Holiday,
A week has been gone, and I am back to work again. Nicely tanned, with no intention to do any work today :-). I hope I will be able to avoid it.
Our Holiday was great. Wonderful, perfect.
The way to the airport on saturday was tricky, as they have cancelled all the trains to the airport as the tracks were flooded, so we had to call a cab, which caused us some delays. Then run to the travel agents office at the airport to pick up the tickets. Finally we got to the plane, where we had a kinda bad flight because of the turbulence.
Arriving to Palma Airport, the weather was great, we found our transfer bus, which after a couple minutes wait, departed and started our 1,5 hour journey to our Hotel. (It was only 60km from Palma, but as it was a transfer we had visited other resorts/hotels too, to drop people off)
We arrived to our hotel just a couple minutes after 9pm local time, so we missed our dinner. The room we got was very nice, on the 7th floor, with a safe in the wardrobe, nice and tidy. We packed our stuff and went for a walk to look around. This was a holiday resort, a huge village sized area with hotels and shops, restaurants, etc, but there was not really a residental area, which I did not mind at all. We went for a nice dinner in a restaurant, which was great, and not even expensive.
The next morning we found out, that the loud noise we heard from our balcony was the sea, which our room was looking over, and a small bay with rocks. So we got a seaview room, with a really nice view. We got ourselves together and went down to the beach, where we spent completely the whole day. We got sunburned (on the places we did not use suntan lotion), and fully exhausted. The dinner was provided by the hotel was very good, with nice food, lots of choices, and exotic food. Every night at 10pm the hotel had some activites/entertainment shows, which were not too bad, and after a couple days, we really looked forward to these shows. I was really impressed by the whole area, the color of the sea, the weather, the food, and everything. It was like heaven. As there was no disco around, there were no drunken english tourists, only families were around or young couples came to rest. Ideal location.
The second day we also spent with swimming and bathing in the sea. We were making some photos, but did not make so much as we were busy with swimming snorkeling and enjoying life :-). Our binoculars what we bough for a 5 at the Openshaw market, was great.
On Tuesday we have rented a car and went near to Palma to Marineland, to see a dolphin and sea-lion show as everybody was recommending it. Car rental was kinda cheap and easy, fully insured cars, etc. I had to pay attention as I have read, in Mallorca, all the cars are wrecked, and there are many accidents. And it was TRUE. After we got the car, we just saw an accident, which was done by one of the couple who were in our hotel. They have totaled their rented car. But probably 90% of the cars in Mallorca had some accidents before, as we did not really see cars without any issue. :-) The people there had incredible driving habbits :-)
Apart from this our drive was safe and quick, as Palma and the dolphin show park was just around an hour driving away. The park itself was great, with lots of things to do, Aquarium, Tropical place, Stingray stroking facility, penguins. The sea was 30 meter from this place, so it had an incredible view also. For a 21 EUR ticket, you could go and see everything, for the whole day, parrot show, and dolphin shows, etc.
We went down to a room, where we could see the dolphins swimming around in their tank, and a couple seconds later we saw something amazing. One of the dolphin was blowing out air, and created an airbubble circle, which she swimmed through, then created a smaller one, and did the same. I had made videos, I might put them on youtube.
The Dolphin show was great and honestly can not be described. You have to be there to see and feel. Great intelligent animals, were doing great show. I was truly amazed. The first part of the show was done by sea lions, which are just seals (not lions :-)), however really funny ones, and the second part of the show was done by the dolphins. I could tell everything for hours and hours, but I decide not to, as it could be boring after a while, so if you are interested I will tell you in real life once :-)
After the show, there were an option to book a Dolphin Encounter, an activity with dolphins, where you can learn about them, touch them, teach them, etc. Of course we did it. The whole thing started with a 10 minute introduction about the 4 dolphins the park had, we learned their name, their personality, their behaviour, their body structure, etc. The second part was more phisical approach. We went down to the pool, sit at the side of it, and a dolphing was coming to us, and the trainer was showing everything on the dolphin, and of course as we were very close, we could touch their skin, fin, we could saw how they take blood sample from their veins of their tale, how to "ask" them to "caugh". The dolphin was around 50cm from our feet and arm, floating in the water. After this we have been taught how to "ask" them to do tricks, so we could get them to "sing", to turn over in the water, to splash us, etc. Imagine, when you have a huge 140kg animal in the water infront of you. Undescribable feeling.
After this exersize, we got a picture taken with the dolphin, and they printed it out, and also we got a "diploma" that we have done the educational training. Unfortunately we could not make pictures during this exersize as we got wet also, and we had to even remove our rings and watches not to have to risk to any of these items to fall in the water. Finally I could see and have my mind changed about their "training" and the cruel show vision I had before. Dolphins are doing this for fun and the small fishes they receive. There is no force for them to do these. They want to do it. And by being there I was convinced, as I saw how their trainers were dealing with them, how they played and handled these animals.
Atfer this encounter we stayed to see their show again, but this time, with a different perspective as we got more familiar with these great animals.
It was around 5pm when we left the place and got to Palma, to look around. It was incredible hot, so we almost died there. We ran around, looked around, made pictures, then got back to our air conditioned car, to drive back home. Palma was a nice city, Mrs. Smith loved it, I did not like it so much, but anyway, we are different.
Look at the pictures and enjoy. I will be coming back to tell the other half of our holiday.
