Cala San Vincenzo and The Venomous Pelagia Noctiluca of Mallorca

We really enjoyed Cala San Vincenzo.  It's a small sandy beach at the head of a cove, with beautiful blue and turquoise water, and great views of rocky cliffs.  These cliffs are the backs of the slab of land that juts out in some of the photos of our previous Mallorca/Majorca post.  As you can see from the photos, it was an odd day for weather.  We had clouds alternating with sunny, clear skies, every ten minutes or so.  It was soothing to watch the shadows of the clouds slowly roll along the towering cliffs.

In photo above, some people are out in the water, which was pretty warm.  A lot of people were snorkeling, so we tried it too.  It was fun to watch small schools of 8" silver and white fish.  An isolated black and blue fish with red and purple highlights popped up here and there, and we hovered over the top of a few schools of hundreds of two-inch silver fish.  The water was fairly calm, and most of the time it was even shallow enough to stand up. All these favorable conditions were helping Jennifer become more comfortable than ever with snorkeling.

Unfortunately, we encountered another type of sea creature that left a mark on Jennifer's arm for two weeks.  We were swimming along peacefully when Jennifer suddenly popped up and yelled "something bit me!!!" My first thought was that there aren't any fish that would bite someone here, are there?  When I looked under the water - yikes!  - there was a reddish spotted jellyfish right next to Jennifer, bobbing under the surface.  It wasn't a clear jellyfish, or a purple Portuguese man-of-war, like I've seen many times before.  This was rust-colored, about 4 inches across, with white dots on its "petals."  Once I saw that, my skin started to crawl.  How many more of these are there?!  Needless to say, we swam back to shore as quickly as we could.

Once we got back, we saw yellowish welts raising up in a couple of spots near Jennifer's elbow.  We heard someone else saying they got stung too.  Then we found out they even have a special beach flag for jellyfish, sort of like red beach flags for dangerous tides.

Here's a reference I found about the Pelagia Noctiluca jellyfish.  Looks like we were lucky it wasn't worse!  
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Pink jellyfish (Pelagia Noctiluca)

  

Sting level: painful and dangerous.

It is a 10 cm fluorescent jellyfish, transparent with pink or purple tones. It has 16 long tentacles that can cause pain, burning, nausea and muscle cramps. They are not very common, but if seen do not touch!
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Another arcticle about this jellyfish: Pelagia Noctiluca invade Ireland!

The article above says they do NOT recommend URINE as a treatment for these stings! That's funny because Jennifer remembered an episode of Friends where Monica got stung by a jellyfish, and that's how they cured her.  I can't believe I'd never heard about that.

Mallorca (Majorca) - Spanish Balearic Island in the Mediterranean Sea

For a last getaway of the summer, we took a short trip to Mallorca, or Majorca, depending on who you ask.  We decided to stay on the northeast corner of the island to be near this.

[This article is picks up from our previous Mallorca post - Firefighting seaplane!]

I'd been wanting to see this since a planned trip to Mallorca was canceled back in 2001.  We stayed in Port de Pollença.  Pollença is a pleasant town on a wide bay surrounded by scrubby hills; small enough to be easy to find your way around, yet with plenty of restaurants and grocery shops.  During summer, a visit to Pollença might as well be a visit to England.  You'll here nothing but English accents everywhere you go, because the English seem to have adopted the town as their favorite on the island.  It has a nice walk along the beach past the end of the road, so you can get away from the car noise.  I've really started to notice how much more pleasant life is when there are no noisy, smelly, dangerous cars and scooters disturbing the peace.

From Pollença, it's only a short drive to the tip of the island, a dramatic peninsula with 1000'-plus rocky cliffs, pine forests, and views of the sea and nearby mountains that stretch for miles.  We drove up there at sunset one night.  For a sense of scale, notice the sailboats.

It was so relaxing to sit and look out over the ocean, with sound of the wind.  Until a jerk with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) known as a quad-copter (i.e., a 2'x2' contraption with four horizontal propellers powered by small gas engines) arrived.  He started up the really loud motors and hovered the thing here and there, totally obliterating the peaceful atmosphere on top of the mountain.  Boy, I can't wait until we have hundreds of those buzzing over our heads in every major city.

Leaning precariously over the edge of one of those cliffs, looking straight down, we could see how clean and clear the water was.

The next day, we went back and drove down to the end of the peninsula, on a winding road through pine forests and along cliffs.  This is how it looked from the lighthouse at the very end of the peninsula.  The cliffs on the right are the same cliffs in the first photo above, seen from about 10 miles further away.

We drove past this amazing cove.  It requires a hike or a private boat to reach.

Next article - Jellyfish attack at Cala San Vicenzo!

Fire-Fighting Seaplane in Port Pollença, Mallorca, Balearic Island of Spain

This is sort of random, but the unexpected is what makes travel fun, as long as it's not bad unexpected.  When we arrived at Port Pollença, we saw a big yellow plane crash into the bay, at least that's what it looked like at first.  It turns out they constantly practice with a pretty cool fire-fighting plane in this bay.  It's what the town is known for on Mallorca.  We saw it making practice runs two more times while we were there.  First, it flies down low over the water...

Then it actually flies while skimming the water for about a whole minute - not just a touch and go for sure - and scoops bay water directly into its water tanks.  

Once it's full, it flies off to the "fire" (all we saw were practice runs) and dumps the water.  Then it repeats.  Looks like dangerous flying for those pilots. 

Next post on clffs of Mallorca

Noto - 17th Century Sicilian Hill Town

Here are a few photos from our visit to Noto, a hill town in Sicily, Italy.  In the 17th century, a terrible earthquake killed many of the residents and destroyed the majority of the city.  The government recruited several brilliant architects to aid in the reconstruction.  The results are beautiful.  Noto was recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All the building facades have been sandblasted recently, so they look new - almost too new!

[Other recent Sicily articles: Mount Etna, Stromboli Volcano and the Aeolian Islands, UNESCO Roman Mosaics.]

Below is the ornate main door of San Francesco, one of the four huge churches along the main street through the center of town.  The street is only about a kilometer long.

Aging and corrosion have given this World War I monument a haunting look.

In this photo, the facade of the Duomo is visible behind the WWI monument.