of rocks looked what we might pile up, given the chore.

But the craftmanship of the construction could be seen when the wall was completed, and where just for show the top rocks were set on edge.

Sometimes the top rocks were rounded off. This seemed to be cheating a bit, because a tool would have been used to shape the rock.

The builders could produce quite a flat top.

Something else of note. In our Canadian experience sheep are white or black. But here we see brown ones, helpfully in this shot showing their brown butts. This brown wool would be great in spinning and knitting as an extra colour.

We arrived easily at Ses Salines, our stop for the day. The word "ses" means "the" in the Mallorcan language (Catalan) and refers to the salt flats or "salines" that surround the area. We have come here because we expect those salt flats to harbour some birds. We read that salt production here is among the most ancient of history, dating from the 4th century B.C.

Our hotel in town is called C'an Bonico. In this we stumbled on something we love - a really ancient building, such as a monastery, now in use as a hotel. In this case, C'an Bonico means "house of" the Bonet family. This place dates from the 13th century, when Jaime I conquered Mallorca. The house was the center of town, with its walls being the first walled protection in the place.

The church as viewed from our hotel grounds.

We stumbled though the back door of the hotel, onto its extensive grounds, beyond its wall.

Dodie hunted up the reception lady, somehow, for the buildings are like a maze. The lady came and led us to a place to put the bikes:

The bikes are sharing covered space with a very old wooden press.

One of my first chores was to make my way through many common rooms and to ultimately bring the gear to our room.

One of two wood ovens. Not sure if they are still in use.

Dodie seemed to have charmed the reception lady, who spoke German, and liked Dodie's true name, which is German: Dorothea. So we got an "upgrade", to the "junior suite". This room was quite amazing, not only being very large but also boasting three levels.

The basic room, but with stairs to the next level.

From the lounge, stairs led to an upper lounging deck, with a view to the church.

Dodie and I looked at each other in this place and said "How did they allow riff raff like us into here?"

After dumping our grubby panniers, we set off for a quick look at the little town. But not so fast. I had been shown the way to the room via some stairs. But we knew there was also an elevator, and we set out to find it, which we did. But out of the elevator we had no idea where we were. We wanted to go to the bikes to get our sunglasses, but could not find the way. Finally we ran into a staffer, and I asked the way to the "wooden press", using my phone. The poor lady thought we were nuts.

Out in the town we could again see the church, and then the few but quaint streets.

Some artist had installed this devil sculpture.

We were vaguely thinking of eating out, and there were a few restaurants, but ultimately it felt like a lot of work to order and to wait for food, so we just ate out of our food bag.

We did spot this nice Cattle Egret in a back street:

Hey, about spotting birds - there were some good ones today. We really liked this Eurasian Kestrel:

And some Red Legged Partridges. (They are not inside, but outside a fence.)

There are of course lots of Sparrows, almost all House Sparrows. But we make this one out to be a Rock Sparrow. eBird admits there are Rock Sparrows in Spain, but it does not accept it in Mallorca. Here is your chance to learn something, eBird!

Total bird species for 2025: 174

Tomorrow, the Salines!

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,213 km (753 miles)

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Comment on this entry	Comment	7

Scott AndersonGreat to see you on the road and having such a good day. Congrats on making it through.

There was an interesting feature article on NPR yesterday about what a record-setting rainfall season southern Spain has had this year x the wettest in nearly two decades, I think. Bad luck for you, but hopefully it’s behind you now.
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2 weeks ago

Michael HutchingJust wondering if these jammers get hit with a 10% tariff, will you get more jammer for your $ or less?
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2 weeks ago

Mark Bingham"one of our best days of cycling ever"
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2 weeks ago

Mark BinghamI'm finding that, for some reason, if you put an arrow pointing to something then write anything after that, your comments don't get included.

I also said, pointing to the above quote, that coming from two highly experienced cyclists like the two of you, that's very high praise. Mallorca just went up several notches on my "To Ride" list.
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonWe have certainly encountered a lot of rain, at the end of the last trip and the start of this one. All the locals are commenting on how unusual it is. Since we hit the coast though, it has been sunny and warm. Fingers crossed moving forward.
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Michael HutchingProbably depends on where you are.... in the exporting or importing country. Since we will NOT be setting foot in the US, it will hopefully not be a problem for us.
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Mark BinghamStay tuned to see if Mallorca maintains its initial great impression. Right now, though, we are seriously considering it as a warm winter cycling getaway location.
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2 weeks ago