General: Balearic Islands

This is not a place for the weak! The feeble and the flaccid will find themselves raided at every step of their holiday. Assuming you're going for the nightlife, you'll find the PR's will resort to physical means to haul you into their place. This is annoying, but understandable - there are over 2500 bars and clubs in Magalluf alone, so competition is fierce.

Everything you've heard about the resort is exaggerated. Yes, there is a ...
...but it occurs in a strangely muted atmosphere. I expected the same kind of manic buzz as Las Vegas, but the atmosphere was far more laid back.

Yes, the resort is alive with amazing looking women, but Magalluf's
reputation as "Shag-alluf" means that for every gorgeous girl, there's about ten red-faced blokes spilling beer and chips down their Kickers shirts.

These come in massive, self-consciously ... more

This is not a place for the weak! The feeble and the flaccid will find themselves raided at every step of their holiday. Assuming you're going for the nightlife, you'll find the PR's will resort to physical means to haul you into their place. This is annoying, but understandable - there are over 2500 bars and clubs in Magalluf alone, so competition is fierce.

Everything you've heard about the resort is exaggerated. Yes, there is a great deal of mental partying going on day and night, but it occurs in a strangely muted atmosphere. I expected the same kind of manic buzz as Las Vegas, but the atmosphere was far more laid back.

Yes, the resort is alive with amazing looking women, but Magalluf's
reputation as "Shag-alluf" means that for every gorgeous girl, there's about ten red-faced blokes spilling beer and chips down their Kickers shirts.

These come in massive, self-consciously rowdy groups. They are all tall and/or beefy, with short hair, lobster tans, all wearing the same clothes, attitudes and personalities.

So, how does a roving bunch of misfits like us fit in? Surprisingly
well, actually - our sheer weirdness and anti-social behaviour means that we're able to intimidate our way into most situations. We are not your average cross section of the 18-30s crowd. We are not the lads you see on Ibiza Uncovered, gurning for the cameras and shouting stuff like "Avin' it large!" and "Mad for it!". We're out there on the boundary, occasionally lurching into the limelight to steal the show, before scarpering back to the periphery.

Our apartment is great, commanding an awesome, sweeping view of the bay. The ninth floor feels like the 99th floor when the lifts break down, though! The gentle sea breeze encountered at ground level turns into a hurricane at 100ft, and because of the heat, we have to leave the patio doors open at night. The effect is like sleeping inside a jet engine.

The Reps are a useless bunch of thickos, out here, like the rest of us, on a quest for sun, sand, sex and booze. They are only slightly hindered by their jobs, which they do with minimum efficiency. We got roped into a bar crawl by them at our induction meeting. These are invariably held at 10.30 on your first morning there, when you're recovering from your first night in Magalluf.

You're not thinking straight. They talk intolerably loudly in a mixture of regional accents for an hour, with no discernible pauses. By the time they present you with the trips, foam parties and bar crawls, your head is about to pop from information overload. In this bewildered state, you'll end up signing up for 25years in a Turkish prison in your confusion.

So we got press-ganged into a bar crawl, that took us through the back streets and the dingiest and most expensive bars. On the main strip, we normally paid around £8 for a round of beers, along with the usual freebies. On the bar crawl, we got charged around £20 for the same amount of booze. Ignore these Reps, first time travellers - they are wolves in sheep's clothing, and their smiles are remarkably false.

These are the same Reps that warned us about potential fatalities from our balconies. Only last week (July) a seventeen year old lad tumbled from his balcony and killed himself. The local doctor told us why this happens so often:

Drunken, partying fools suddenly feel the need to vomit, and launch their lunch off the balcony. The rails aren't very high, and at altitude, the wind blows some of the chunder back onto the tiles at the puker's feet. On their follow up reach, they slip on their own puke and go over head first. This isn't a very dignified way to die - plummeting to earth in a shower of your own vomit. If it happens to us, that tree might break our fall...

If your are here for the nightlife (Why else would you be in Magalluf? The art galleries? The architecture???) You're body clock will be malfunctioning within three days. The bars and clubs are open until daybreak, so you'll find yourself getting to be around five or six. If you're lucky. You'll then sleep until around two in the afternoon, and by the time you've ponced around the apartment, you'll sit down for breakfast around three. Your evening meal with probably be around eight, and then you'll be ready for the beers again, strolling out around midnight.

My holiday was effectively ended three days from the end by a dodgy burger. It was cold, it was stiff, it was tasteless...but I was horribly drunk, so I ate it anyway. The next morning I thought I was losing all my internal organs into the toilet bowl. After that, I daren't move more than ten feet from the bathroom door. It gave me a chance to write my epilogue to our Magalluf experience.

There is a strange vacuousness about the resort. It is filled with very vain holiday makers - they are extremely serious about their clubbing and their sunbathing, and even more serious about looking good while they're doing it. This isn't quite so noticeable at night, when everyone is mashed up on booze or drugs. During the daytime, when everyone is sober and straight, the vanity causes a strange kind of silence.

One flock of finely sculpted girls are as gorgeous as anyone seen in the pages of Loaded or Cosmopolitan. Unfortunately, they've been stilted by their own beauty, and have been suffering from personality rigor mortis since they found out what they can achieve with one wiggle of their perfect butts.

All this might make me sound like some jaundiced, paranoid phantom jabbering fear and loathing from my ninth floor parapet. This is what fourteen nights in such a place does to you. The first week was a blast, then we ran out of energy and the wisecracks dried up. A week is perfect for an intense stint of partying, but a fortnight is too long.

 

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