Mallorca (part three)

Okay, I know I'm really behind on posts.. I have so much to tell about this weekend, and I haven't even finished the account from last weekend! My apologies, but I'm not about to stay inside writing if there are exciting things to be doing outside!

The last important happening of last weekend was our stop at the most tacky and depressing tourist trap I've been to. It was so bad, it was funny. We had heard things about giant underground caves called, caves del drach, located on the east coast of Mallorca, so we took the bus out there on the third day to check them out. We were pleased that there was a bus that went directly from our hostel to the caves - this should have been a clue.

The caves themselves were amazing, natural limestone caves about 1200m long with a lake at the bottom. But we were pushed through them like cattle in a stockyard. Our tour group was about 200 people (mostly germans) and we shuffled through shoulder-to-shoulder. It was muggy down there, and it was hot and stinky from the eau-de-hot-tourists. They had paved over a path through the caves so that we could shuffle down through them, but still, the stalactites and stalacmites within reaching distance were totally distroyed. The rest of the caves were lit up entirely and I thought they lost some of their mystery. There were crying babies every 4 steps and I was feeling a bit claustrophobic with all the people around me.

The crowning tacky-ness of the trip was The Concert on Lake Martel. We filed into the biggest cavern and (all 200 of us) sat down on wooden benches on a concrete floor (presumably poured over the natural formations). The lights were turned off (to my relief) and then three boats floated on the lake into view, illuminated with christmas lights under their keels. The 'concert' consisted of a synthesiser-keyboard-organ, a violin, and a cello which were being played in boats. They were out of tune somtimes, and played tacky orchestral music. I felt like puking. Oh, and the concert was also punctuated by crying babies and the flashes of cameras. It seemed to go on forever but it finally ended and we were herded through the caves and exited.

I couldn't help thinking how awesome these caves would have seemed to the people who first discovered them. No wonder they named them the dragon caves, because they must have been very precarious to climb through and very scary to explore with only one flashlight. I'll have to use my imagination, because the 9.50 euro tour totally distroyed them (literally and figuratively).

The afternoon visit to the gothic cathedral in Palma was georgous though. Funny that people put so much effort into preserving this gem of a human creation built in the name of God, wheras they try to dress up and end up distroying something that God made with his own hand. They try not to disgrace the church, but end up doing so in his own cathedral.