This last weekend was simply a wonderful birthday weekend. My partner and I were invited to one of my partner´s best friends 40th birthday party. The celebration was held in a beautiful finca located on the magical road stretching out from Valldemossa to Deia. The finca has been renovated and is currently rented out for events. Actually, this is one of the advantages of investing in property in Mallorca: owners can always lease or rent out their properties, obtaining always good returns since the demands for high level accomodation keep growing. Friday evening already and on our way to the birthday. Unfortunately, we get there a bit too late…. Early guests have the advantage of choosing to sleep in original Parisian refurbished train wagons placed in the finca´s plot, perfectly integrated in the stunning nature scenario and which are just a museum work of art, but places are limited. Still, the feeling of being there is so special and unbelievable, that it feels like being part of a film. My partner and I are given a cosy bedroom with ensuite bathroom and lovely views to the countryside. We drop our luggage and join the rest in the porch to drink some great wine before heading inside the main house to enjoy an abundant dinner: a hot soup made out of seafood and es clat sangs (local seasonal mushrooms or lactarius deliciosus in latin, which they are), pasta with bogavante,..sauces, wines and all the accessories we want, all of the best, are given out by our host. The cook, a friend of the birthdaier is also a fabulous tenor singer, so when it´s blowing cake candle time, we all chorus and sing songs until we were all exhausted and we have no voice and some of us decide to go to bed, eager to enjoy the mountain walks the following day. Others, remain night owls and keep on chatting and drinking. So, it´s saturday morning, more guests arrive to the finca and at about 11:30 am we all (except those that continued singing to late hours the night before…)set off, under the guidance of a local expert in excursions in Mallorca, to walk and discover the property´s extension and views….wow! there are actually 5 miroirs with impressive views to the Tramuntana mountains and seas. No words. Our guide also tells us some interesting facts about olive trees. There is the maiin olive tree type and then the “acebuche” (Olea europaea var. Sylvestris) which is a wilder and smaller kind of olive tree, ancestor of the main one and differs from it in that it has rounder leaves, thorns in its branches, bears a smaller olive fruit and is more like a bush in appearance. It is, however, attracting the interest of farmers because of its rustic qualities and easier growth than other species of the same family. Other interesting fact that is pointed out by our guide and friend is that we are currently running out of oak trees in Mallorca, the main reason being that wild goats eat these trees when young, impeding them to grow. This fact in turn, has motivated the creation of competitions to hunt goats in return for money. It´s obvious that this should not be the cleverest and most ecological solution in the long run…It´s not only the mushroom season in Mallorca, it´s also the cane-apple bush time. If you ever have the chance, I strongly suggest you to try the cane-apple jelly……a mouth watering breakfast delicacy…. So this reminds us, it´s eating time again….we head back to the house and to our surprise an apertivo with olives, local almonds, cocas de trampó, and more drinks is served before we all go ahead and enjoy some bbq meat and salad as main course. The birthday organizers still have more surprises. They suggest that each one of us takes a small lantern and we all wonder why…….At sunset time all the guests ( 50, at least!) join to watch the sun slipping into the ocean´s horizon and we are finally lead into a dancing area integrated in the estate´s forest, surrounded by stones, illumiated with unseen light bulbs and shining a dim and cosy light. And so we dance and laugh and drink. And we all get back home following the scattered liten stones that mark the path to our accommodation, and of course, our lanterns. A very memorable 40th birthday indeed!
