Day 6 - 4/3/24

 Heads up, today's blog will be a lot shorter than usual. Mainly because we spent a lot of today driving (in circles because we were lost).

But before that all happened we started our day at the Panaderia near where we were staying. This time I got a Mayorca with cheese and guava jam in it. It tasted absolutely delicious, good mix of sweet and savory.

Anika Rating: 9.7/10

After that is when our troubles began, our goal was a hiking trail called El Sofá (it's a great name I know). It took an hour and a half to get to the central part of the island it was supposed to be around to start off with.

While the sights in the mountains were amazing that didn't help when Google Maps took us down a road that had so many potholes it was nonstop up and down jostling us around.

 We tried to get it to reroute us but we kept being redirected to a road that was a total dead end. After half an hour of Google doing us wrong, we decided to change direction. We knew there were coffee plantations in the mountains around it so there was something to explore and keep our minds off El Sofá for a moment. When we got there the farmers were on lunch break so we drove around a bit more before returning and going in. We were only allowed into a few of the old buildings and we didn't go on a tour because we weren't sure if any of them were going or if they spoke English. We were able to guess well enough how we thought all of the old machinery worked.

(In the back of the room is a big churn that looks like it was used to grind coffee beans or other grains)

(They kind of look like peanuts but they're raw coffee beans)

(Giant pan for roasting beans)

After that excursion we returned to our quest for Le Sofá, and this time we used Waze instead of Google Maps (Google Maps was seriously the supervillain of our day). Following Waze we made it, apparently one of the roads we had been on earlier was right but at the time we tried to go through the road was blocked by someone dropping off wooden planks at a house. On our detour we got a few more great views.

(It doesn't come out well here but there were tons of vines dangling off of trees by the roads)

And at last, we reached the Le Sofá hiking trail. Hiking trail is a bit generous, most of it was scrambling across the rocks making up a nearly entirely white granite canyon which a river ran between. As we walked the walls of the canyon grew steeper and steeper but as long as we remained on the top it didn't matter much...

But of course, that's when Dad told us the reason the place was called El Sofá, apparently there was a sofa shaped rock at the bottom of the canyon...if you think that's stupid, you're right, and what we did next was stupider. We climbed down the side of the canyon, no spotter, no nothing. It was absolutely terrifying and I was wearing jeans so there was no way I was wading without getting my jeans at least slightly wet even if I rolled them up. 

And here's the photo we risked it all for- 

In summary, it was dumb. And of course next came the problem, how do we get back up? Great question, the answer is we all flounder around and have to get our shoes back on (unless you're Dad and climb up barefoot like a champ) then climb the way we came down.

 Though for me it was quite a bit more difficult, I hate having wet jeans, if I'd rolled them down again I'd probably have had an easier time of it but Dad was spotting me and Clover and Dad didn't have any issues climbing back up. But as we were walking back we noticed the glimmer of metal just in the forest, a ladder. Of course the social media people who took photos at El Sofá didn't climb down like we did, so that make us feel a bit better about our struggle. Once that was over with we hiked back over the rocks back to the car stumbling across an interesting looking fruit along the way.

It was already later in the day by that time so we slowly made our way back to where we were staying. On the way back we went a bit out of our way for chicken wings. We'd heard about chicken wings the other night and it had been on our minds since, so of course we had to go to the place called Señor Alitas (Mr. Chicken Wings). It was a pretty small bar, we sat on one side of the room and on the other was a giant birthday celebration! It really felt like a community bar and was really comfortable, not even mentioning the wings were really good (Clover got a Burger)

Anika Rating: 9.9/10

It was the perfect amount of food and the sauces were really good, feels like the first time I've had good chicken wings in a while so I was really happy.

Overall while we spent most of the day lost that doesn't mean it wasn't a great day, I still got to enjoy seeing things I wouldn't typically see back in Virginia.

Thank you for reading!