Massanella, the second highest mountain on Mallorca

Almost six years ago we bought our paradise La Mina San Cayetano. Believe it or not, but we have seen less of the island than most of the guests and friends who have visited us. We are located at the foot of the Tramuntana mountain range and we have never been really up there. The highest peak, the Puig Major (1445 meter) can unfortunately not been climbed all the way to the top, thanks to the USA, which has placed an ugly military surveillance radar ball on top of it and made Spain to accept that no one should be allowed to access the peak - of course for 'security reasons'.

The next highest mountain is the Massanella, which is 1364 meter high. This one has no ugly antennas or radars and it's really magnificent to be up there. We 'did' the Massanella last Sunday with Ondrej, the volunteer who is helping us out with great satisfaction. We accepted his invitation to hike to the top reluctantly and perhaps more to please him than for ourselves. After having climbed it we should be thankful to Ondrej as it was worth it 'dubbel en dwars' and it made me see the island a bit different as what is has to offer.

One of the reasons for the reluctance was for me (Mark) the assumption that the hiking paths were probably too prepared, too easy to walk. Besides this I expected too many people. The latter is true, although the higher you come the less people you will see. The paths however are quite difficult to track correctly and with foggy weather you could get lost easily as you can't see the next pile of stones which marks the route. You could suddenly stand on the edge of a cliff in poor sight weather. The weather that day however was perfect; no wind and sunny and not too warm. The hike to the top takes about 3 hours and then we went through the other side back, so no same hiking paths and the south side is completely different from the north side. On the top spectacular views over the whole island except in the direction of Soller and Andratx as the Puig Major is blocking it.

Frustrating was the €6 per person admission we had to pay to just cross a piece of private land. We could have avoided this if we would have walked along the main public asphalt road to Lluc for 3 km, but we decided to take the nicer route. I can get very upset by charges in the middle of nowhere, especially because there is no counter value offered by this owner for the €6 per person - the credit for the beautiful nature cannot be tagged to the owners I mean and the money goes straight into his own pockets. In Sweden this would have been not possible due to the 'all men's law' which means that even if you are the owner of a fast piece of land you have to give access to people and animals - so also no fences, no barb wire and 'no trespassing signs'. A similar law is in place in New Zealand where all people should have access to the coast, so if you would own a piece of coastline or beach you must give access to the public. In Spain such laws do not exist.

So we can highly recommend climbing the Massanella. It takes around 6 hours and it's kind of tough, especially the last few hundreds meters elevation to the top. Don't go there on flip flops, wear hiking shoes and of course take enough water and food with you, there is no restaurant on top of the mountain. You do pass a well with fresh streaming mountain water, which you can access through a stairs into the mountain.