Cala Deia was the third of Mallorca’s best, hidden natural cove beaches on our list to visit, after Cala Murta and Calo des Moro and is one of Mallorca’s most famous beaches – apparently a popular hangout of the rich and famous who come to enjoy its stunning cliff-side restaurant that overlooks the clear blue waters of the cove.
The likes of Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Andrew Lloyd Webber apparently have properties in nearby Deia town.
Driving from our villa near Pollenca to Cala Deia took about an hour and a half or so, much of which is taken with driving up a beautiful mountain road – a drive with views alone that are worth making the journey here for.
The road to Cala Deia itself is definitely a tricky one to navigate as, having driven up into the mountains of western Mallorca, you then need to drive all the way back down to sea level, which involves a very narrow road and some unbelievably tight 90-degree switchback turns.
It’s not a problem, it’s just a lot of stopping and pulling over and squeezing past traffic coming the other direction, after which eventually, right at the bottom of the hill, you arrive at the car park for Cala Deia.
Being the middle of the August summer holiday season, we weren’t surprised to find the car park, which is only quite small anyway, completely full.
It’s a pretty narrow car park with tight spaces – bear in mind this is a remote mountainside location and not somewhere well-suited to large numbers of tourists, so the fact they’ve managed to squeeze a car park in here at all is impressive.
Somehow we got lucky as another car left just as we arrived so we got a space and headed off down the steps to find Cala Deia beach itself.
When we saw the beach, we felt a bit disappointed. There’s no doubt it’s an extremely beautiful, natural location – but the beach is entirely, almost 100%, large boulder rocks, with very limited sitting space.
If you’re a couple, with perhaps just a towel and a small bag between you, you can probably find a flat piece of rock to sit on, or up against and be perfectly comfortable for the day.
But as a family of five, with all our lunch stuff and beach mats and towels, it was difficult to find a boulder or space between the boulders that was big enough for us to sit down.
Eventually we did manage to slot ourselves into a position on a flat-ish boulder, but you could tell the children weren’t too happy, as they couldn’t stretch out or relax.
Still, we enjoyed the amazing views and swam around in the sea which, like most of Mallorca’s beaches, was crystal clear, blue and warm.
It’s definitely worth coming here to see this beautiful beach, but do be prepared for a great deal of rock and literally zero sand.
Getting into the sea wasn’t all that easy either, as you have to clamber over rocks and boulders, taking care not to trip on those which are under the water on your way into the sea. It’s definitely not an easy, comfortable beach to be on for a whole day that’s for sure!
It’s more a rugged, natural rocky cove – which happens to have an extremely popular and highly-rated restaurant at one end, kind of build in to the cliff face.
The restaurant is a destination itself for many visitors, who come here purely to eat here, rather than actually going on the beach itself (if you plan to do this, you’ll almost certainly need to pre-book if it’s in the busy summer season).
I would go as far as to say the beach here is potentially quite hazardous with its rocky, wild and remote nature – a feeling that was perhaps influenced by a bad accident we witnessed on the afternoon we were here.
There are ledges up on the cliffs surrounding Cala Deia that you can climb up, which people do so for the purposes of jumping into the sea, but also to find additional space to lay, up and away from the main rocky beach.
We saw someone carrying a girl absolutely covered in blood up on one of the cliff ledges, clearly in distress – and looking for anyone on the beach or in the restaurant who might’ve been a doctor.
By some amazing luck, one of the diners in the restaurant was a doctor, who ran up to help.
It turned out the girl had been laying peacefully on a cliff ledge sunbathing, when a large rock fell from the cliff above and landed straight on her head.
She had a very bad head injury and, when it became clear the ambulance had to travel all the way from Palma, all the way down the winding mountain roads and had an ETA of well over an hour, the doctor helping her became concerned about the length of time until help would arrive.
Given that she was on a cliff ledge, the wrong side of a very rocky beach, unable to move and with no access at all for the emergency services, a very risky rescue attempt had to be made, where we used a beach-goer’s standup paddleboard as a makeshift stretcher to carefully carry her off the cliff to where an ambulance could actually reach her.
Eventually the emergency services did arrive but it was over two hours from the incident happening to her being loaded into the ambulance – a reminder that Cala Deia’s remote, wild beauty comes with a price if you need help or facilities of any kind.
I regretted not finding out the details of the victim in order to be able to find out how she was and if she recovered and wonder to this day if she was OK in the end.
I believe her name was Carolina, or similar, and she was from Italy. If you happen to read this Carolina, please drop me an email to let me know you were OK!
This experience aside, on any other day, Cala Deia is clearly a stunning place to visit – but it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s a rugged, rocky place that doesn’t provide much comfort for its beach-goers.
And take note of the large sign in the car park that warns of falling rocks, because that is a genuine, very real danger – the disastrous consequences of which we saw with our own eyes.
After spending a bit more time on the beach recovering and calming down from the exertions of that incident, we decided to head to the nearby port and beach resort of Soller.
This was a totally different experience – and was actually one of our favourite places we visited in Mallorca.
A very relaxed, sandy beach lined with restaurants and with lush green hillsides all around, it’s a beautiful location – with a large marina opposite that’s home to some proper billionaire-style super yachts.
The atmosphere and surroundings of Soller and Port de Soller are great and we managed to enjoy the rest of our day and evening here despite the distressing incident at Cala Deia earlier in the day.