I wrote a post once, years ago, about moments.
I talked about how I classify my experiences by the moments that hit me, and stick with me the most.
While, now, there are so many experiences that stand out to me, sometimes there are things that I know I will remember the feeling of in a deeper way.
Mallorca, part of my latest European travel, held a moment like that for me. I was with my friends Max and Julia, both of whom shared similar feelings about a particular morning that we shared on the beach, a morning that felt surreal at best.
We compared it to an experience in Vietnam’s Halong Bay, when my travel companions and I reflected on our moment of the trip.
The Blueprint
Back when I studied abroad with Semester at Sea, in 2018, I had an experience that is still one of my most potent memories. I think of it when I think of what it means to be alive, and how it feels to truly exist in the world.
We were looking up at the stars as we swam in the dark waters of Halong Bay among the bioluminescence, next to the private island we stayed on for a few days. It was the kind of place that allowed me to stare at the sky above and feel the water below and think about everyone experiencing that same exact moment with me. I thought about how we all just happened to somehow be existing at the same time, in the same place, in the universe around us.
I remember thinking at that moment, “What in the world are we going to do after this?”
How does life go back to ‘normal’ after you experience a moment in time and space that rocks your entire world?
A New Moment
I think that I have an answer to that question from 4 years ago- because everything we’ve done since that night in Vietnam is what led us to a new hidden beach, on a new island, and saw the three of us swimming completely alone in new waters.
So, I realized that instead of allowing the amazing experiences we had while we traveled the world to end, we decided to continue on.
In the last four years, I’ve constantly searched for new things that allow me to fall in love with the world, with my life, over and over again. That’s what in the world we did after that moment, because there’s no way that I could have gone back to an existence without constant new experiences.
That’s how we ended up at the Platja des Coll Baix, a beach near the town of Alcudia, on the Northeast part of the island of Mallorca, in Spain.
After it was over, as we reflected that night at our place in town, Julia and I talked about how we’d had the same exact thought while we swam in the water. So similar to that night in Halong Bay, where Max had also happened to be, when we couldn’t help but think about our place in the world.
This time, we’d both been thinking about the fact that we were the only ones in the entire universe experiencing that exact moment in time and space.
We all three agreed that it had felt unreal to let the water of that beach move us as it ebbed and flowed, in our isolation beneath the cliffs that we had hiked down from.
What a thing to share together, a moment that is truly yours and yours only.
Our Time in Mallorca
The entire trip to the Spanish island of Mallorca, a much larger neighbor of the more well-known Ibiza, and located just east of Valencia, was a dream.
To me, it held the perfect balance between early morning yoga sessions and early morning walks back from the club.
It brought us incredible meals and our fair share of dri nks downstairs at the bar, where we ended up learning all of the names of the staff and inviting them to go out with us afterward.
We spent time in the city of Palma, but that also meant that we had an hour each way in the car we’d rented since we were staying across the island in Alcudia.
Those car rides, always with Max in the driver’s seat, saw conversations and plans for our next trip, lots of singing along to music, and periods that were simply shared for the sake of quality time.
As we drove up through the mountains, it felt like we were flying, even when my fear of heights led me to close my eyes for part of the time.
That drive wasn’t a moment in the same way that the hidden beach was, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget Max saying that we were on the edge of the world, as we wound further up into the sky, with mountains and the ocean meeting somewhere hundreds of feet below our vantage point.
I’ll always associate the Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 album by Calvin Harris with that part of the trip, in the same way that Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti album was the soundtrack to our Tulum trip back in the spring.
Speaking of music, our nights at the bar and restaurant, located below the AirBnB, turned into early mornings where we stopped dancing just to get a few hours of sleep before our next adventure of the day began. The conversations we had in-between were lengthy, though I’d bet money that even the three of us put together probably still wouldn’t be able to piece together everything we’d talked about at our counter at 2 am during those long nights.
It was funny, too, to see how our communication with those around us played out, each of us equipped with a different level of Spanish to go off of.
On our last night, a promoter came up to us and spoke English. Max, of course, responded in Spanish, and Julia and I were subsequently asked if we understood. When we said yes, we were asked why we’d all been speaking to each other in English.
My Spanish came out more on those nights that we drank, but I also found that I was able to practice more overall than I did in Mexico, for whatever reason.
Anyway, that happened a lot on this trip, where someone would respond to Spanish in English and another would speak Spanish, or where we let some waiters assume we needed English but told some that Spanish was fine for us all.
It was an interesting mix of interactions, especially considering that Mallorquín (a dialect of Catalán) is spoken there, along with Spanish. That language is different enough from any Spanish dialect that certain phrases and colloquialisms went straight over our heads (even Max, which is saying something, since he’s the only one that is truly fluent in Spanish.)
Overall, we had a great balance. Whether it was between activities or languages spoken or the amount of sleep we got on a given night, we made it work.
Sometimes I do my research before trips, and other times I just let myself avoid having any expectations by waiting until I arrive to see what it’s like. This trip definitely fell into the latter category, and I’m so glad it did.
There’s something special about allowing an experience to be pure in that sense, without any prior connections or ideas about how it might turn out.
Maybe that’s even why our morning at the beach felt the way it had. We didn’t know how long the hike down would take, nor that we’d end up actually rock climbing to get there. We had no idea if we would encounter other people or if we’d get a chance to be alone there, like we did.
Everything about that specific experience came together for me in the moment itself, which allowed me to take it all in without any outside considerations or expectations.
I think that is what creates a moment, really. It’s about presence, and connection, both of which felt like the backbone of this latest adventure.
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