Sleeping our way to Mallorca

Travel thoughtfully, and you might just find the journey is as pleasant as the destination.

Roshni and I dropped off our bags and headed straight to the dining room. We filled our trays: bread roll, green salad, roast potatoes, a chicken leg for her, and mini bottles of wine for each of us. Not long after, we retired to our room. We washed up in the closet-sized bathroom and then went to sleep.

I could whine that the bunk beds were so narrow that sharing was out of the question. But how could I not go to sleep happy? In the morning, the ferry would drop us off in Mallorca.

We were headed to the island, which sits just off the coast from our home in Barcelona, for a week’s vacation. Most people tended to fly there. But we had decided — well, perhaps I had convinced Roshni — to travel by water, not air. 

View from the crow’s next of the Baleares public ferry, looking over the tractor-trailors, ocean and distant city. CC/Nicolas Vigier

There’s a logic that says that’s ludicrous. A flight would have taken under an hour and cost around €20 each. The ferry took nine and was several times more expensive, too. Yet my time in Barcelona has helped me see that to think that way is to do the math — and the morality — wrong. The fastest, cheapest option often saves neither time nor money. Nor is it remotely as fun.

We should all know by now that there is no such thing as a low-cost flight. The passenger may save a few bucks, but we all pay the environmental cost, which can be 80 times greater than making the trip by train, according to Greenpeace. Not to mention such fares encourage us to hop on a plane for a weekend trip. I’ve done it myself, jetting up to Portland. We’re seduced from our morals by the illusion of speed and ease. But is it really better?

Imagine we had caught a plane to Mallorca on Friday night. We would have got there in a hurry, only to go straight to bed. Add one more night’s accommodation to our bill, and one more day of car rental. We might have flown on Saturday morning, but it would have meant getting out the door at an ungodly hour or a much later start. Instead, we arrived early yet well-rested.

That brings me to our experience. Consider our meal. Sure, if we’d taken a plane we could have squeezed in dinner before the flight or after landing in Mallorca. But how can an airport meal compare to sipping wine while watching the coastal lights fade into the distance from the ferry’s dining room window? Not that we were on some cruise liner, this was a commuter ferry. But it doesn’t take much to improve upon the cattle-car experience of air travel today.

Transport that costs us all more — in its contribution to slowly cooking humanity and the rest of the planet — should reflect as much in the sticker price. We could, for instance, phase out short-haul flights that have reasonable alternatives. France recently barred some such trips, if not yet enough. 

In discussion of what travel might look like in a more climate-conscious future, the emphasis is often on how it will cost more and move slower. It’ll be so much worse, is the implication. It is true that traveling slower is usually better for the climate. Ferries, for instance, emit less per passenger than flights, as do trains, and better fuels and other technological advances should lower the difference further. Yet I fear we overlook all the ways in which traveling slower is also better for us. 

Alternatives to flying and driving are scarcer in the U.S., but they do exist. The last trip Roshni and I took before leaving California was from Oakland to Santa Barbara, along one of Amtrak’s many routes in the Golden State. The ride lasted more than 10 hours, twice what it would take in a car. But it’s not like we had to drive the train. 

Instead of two hands on the wheel and mind half preoccupied by traffic — i.e. ensuring we did not get crushed by a tractor-trailer — I spent the journey planning our future in Spain with Roshni. We read about history and culture, and made lists of day trips and hikes. I even read a couple magazines and finished a novel. And when I looked up for a break, instead of seeing gas stations and asphalt, I had a breath-taking view. The train, known as the SurfLiner, runs along the Pacific Coast. 

Travel thoughtfully, and you can curl up with a book or a TV show. You can enjoy a leisurely meal with your love, and get a good night’s sleep before you plunge into a new adventure. You can experience that rarest of modern luxuries: unscheduled time. Travel thoughtfully, and you might just find the journey is as pleasant as the destination.

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drop | Travel thoughtfully. Book a local ferry ride. Take a trip on Amtrak. Try an overnight bus service.

ripple | Recruit others. Share your trip on social. Brag when you get home. Hopefully you enjoy it?

wave | Build power. Support a group that’s advocating for better and more equitable transit. PolicyLink’s Transportation Equity Caucus has a long list of options, such as TransForm in CA. That’s who got my donation this week.

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Collaborators | excerpt

and this gentle litany tolls the schedule
of departing ferries that take us from

island to city and back again — 1210,
1245 — ferries where the whales bloom

a black and white skirt in our wake, ferries
we drive our big cars onto because now

we can go anywhere, ferries that took
the people from the clear shore of their lives

– Keetje Kuipers

Read in full at poets.org.

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My friend Priya Joi just started a newsletter, Science Safari, which offers a witty weekly take on science in our everyday lives. Check it out.

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This newsletter, as always, is a collaboration. Roshni Kavate is my editor in chief and Steve Kay is my proofreader. All errors are mine alone.