Tramuntana in One Day — Sóller, Sa Calobra and the Villages in Between

You can’t really understand the Serra de Tramuntana through a bus window. That’s why this excursion stops along the way — at the stone terrace above Sóller, at the hairpin road that winds down to Sa Calobra in thirteen bends, and in two villages where the shutters are still green because they’ve always been green. In Sóller, there’s time for a coffee on the square and for the question of why the houses here look wealthier than elsewhere on the island — the answer has to do with oranges and with France. After that, you head down to the sea, where the Torrent de Pareis ends between walls two hundred metres high. On the way back over the mountain pass, the island lies below you. If you thought Mallorca was flat until then, you won’t think that anymore.