Cabrera

Sunday 10 June 2007

I finally got to Cabrera today. I got up at 0530, and was at the bus station by 0630. It was then that I discovered that the first bus to Colónia Sant Jordí on Sundays doesn't get there until 1100, so I took a taxi. The taxi driver was a very pleasant woman from Nigeria with beautiful dreds. She spend some time in Russia and 2 years in Germany before coming to Mallorca. She has been here 10 years. She is married and has two children. English is her second language, but she learned to speak it well as a child, and as if it were her first language. Her children don´t speak any Nigerian languages. She has been trying to get them to speak Spanish at home, but they prefer to speak Pigin, a dialect of English. She expressed interest in seeing California, so I invited her to stay with us in Vacaville.

I arrived in Colónia Sant Jordí at 0745. The Cabrera boat office was open, but the lady there asked me to wait until another lady came. I sat on a park bench. A German gentleman sat on the other end of the bench. He spoke English, and we had a nice visit. I went back to the office at 0830 and the same lady I bought my reservation from on Friday told me I could board a boat immediately. I got on the boat and it left at 0845. The swells were about 1 meter high out of the southeast and had a very short period of about 3 seconds. We were quartering into them. The wind was out of the east and blowing at 5 to 10 knots. I had my back to the sun and the wind, so I got hit by the spray that was occasionally kicked up by the boat.

We arrived in Port Cabrera at 1000. Most people headed for the picnic area and the beach, but a few of us headed for the castle, and spent about an hour there. The entrance to the castle is a small door in the south side leading to a narrow, dark, steep, circular staircase. The view of the port and the island is great from the top of the castle. There are also lots of lizards here. They dissapear at any sudden movement, but ran over my feet if I stood still in an area where there was little or no traffic.

I arrived at the picnic area at 1200. I found an unclaimed table and unloaded my backpack. I ate my ham and cheese sandwich, two oranges and several dates. I brought my journal up to date before reloading my backpack and heading off to see the archaeological sites and a distant beach where jellyfish are stinging bathers. The jellyfish are quite small, only about 50 mm in diameter. I met a park employee, Danny Calvo, on my way to the beach. We spoke in Spanish until he found out I spoke English. He spoke English like a native Californian. It was now nearly 1400 so I decided to head back to catch the boat to Colónia. I took pictures of many plants and identified several.