The summation of the day is that troubles certainly come in threes.
The plan was to leave the cottage at 9am this morning and that part we managed with flying colours, but the first spanner in the works came when I started the car to an alert that one of the tyres was low in pressure. I found the pump in the boot, gave it some air and hoped with fingers crossed that it was some atmospheric phenomenon and it would stay inflated (read on and you'll find out).
The earlish start this morning was with the aim to get to Sóller in time to find somewhere to park and make it to the station in time for the 10am tram to Port de Sóller, and the slight delay to pump up the tyre was not causing any major concerns. But what happened next did, and also impacted our plans for the rest of the day. I'll hand you over to Amber to explain...
As we got out of the car Paloma said she wasn't feeling great. I took her to sit down in the shade at the edge of the carpark and a moment later she was throwing up her breakfast into the bushes. She had actually had a bad sickness bout earlier in these school holidays so thankfully it didn't phase her too much but it was certainly unexpected. She seemed better straight away and after sipping some water, said she felt fine but as our plans for later that afternoon included going on a snorkeling boat trip we really didn't feel it would be at all sensible to carry on! After a look online we could actually very easily reschedule the snorkeling to Thursday (thank you Octopus Scuba) and so now it was time for a quick family conference to decide what was best. After several decisions, redecisions, change of minds and mild disagreements we settled on continuing to Port de Sóller on the tram and spending a few hours on the beaches there. And here I will hand you back to Matt....
For most tourists the Tranvía de Sóller is part of a longer heritage journey that starts in Palma with a ride of the vintage Ferrocarril de Sóller railway to Sóller, before catching the tram for the final 5km to the port. For us staying close to Sóller, we will be taking the train to Palma later in the week, so today it was just the tram to the port. We were an hour later than originally planned, but the 11am tram turned up on time and we crawled through Sóller before running alongside the main road for most of the journey, with the final stretch along the promenade. The tramway opened in 1912 and most of the vehicles date from the first half of the 20th century. Our tram was powered by car 22, built in 1937 for the Lisbon tram network before moving over to Mallorca in 1997.
Now we're in Port de Sóller, Amber will continue the story...
On arrival in Port de Sóller we initially went for a quick drink in the restauarant next to the tram stop. This was to check that Paloma still felt okay and also to make use of their facilities to change into our swimwear. Once all set we wandered down along the promenade to buy Paloma a spade so the kids could partake in one of their favourite activites of building a moat. She had been so happy when she had seen a bucket and spade at the holiday house but of course with no initial plans to spend long on the beach today, that is where they still were. Spade purchased and with no umbrellas for shade (also available to borrow at the holiday house) we set ourselves up against the sea wall. We added a layer of waterproof suncream to the kids and told them to stay out of the water for 15 minutes.
But before we had even got the towels out to sit on Paloma came running up to us upset because her brand new spade had shattered into several pieces on its first encounter with the sand. So I carried on setting up whilst Matt went back with Paloma to exchange the spade. The shrug he recieved on returning it implies it may be a common occurance! We don't know how the replacement spade will fare though as after the kids were allowed in the water it never got used. The task of catching one of the many small fish sharing this stretch of sea obliterated all thoughts of anything else for the next few hours. Don't worry they never did catch one and there wasn't the slightest possibility that they ever would. Didn't stop them trying though.
With the sun now high overhead and no shade on offer anywhere (and after between 15 to 100 "just one more dives") we eventually got them out of the water. We had decided to return to the same restaurant where we had our drinks earlier for lunch as Forrest wanted to try the Gazpacho soup (and for any Red Dwarf fans out there he ate it cold).
It was now just after 1530 and with the next tram not due until 1600 there was time for ice cream whilst waiting. Due to the large number of visitors relief trams often run a few minutes behind the scheduled services so we thought we would have no problem boarding one of the three trams that pulled up. What we didn't anticipate though was that two of these trams would be used exclusively for organised tour groups leaving three carriages and a LOT of general public tourists trying to get on. A quick google told us there a service bus (No. 204) we could catch instead so we extracted ourselves from the crowd and saved ourselves time and money and got dropped off right outside the carpark. Now back to Matt...
So the moment of truth you've all been waiting for, was the tyre still fully inflated? No! It was back down at 1.8 bar (26 PSI) so clearly there was a leak somewhere, most likely from a slow puncture. We didn't want to drive back to the cottage just in case the leak got worse and the car would be stuck up the hill. We also knew that a puncture would be low down the list of recovery jobs if we called (who remembers when cars had spare tyres?), so we decided to pump it up again and drive back to Hertz at the airport. Sóller was in the right direction, so it was just over 30 minutes and Hertz to their credit were very helpful and exchanged the car with a small tyre excess to pay that I should be able to claim back from Zest. We were also able to downsize to a Ford Puma that is considerably smaller than the Chinese SUV that we had and much more suited to the local roads.
We made the most of being in Palma to visit the same Lidl we stopped at on Saturday to stock up with some more shopping and once back (after a much easier drive up the hill), cooked a late dinner of pork schnitzel and baked cheesecake that our feline friend sat at the table and watched us eat!
So, a broken car (replaced), a broken spade (replaced) and a broken Paloma (seems fine now so I guess we will keep her) and a fun day fishing rescued from what could have been a disaster.
Blogged by Matt and Amber
