Palma: a fever dream

Sitting here on my $17 Ryanair flight I'm trying to piece together the last four days in Palma. Maybe it's the cabins dry 90 degree heat but my time in the tiny Spanish island only comes across as a blur. I guess I'll have to go through piece by piece.

After leaving arctic Berlin the three of us couldn't have been happier stepping off the plane into warm weather. At the airport we toy with the idea of a rental car but ultimately vote against it, to my disappointment. The bus took 45 min. It's a small island. As scenery rushes by we realize our hostel is no where near the actual city.

I step off the bus into an abandoned beach resort. The huge and very pretty beach is occupied only by two fat old Germans, Palma is mostly a German vacation spot. We get to the hostel and decide the situation is too absurd to survive 4 days. Five minutes on wifi, a quick lie to our friendly kiwi host and we have a hostel booked for tomorrow in the center of town. Only one night in ghost village. We head to town.

The bus dropped us in the city. It took a few minutes to get our bearings. Food was a priority and soon we find a Mediterranean place. The meal is harmless and we're ready to explore. Palma is bigger than I had imagined. The main port surrounds an old city with small windy cobblestone street and giant church, things we came to expect in places like prague or budapest. We trade stories about the last year as we walk around an old church (it's the first time we've all hung out alone since the oak woods). We walk and have a good time.

Our wandering comes to a halt around midnight as we try and decide our next move/figure out where we are. This was when my stomach started to feel a little weird. I disregard it as being slightly irritated by a new region's food. We walk into a tiny alleyway to stop and look for street signs. Doing so we disrupted an attractive 40 something Spanish woman is entering her house. She asks us if we're lost. We tell her we would be if we knew where we wanted to go. She ask what we want to do and the conversation continues. We all got friendly in front of her door so she decides to take a walk and show us around.

Her name is Maria. She's been in Palma for 12 years. She takes us all around the old town for hours as she's telling us about the area. She doesn't really tell us what she does for a living or who she is but she's very friendly. During this huge walk the mild stomach irritation had turned itself into nausea. I'm sure it's just something weird in the food and it'll pass. Maria takes us to this incredible old windmill overlooking the harbor. It's an amazing secluded gem. There are candles and rose pedals from some seriously romantic shit that happened earlier. You could see for miles. We sit there for a while.

Maria finishes off the tour by showing us a few good bars to hit up the next couple of days. We say good bye and find a bus stop. After a long wait and increasing stomach discomfort and nausea we catch a bus to our secluded hostel. The bus shakes back and forth and back. Every time the bus breaks the sick feeling gets worse. I can feel the blood run from my face. I'm trying to hold on. I inform the guys of my situation. Try to hold on. We must be more than twenty minutes away now. Try to hold on. Can't do. Sitting in the bus I start to vomit in my mouth. I run for the door holding it all in. The driver begins to stop. I place my hands at the sides of the door. I watch as simultaneously the doors separate and a shotgun spray of puke flies onto the street. I stumble off the bus and continue like a loose garden hose for a good 5 min.

God that feels better! That shitty food is finally out of my stomach, guess it had to happen at some point. I got some water and we caught another bus. Back at the hostel we're all exhausted and decide to go to bed. I lay down feeling weak but peaceful. But after fifteen minutes I'm suddenly hit with a rapid and intense bout of nausea. Fuck! I jump over an empty bed and land my head in the toilet. When I finally turn on the lights and look into the bowl I can see blood. Fuck. My stomach feels empty so maybe that was it. But 15 min later it's the same story. And again and again. Five times. More blood. I'm fucked. I look up "puking blood" and every website says get help. It's 3am in an abandoned resort town forty minutes from town. I wake everyone up.

I'm so weak from all the vomiting I don't have the energy to panic of figure out what to do. Jeff gets the number of an international emergency line and we get the name and address of an open clinic. Luckily its only 2 blocks away. We get dressed and head to the clinic.

Two blocks towards the beach. Nothing. We try two to the west, then to the east. We call again. They say there people waiting for me and give use the same directions. Two blocks north then south. Scott and Jeff are running ahead of me cause I can't keep up. The nausea is still hitting. I go to puke on a wall on the sidewalk and a stray cat jumps trying to claw me in the face. It runs off when I try to vomit on it. It feels like we've been walking for thirty minutes, I just want to lay in the street and die. Two more blocks north and one west. I see lights on! I see the clinic!

Most of the clinic is dark inside, it's just one doctor (hopefully) and one nurse (hopefully). The doctor speaks okay English. I tell him everything and he examines me. I puke in his trash can, I think he gets what's going on. The nurse come in with a syringe. The doctor tells me I have a virus that's been going around the island and I need an antibiotic injection. I have no idea what he's giving me but I know this has to stop. I agree. The nurse stabs me in the ass.

Now when I was sitting in my bed, in between the nausea attacks, I looked up some info about international medical insurance. The healthcare i have under my parents will only reimburse me for international care if it was in the case of an emergency, which this was. But it still means I have to pay the full price in Spain before I get reimbursed. When I hand the doctor my insurance card he knows this. Maybe it's because he saw how much agony I was in when I puked for the seventh time in his trash, maybe he's just one of those doctors who got into it to help people, maybe he didn't want to do the extra paper work that goes along with charging someone with a foreign insurance policy. Whichever it was, when I asked him about payment he looked at me and said "no worry about it". No charge.

The ass shot did the trick. Back in bed I was able to sip water and have a semi-restful night.
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That was just the first night in town. Looking at how much I've already written I'm wary of trying to tell the whole story of my time in Palma. The details are almost endless. Granted I'm writing these partially as a person journal I still want them to be interesting to read. So I think I'll tell a super abridged version of the next days, mainly so I don't forget those days completely.
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The next day we got to the new hostel, which was just a dope rented apartment. Once there I stocked up mild food and water and spent the entire day sleeping and watching movies on Jeff's iPad. I watch "Midnight in Paris", "Attack the Block" and part of "Easy Rider". I must have slept for 15 hours that day.

The day after we went to a small port town on the west edge of the island. The scenery was stunning. We hike the entire day and went from a cute town to cliff side views to wooded farmlands to mountainous meadows filled with sheep and trees out of a fairy tale to grassy
noels so green they looked fake to a stone wall and path that belonged in the Shire to an abandoned apartment building and back. It was a hell of a hike.

That night we met up with a bunch of locals Jeff and Scott met via couches surfing. That story is too detailed to get into.

The next day was Kings Day, which we didn't know until canons started going off and a giant parade throwing candy at hundred of kids emerged. It was in expected and wild.

That night I believe we left for Barcelona. The hike and parade and the locals is such a blurt right now. I think I'll piece it together for myself at some point but right now these mini notes will have to do. Thanks for joining me for story time. I know I started writing this when I was heading to Barcelona but I'm finishing it heading to Morocco, my first Islamic country. Expecting to loose at least one hand, sorry old lefty but I'm hoping it you. Wish me luck.