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Formentera

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Michelin The Green Guide : Spain
Michelin
This comprehensive and practical travel guide to Spain offers suggestions on what to see and what to do, backgound on history and culture of the country. It includes maps and itineraries, making the planning of trips easier.
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The Rough Guide Ibiza and Formentera, Second Edition
by Iain Stewart
Ibiza is an island of excess. Widely acclaimed as the world’s clubbing capital, it’s a unique and almost absurdly hedonistic place, where the nights are celebrated with tremendous vitality. Thanks largely to the British tabloid press, the popular perception of Ibiza is of a charmless, high-rise party destination, but, while it’s true that high-octane techno tourism is central to the local economy, there’s much more to the island than the club scene.
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Formentera

Formentera is a quiet contrast to the busier tourist islands of Ibiza and Mallorca. Around 6,000 people are spread over a thousand hectares, the island being split into two flat plateaus connected by a narrow isthmus. The island is dry and sun-baked with three main villages: Sant Francesc Xavier (the capital), Sant Ferran and El Pilar de la Mola. However, despite the lack of rain, inland Formentera provides attractive vineyards, fig planatations and wheatfields surrounded by drystone walls.

The cheapest way to get to Formentera is generally via charter flight to Ibiza and then taking a thirty-minute trip on one of the regular hydrofoils to Formentera. Flights are plentiful from the main European airports between Easter and October. Standards of hygiene and healthcare are high and no jabs are necessary. The island has a reasonably good bus service though car hire offers greater flexibility for touring. Cycling is also an attractive option for exploring inland Formentera.

Tourism is the mainstay of the island economy with most visitors coming from Germany and Italy. The beaches are long, white and clean - and relatively uncrowded compared to many in Spain. The government has restrained any tendency to over-development and there is a blissful absence of concrete resorts. According to the Rough Guide, the main attraction is 'its magnificent shoreline - the clarity and colour of the sea is astonishing, with water turquoise enough to trump any Caribbean holiday brochure.'

The Rough Guide highlights the following beaches:

Platja Illetes and Platja Llevant - these are back-to-back beaches of powdery white sand in the northern Trucador peninsula; and

Platja de Migjorn - six kilometres of sand lining the south coast

Travel guides are available through the following links:

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