Grove Koger

I’m basing today’s post on an article I wrote for the Summer 2004 issue of Boise Journal.

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If you travel much, you learn that your transportation can be either a simple means to an end—a way to get where you’re going—or a rewarding part of the experience itself. In the case of Mallorca’s Ferrocarril de Sóller, it’s both.

After ferrying from Barcelona, Maggie and I have routinely spent a few lazy days in Palma, admiring its magnificent cathedral and several of its other sights, including its sphinxes and the elegant building that was once its Gran Hotel. Then we’ve headed out on a ferrocarril, or train, from the city’s station across the dusky plains of southwest Mallorca and into the rugged Serra de Tramuntana.

Built in 1912, the 16-mile narrow-gauge railway originally transported citrus from Mallorca’s lush northern coast. Today it carries tourists and Mallorcans between Palma and the old market town of Sóller. The train itself is venerable; many of its wooden carriages date back decades, and it clicks and sways along its narrow track as if muttering to itself. As the ground rises, the landscape grows greener and more angular, more vertical, and before long, the peaks of the Tramuntana tower overhead, and its valleys fall away far below. The track doubles back, plunges in and out of tunnels, doubles back again, and emerges in the heights above the Valle de los Naranjos (the Valley of the Oranges), only to begin its dizzying descent.

Sóller is built around a central square lined with cafés and bars and shaded by ancient plane trees—a fine base from which to plan the rest of your visit … or the rest of your life. One morning we wandered among the extravagant subtropical plants of the town’s jardin botanique and watched wasps the size of our thumbs darting impatiently through the flowers. Another morning we hiked through overgrown terraces of olive and carob to Fornalutx, a mountain village whose stillness lay heavily against our ears.

In the past, Mallorcans contended with pirates, and so built many of their towns inland, linking them to simple ports by road. But Sóller and Port de Sóller are unique in being linked by tram as well. Opened a year after the Sóller railway itself, the Tranvía de Sóller provides convenient access to the small, circular bay whose beauty so impressed the Moors that they called it Sulltar, or “Golden Shell.” (The photograph at the top of today’s post is the entrance to the bay.)

Today, the shell is encrusted with hotels and villas, but the swimming is still good and the vistas breathtaking. One day we took a sweaty hike up the steep road for an eagle’s-eye view of the bay far below, lingering in the Faro Restaurant in our shorts and boots for an embarrassingly elegant lunch served with crisp linen and gleaming crystal.

A precipitous road leads from Port de Sóller to Port de Pollença on Mallorca’s northeast coast—but that’s another destination for another day.

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