http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/travel/28next.html
May 28, 2006
Near Ibiza, a Quiet Place to Recuperate
By JULIA CHAPLIN
THE morning ferry from Ibiza to the small island of Formentera is always an amusing sight. A mix of club kids, still awake and wearing plastic bracelets from last night's party, well-traveled hippies wrapped in exotic shawls and caftans, and perhaps a fashion stylist or a model hidden under a big sun hat, all mesmerized by the impossibly brilliant sun playing off the azure sea and the weird rocklike formation in the distance. When the boat docks, 30 minutes later, the passengers stretch and yawn as if getting ready for bed.
Over the years, the fabled Spanish island of Ibiza has developed into a package-tour, party Valhalla pocked with megaclubs and concrete high-rise condominiums. In contrast, Formentera, just two miles away, seems like a different planet, or at least a different social orbit. The smallest of the inhabited Balearic Islands, with no airport and few paved roads, Formentera has become fashionable not so much for what it has but for what it does not: a scene.
"There's no high-heel glamour here, just sand and sun," said Consuelo Castiglioni, the designer of Marni, the Italian fashion label, who keeps a vacation home on Formentera. "It's a hideaway where we can relax."
Inevitably, Formentera's antiscene has become a scene in itself. Ask people who've spent time on the island about it and they will breathlessly brag about finishing long books and going to bed before midnight as if they had just climbed Mount Everest. All of which has made the island more irresistible to those seeking shelter from the limelight, among them Kate Moss, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, David Gilmore of Pink Floyd and the designer Philippe Starck, who built an experimental home there. "It's a place for stressed-out people," said Patsy Dodd, who met her husband, the artist Lance Tilbury, at a full-moon party there in 1964. "The air is so relaxing, everyone comes down a notch."
What has kept the 11-mile island exclusive is partly the luck of bad topography. The terrain, nature's equivalent to a velvet rope, is rugged, windswept and hostile with craggy cliffs. Fresh water is scarce, and the only land suitable for an airstrip is a government nature preserve.
The island was vacant for almost 300 years (between the 1500's and the late 1700's) until a group of diligent farmers began cultivating the parched earth, planting pine trees, almonds, figs and grape vines. Franco's rebels used the foreboding slab as a concentration camp in the 1930's. Fortunes changed in the 1960's when throngs of hippies from Ibiza showed up by the boatload. Bob Dylan set up house in a windmill. And Pink Floyd hung out while producing the soundtrack for the movie "More," Barbet Schroeder's 1969 film about strung-out hippies that was partly filmed on the island.
"There was no electricity or running water," Ms. Dodd said. "There was only one bar, and they only had one record, 'Highway 61 Revisited.' They would just play it over and over." (Her daughter Leah Tilbury now co-owns the island's closest thing to a boutique hotel, Las Banderas.)
Still, when I went to Formentera last summer, I was skeptical. I had seen the tabloid photos of soccer stars and celebrities sunning in Formentera and I was convinced there was something going on. It must just be hidden from view, and the challenge, like hunting for truffles, would be to ferret it out.
There are about 40 hotels, guesthouses and hostels, with a few big resorts, most tastefully tucked behind trees, but I checked into Las Banderas. Its six cottages are on the side of a hill overlooking Platja Mitjorn around an open-air restaurant and hangout area strewn with Moroccan lanterns and actual beds — not day beds — a statement of non-hipsterdom, inhabited by a few mysterious internationals wearing face-enveloping sunglasses who wanted to be left alone.
The day started leisurely at around 11 a.m. when a group of sleepy-eyed defectors, just over from Ibiza with beach blankets and guitars, came to life with yogurt and café con leche. (Showing up at a cafe in Formentera with no shoes and sleeping bags is apparently commonplace.) A towering male nude sunbather was wandering around sipping a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. The beach out front, with its sugar-fine sand, stretched for miles in either direction. Sun worshipers, sans bathing suits and totally uninterested in mingling, began to gather there in the late afternoon, splashing about in the warm sea.
No loud techno was blaring from raucous beach bars, and no, there didn't appear to be anyone loudly making plans for the evening on a cellphone. A 20-minute walk east down the beach, by a big-porched restaurant, there were more signs of a social life. It seemed to be a lot of Italians, who tend to show up in late July and August, presumably fleeing the swarms and high prices in Sardinia and the Amalfi Coast. They were clustered together in docile groups, applying sun block, leafing through magazines and dozing.
Determined to find the action, my traveling companion and I jumped on our moped and headed toward Platja Illetes. (The bartender at Las Banderas had described it as the closest thing to a Mediterranean party beach, a popular day trip from Ibiza, where Arab princes and Italian playboys anchor their yachts. "It's awful," he said.)
When we arrived at the beach, a spit of dune-backed land stretching out toward Ibiza, the view was clogged with boats and wall-to-wall sun umbrellas. Men were snapping photos of girls in what looked like a European re-enactment of "Girls Gone Wild." By the shore were caution signs with a boat motor and a red slash through it. An hour there was all I needed to quell my urge to party. I was ready to detox.
First stop was just on the other side of the inlet, about five minutes away. Here was another beach, Platja de Llevant, that was less crowded and more beautiful. We had lunch at a scene-free open-air restaurant, Tanga, under a big, shady palapa. It was almost as though Platja Illetes had been sacrificed in a Faustian bargain to save the rest of the island from the Eurotrash contagion.
In the late afternoon, when the sun was lower and less intense, I wandered around Sant Ferran de Ses Roques, where the island's best boho-chic shops are. Forever had authentic international hippie clothing and accessories like groovy leather sandals (25 euros, $33 at $1.31 to the euro) and straw handbags from Morocco (30 euros).
For lack of anything else to do, we began to explore the long dirt roads that fan off the main streets. Past a few goats, stacked limestone stone walls and tall *****ly dry grass, we found a weird castle flying a German flag, white-washed farmhouses with gardens of cactus and, farther along, an old villa with chipped shutters among pine needles and bougainvillea.
Punta de Pedrera, the nature preserve with serrated rocks lining the cliffs, turned watching yet another sunset into a surreal vision that recalled a trippy moonscape on a 1970's album cover. Not surprisingly, this area inspired the Spanish director Julio Medem to write the film "Sex and Lucia," where the lead character falls though a hole in the rocks to go back to her past.
At midnight at the Blue Bar, a chilled-out restaurant/bar on Platja Mitjorn, with a D.J. set up in the sand playing ambient reggae, and picnic tables and lounge chairs by the water, the clientele was mostly handsome 30-something couples with children.
We finished the day with a late-night moped jaunt to the Far de la Mola lighthouse. In the rocky cliffs surrounding it, a few small groups were gathered smoking hash and gazing at the stars. We found our own formation to huddle in, and as I stared into space, I was pretty sure I had stumbled upon the island's secret scene.
If You Go
Formentera prides itself on feeling undeveloped, so instead of addresses, most hotels and restaurants are known by the beach or town they are in and have hand-decorated signs posted on the side of the main roads. The island is small enough that the system works.
GETTING THERE
It's either take a boat or swim. High-speed ferries leave about every hour from Ibiza to La Savina. The trip takes about 25 minutes, and there's a view of Espalmador Island. Cost: 18.50 euros, $24, at $1.31 to the euro; 34-971-31-5736.
GETTING AROUND
Mopeds are by far the best way to explore the island. The main roads are not that crowded and are wide and straight. Several rental shops are clustered around the ferry dock; one is Moto Rent Pujols; 34-971-32-2488; www.motorentpujols.com; 18.50 euros a day.
WHERE TO STAY
There are dozens of small hostels and inns around the island, but the Moroccan-hippie chic Las Banderas, 34-666-55-9027, in Platja Mitjorn is where the hiding-out fashion set gather. There are only six rooms, most with breezy porches accessorized with couches and big comfy cushions, so book ahead. (A task complicated by the fact that its owner rarely answers the phone. But it's worth the effort.) Doubles from 65 euros.
For a more old-school Spanish feel, Hostal Can Rafalet, 34-971-32-7016, in Es Caló was built in the 1950's and is perched on a postcard-perfect rocky cove strewn with sun worshipers and wooden fishing schooners. Doubles from 55 euros.
WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK
The best restaurants tend to be hidden from view in cliff sides and leafy courtyards. Las Ranas, 34-971-32- 8195, in the garden of an old stone house in San Fernando, serves refined Spanish fare such as sea bass in a light basil sauce. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine is about 75 euros.
Blue Bar, 34-971-18-7011, on a lone stretch of Platja Mitjorn, is so laid back that barefoot diners wander off the porch between courses of fresh seafood and salads to smoke and lounge under the moonlight. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine is about 67 euros.
Late afternoons at Tanga, 34-971-18-7905, on Platja de Llevant, is where groups feast on hearty paella and white wine under a shady thatched palapa before heading back to their beach blankets to doze. Lunch for two: 50 to 70 euros.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Formentera's terrain is rugged, windswept and hostile with craggy cliffs. Fresh water is scarce, and the only land suitable for an airstrip is a government nature preserve.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]A high-speed ferry takes visitors from nearby Ibiza to the island.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]A beach on Formentera, a quiet Spanish island near Ibiza.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Argentinian tourists, having beers at Blue Bar, a chilled-out restaurant/bar on Platja Mitjorn.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]The Cape de Barbaria lighthouse from a distance.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]And up close.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Platja Illetes.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Lizards are common on the island.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE][/FONT]
May 28, 2006
Near Ibiza, a Quiet Place to Recuperate
By JULIA CHAPLIN
THE morning ferry from Ibiza to the small island of Formentera is always an amusing sight. A mix of club kids, still awake and wearing plastic bracelets from last night's party, well-traveled hippies wrapped in exotic shawls and caftans, and perhaps a fashion stylist or a model hidden under a big sun hat, all mesmerized by the impossibly brilliant sun playing off the azure sea and the weird rocklike formation in the distance. When the boat docks, 30 minutes later, the passengers stretch and yawn as if getting ready for bed.
Over the years, the fabled Spanish island of Ibiza has developed into a package-tour, party Valhalla pocked with megaclubs and concrete high-rise condominiums. In contrast, Formentera, just two miles away, seems like a different planet, or at least a different social orbit. The smallest of the inhabited Balearic Islands, with no airport and few paved roads, Formentera has become fashionable not so much for what it has but for what it does not: a scene.
"There's no high-heel glamour here, just sand and sun," said Consuelo Castiglioni, the designer of Marni, the Italian fashion label, who keeps a vacation home on Formentera. "It's a hideaway where we can relax."
Inevitably, Formentera's antiscene has become a scene in itself. Ask people who've spent time on the island about it and they will breathlessly brag about finishing long books and going to bed before midnight as if they had just climbed Mount Everest. All of which has made the island more irresistible to those seeking shelter from the limelight, among them Kate Moss, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, David Gilmore of Pink Floyd and the designer Philippe Starck, who built an experimental home there. "It's a place for stressed-out people," said Patsy Dodd, who met her husband, the artist Lance Tilbury, at a full-moon party there in 1964. "The air is so relaxing, everyone comes down a notch."
What has kept the 11-mile island exclusive is partly the luck of bad topography. The terrain, nature's equivalent to a velvet rope, is rugged, windswept and hostile with craggy cliffs. Fresh water is scarce, and the only land suitable for an airstrip is a government nature preserve.
The island was vacant for almost 300 years (between the 1500's and the late 1700's) until a group of diligent farmers began cultivating the parched earth, planting pine trees, almonds, figs and grape vines. Franco's rebels used the foreboding slab as a concentration camp in the 1930's. Fortunes changed in the 1960's when throngs of hippies from Ibiza showed up by the boatload. Bob Dylan set up house in a windmill. And Pink Floyd hung out while producing the soundtrack for the movie "More," Barbet Schroeder's 1969 film about strung-out hippies that was partly filmed on the island.
"There was no electricity or running water," Ms. Dodd said. "There was only one bar, and they only had one record, 'Highway 61 Revisited.' They would just play it over and over." (Her daughter Leah Tilbury now co-owns the island's closest thing to a boutique hotel, Las Banderas.)
Still, when I went to Formentera last summer, I was skeptical. I had seen the tabloid photos of soccer stars and celebrities sunning in Formentera and I was convinced there was something going on. It must just be hidden from view, and the challenge, like hunting for truffles, would be to ferret it out.
There are about 40 hotels, guesthouses and hostels, with a few big resorts, most tastefully tucked behind trees, but I checked into Las Banderas. Its six cottages are on the side of a hill overlooking Platja Mitjorn around an open-air restaurant and hangout area strewn with Moroccan lanterns and actual beds — not day beds — a statement of non-hipsterdom, inhabited by a few mysterious internationals wearing face-enveloping sunglasses who wanted to be left alone.
The day started leisurely at around 11 a.m. when a group of sleepy-eyed defectors, just over from Ibiza with beach blankets and guitars, came to life with yogurt and café con leche. (Showing up at a cafe in Formentera with no shoes and sleeping bags is apparently commonplace.) A towering male nude sunbather was wandering around sipping a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. The beach out front, with its sugar-fine sand, stretched for miles in either direction. Sun worshipers, sans bathing suits and totally uninterested in mingling, began to gather there in the late afternoon, splashing about in the warm sea.
No loud techno was blaring from raucous beach bars, and no, there didn't appear to be anyone loudly making plans for the evening on a cellphone. A 20-minute walk east down the beach, by a big-porched restaurant, there were more signs of a social life. It seemed to be a lot of Italians, who tend to show up in late July and August, presumably fleeing the swarms and high prices in Sardinia and the Amalfi Coast. They were clustered together in docile groups, applying sun block, leafing through magazines and dozing.
Determined to find the action, my traveling companion and I jumped on our moped and headed toward Platja Illetes. (The bartender at Las Banderas had described it as the closest thing to a Mediterranean party beach, a popular day trip from Ibiza, where Arab princes and Italian playboys anchor their yachts. "It's awful," he said.)
When we arrived at the beach, a spit of dune-backed land stretching out toward Ibiza, the view was clogged with boats and wall-to-wall sun umbrellas. Men were snapping photos of girls in what looked like a European re-enactment of "Girls Gone Wild." By the shore were caution signs with a boat motor and a red slash through it. An hour there was all I needed to quell my urge to party. I was ready to detox.
First stop was just on the other side of the inlet, about five minutes away. Here was another beach, Platja de Llevant, that was less crowded and more beautiful. We had lunch at a scene-free open-air restaurant, Tanga, under a big, shady palapa. It was almost as though Platja Illetes had been sacrificed in a Faustian bargain to save the rest of the island from the Eurotrash contagion.
In the late afternoon, when the sun was lower and less intense, I wandered around Sant Ferran de Ses Roques, where the island's best boho-chic shops are. Forever had authentic international hippie clothing and accessories like groovy leather sandals (25 euros, $33 at $1.31 to the euro) and straw handbags from Morocco (30 euros).
For lack of anything else to do, we began to explore the long dirt roads that fan off the main streets. Past a few goats, stacked limestone stone walls and tall *****ly dry grass, we found a weird castle flying a German flag, white-washed farmhouses with gardens of cactus and, farther along, an old villa with chipped shutters among pine needles and bougainvillea.
Punta de Pedrera, the nature preserve with serrated rocks lining the cliffs, turned watching yet another sunset into a surreal vision that recalled a trippy moonscape on a 1970's album cover. Not surprisingly, this area inspired the Spanish director Julio Medem to write the film "Sex and Lucia," where the lead character falls though a hole in the rocks to go back to her past.
At midnight at the Blue Bar, a chilled-out restaurant/bar on Platja Mitjorn, with a D.J. set up in the sand playing ambient reggae, and picnic tables and lounge chairs by the water, the clientele was mostly handsome 30-something couples with children.
We finished the day with a late-night moped jaunt to the Far de la Mola lighthouse. In the rocky cliffs surrounding it, a few small groups were gathered smoking hash and gazing at the stars. We found our own formation to huddle in, and as I stared into space, I was pretty sure I had stumbled upon the island's secret scene.
If You Go
Formentera prides itself on feeling undeveloped, so instead of addresses, most hotels and restaurants are known by the beach or town they are in and have hand-decorated signs posted on the side of the main roads. The island is small enough that the system works.
GETTING THERE
It's either take a boat or swim. High-speed ferries leave about every hour from Ibiza to La Savina. The trip takes about 25 minutes, and there's a view of Espalmador Island. Cost: 18.50 euros, $24, at $1.31 to the euro; 34-971-31-5736.
GETTING AROUND
Mopeds are by far the best way to explore the island. The main roads are not that crowded and are wide and straight. Several rental shops are clustered around the ferry dock; one is Moto Rent Pujols; 34-971-32-2488; www.motorentpujols.com; 18.50 euros a day.
WHERE TO STAY
There are dozens of small hostels and inns around the island, but the Moroccan-hippie chic Las Banderas, 34-666-55-9027, in Platja Mitjorn is where the hiding-out fashion set gather. There are only six rooms, most with breezy porches accessorized with couches and big comfy cushions, so book ahead. (A task complicated by the fact that its owner rarely answers the phone. But it's worth the effort.) Doubles from 65 euros.
For a more old-school Spanish feel, Hostal Can Rafalet, 34-971-32-7016, in Es Caló was built in the 1950's and is perched on a postcard-perfect rocky cove strewn with sun worshipers and wooden fishing schooners. Doubles from 55 euros.
WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK
The best restaurants tend to be hidden from view in cliff sides and leafy courtyards. Las Ranas, 34-971-32- 8195, in the garden of an old stone house in San Fernando, serves refined Spanish fare such as sea bass in a light basil sauce. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine is about 75 euros.
Blue Bar, 34-971-18-7011, on a lone stretch of Platja Mitjorn, is so laid back that barefoot diners wander off the porch between courses of fresh seafood and salads to smoke and lounge under the moonlight. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine is about 67 euros.
Late afternoons at Tanga, 34-971-18-7905, on Platja de Llevant, is where groups feast on hearty paella and white wine under a shady thatched palapa before heading back to their beach blankets to doze. Lunch for two: 50 to 70 euros.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Formentera's terrain is rugged, windswept and hostile with craggy cliffs. Fresh water is scarce, and the only land suitable for an airstrip is a government nature preserve.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]A high-speed ferry takes visitors from nearby Ibiza to the island.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]A beach on Formentera, a quiet Spanish island near Ibiza.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Argentinian tourists, having beers at Blue Bar, a chilled-out restaurant/bar on Platja Mitjorn.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]The Cape de Barbaria lighthouse from a distance.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]And up close.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Platja Illetes.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]Lizards are common on the island.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE][/FONT]
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( which is a rare these day's compared to some countries ive visited ) & clean crystal water's just how i remembered the island on my last visit twenty yrs ago. I'm just a bit concerned about whether or not the gas scooter i'm taking will be acceptable for getting about on, whilst i'm visiting this oasis of an island