Not that far away from the bland concrete hotels and package tourists of S’Arenal and Magaluf by the Bay of Palma, it is all still there: Mallorcans who don’t speak German, French, English or any language other than Mallorquin, plus crisp mountain air, charming café terraces, fragrant pine forests and deserted sandy beaches. All you have to do to escape the crowds is cross Mallorca’s spiky spine, the Serra de Tramuntana. The Formentor peninsula is its northerly spur, tiny Dragonera island the southerly extension of this majestic mountain range with peaks of up to 1500 meters.
Dragon Island
In the dark Middle Ages, the ragged pirate Barbarossa used Dragonera as an operating base for his bloody pillages on Mallorca and Menorca. It is said that his ghost still lingers here. Perhaps that is why, against all Mallorcan laws of nature, the weather turns foul as soon as we set foot on ‘Dragon Island’.
Even in drizzly weather this miniature island off the southwestern tip of Mallorca is a first-rate natural Valhalla – nicknamed the ‘Galapagos of the Balearics’. With quite a bit of imagination the uninhabited island does indeed resemble a clapped-out dragon. Together with three other blips on the map it forms the protected Parc Natural de sa Dragonera. Measuring a mere four by one kilometres, Dragonera is small enough not to get lost, yet big enough to stroll from one lighthouse to the other. Or scale the 353 meters high peak of the Puig de Na Popia for a smashing panorama.
Wandering at will is out of the question, though, as the park rangers have mapped out four routes, ranging from a half-hour stroll to three hours of clambering over limestone cliffs. The rest of the island is out of bounds – it is home to the endangered Eleonora’s falcon and Adouin’s gull, and to the blue-bellied Dragonera lizard that is endemic to this tiny island and lives nowhere else on earth. The underwater world is terrific, too: there you dive with barracudas, eagle rays, moray eels, octopus and dolphins.
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