In the center photo, Famagusta (then still Nabucco, with white hull) tied up on a mooring in Portocolom Bay after the offshore damages during Hurricane Klaus and our rescue from the Coast Guard.
Below, photos from the shack tavern Es Verger. Bites and Cheers!
MALLORCA
Sailors on the mountains
and the lost tavern Es Verger
The hut-tavern "Es Verger", five kilometers after Alaro in Majorca, on the slopes of the mountain, could have been the scene of a movie by the Italian Tavianni brothers! We are talking about a pen with goats and sheep, which once became a small tavern for Majorcan hunters and European mountaineers. Grilled goat or mutton, fried potato, salad with red juicy cherry tomatoes, green peppers and spring onion. Thats all.
In very short time the hut tavern went famous, entered the cosmopolitan columns and the first coaches have arrived. 35 tables were set up by the "shepherd" for German and French tourist to eat and drink. Even the American ambassador from Madrid and the Cardinal of Marseille stopped here to show off and lick their fingers. And as happens with every story, after fifteen years, the story was forgotten and went to the back pages. That's when we arrived. Historically delayed, but well informed by local people. And the moment was right!
After renting a almost broken Seat Ibiza from our hotelier, we set off for the mountains of Tramuntana. The road was not bad at first, then it narrowed again and again so much that anyone driving down the hill had to drive his car into specially dug ditches so that the car going up could pass. Puting second gear, puting third gear, again and again, and once more second gear, and the dust goes cloud in and out of the car. At some point when we lost our patience and thought we had reached nowhere, we stopped the cruppy car, opened the doors and got out to find a turning point and leave the search of this lost tavern for another time. With great joy we stopped a Datsun, which was noisily descending the mountainside, and asked the driver if this tavern actually exists somewhere on the mountain! “Yes, lads! Exists! Some kilometers more and you will arrive! Just watch out for the goats. They move freely on the road...”
And so it happened. After a while we saw the shepherd-yard and the parking for the carriages as well as the freely grazing goats. The hilling in this field was so big that, in addition to the handbrake, we also put a stone on the wheel to prevent the old car from moving backward. We looked back at the horizon. Stretching our arms, we took a deep breath and with the confidence of the successful traveler straightened for the wooden door of the shack. It must have been nine in the evening. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains of Tramudana and the sky had a deep golden color. The smell of wood burning in the stone oven wafted through your nose.
We opened the heavy door and looked inside. On the left, an old Coca-Cola cooler, which was creaking on the right side and the bottles inside were tilting like a wrong loaded cargo boat. Next to it was the bar with all kind of wines and beers, and to the right of it were the wooden benches, with a plastic floral cover and wicker chairs, different from each other. A group of Spaniards were sitting at a table in the far corner and another group, friends of the owner, had joined two tables in the center of the tavern and were setting out the plates for the dinner. Next to it, another chamber with tables. Leaved empty, with the lamps illuminating it.
The old innkeeper lady welcomed us and seated us across from the wood-burning oven. A tall black lad stood behind the bar scratching a small transistor. As we later learned, it was her cousin, an African orphan from Morocco. The lady handed us a thick laminated food list, asked what we were going to drink and left. There were so many different dishes that you could order, that ten minutes later, we were still searching for the taste that would suit each of us! The old woman came again. She placed the beers on the table and left to return with the homemade red wine. An unlabeled bottle with cloudy glass, used and reused many times.
"The red wine is ours. From our vineyard...” she said, and removed the half-stopped cork from the bottle. She filled the wine glasses, smiled at us and after pulling the open catalogs from our hands, closed them with a thump and without a second word said to us: "Today we have a goat cooked in the wood oven. I'll make you some french fries too. Would you like a salad?”
This is how the order ended, without much thought and with only one taste: grilled goat! When the food came, we greeted it with a "wow" and started to eat like the hungry animals. Take a bite, take a sip, and let our legs go numb from the blood that was leaving towards the stomach.
At the next table sat the old innkeeper with her old husband and all her relatives. Next to her rested the afrikaner, who wore big square glasses and was always smiling. In the middle of the table they placed the transistor, which was broadcasting a football match. They ate and ate again and in every failed attempt to score, they all shouted together "ooooooooo" and again "cheers".
When the old woman saw that we had eaten, she got up from her table, went to the kitchen and, coming back, offered us a spoonful of sweets and another bottle of red wine. "To remember us" she said. After some time, after we distilled the last "red" bottle, we paid, greeted the tavernkeeper's company and took the path to the field, where the Seat was parked.
It was already dark and the road to "Famagusta" was long. After we woke up the cat, which had been lying on the hood of the engine, we turned the old car on and headed downhill to our Sea. It was April 2009. A sweet winter in the South. Famagusta was being repaired in the shippyard after the damage of Hurricane Klaus and in two weeks the Voyage to the far and frozen Baltic Sea has to be starting again!
