Formentera Day Trip Itinerary
Formentera is an island quite close to Ibiza, and popular for day-trippers. Here's an outline for an itinerary to get a taste of Formentera in one day.
First, there are a couple different ferry companies that go between Ibiza and Formentera. They're comparable in cost and all advertise a 30-minute "fast ferry" ride. Our trip time was more like 45-50 minutes! I can't imagine how long the 1-hour "slow ferry" would take...
The ferry port is a short walk along the harbor from the old town, and leaving Ibiza you get great views.
Once in Formentera, we rented scooters. My roommate could rent a Vespa, but I could only rent a smaller 50cc engine "Typhoon." With my US driver's license authorizing only automobile driving, I could rent a scooter with an engine only up to 50cc. Be sure to get your International Driver's Permit from AAA!
Our first stop was Ses Illetes, a narrow spit of land going into the sea. I just couldn't get over how clear and blue the waters were here!
This being late April, there weren't a lot of people on the beach. But I've seen photos during peak summer season, and it looks like it gets quite crowded.
Here you can see the beach on either side of the spit, with Ibiza in the distance.
Then we took our scooters over to the Torre de Punta Prima, an old watchtower next to a promontory. The tower is rather squat, no?
Then we continued along the main highway down the narrow part of Formentera, and stopped for lunch at Es Calo, the name of both the location as well as the restaurant. More on our typical Ibicenco lunch in the next post!
After lunch, the plan had originally been to continue east to the easternmost tip of the island, where the Faro de la Mola lighthouse was. But by this time I was rather grumpy about riding the scooter more. I will admit, I hated riding the scooter. This being my first time riding one, I just felt so exposed! And felt so ready to tip over if I went into a curve too fast! And with the small engine of my scooter, I needed to continually gun the engine to maintain speed, rather than cruising along more confidently with the more powerful Vespa.
So instead of making it all the way to the lighthouse, we stopped instead at the Mirador (lookout point) halfway up the mountain. The winding roads just to get to this point already wore me out! But you can see from this vantage point how Formentera gets very narrow in the middle, kind of like a barbell.
We went back down the mountain, and came to Calo des Mort, and got some nice pictures with this piece of rock jutting out. Warning: we came across evidence in other parts where this type of rock collapsed onto the beach below, so it's probably not too sturdy.
We continued out west, and then south to the Cap de Barbaria. This part of the ride was more fun, with just a one-lane road with few cars. Much more relaxing than the highway down the middle of Formentera. Somehow in my mind, when people talked about Formentera being such a small, relaxed island, I was picturing all roads to look more like this!
There's a lighthouse at the end of the road, and a cave just to the right of where I'm standing to take this photo.
We squeezed in a quick look-see at Cala Saona, but had to head back to the port for the ride back.
The nighttime views of Ibiza were gorgeous, so don't forget to go out on deck and take in the scenery, even if you're tired from a full day of scootering about!
