Ocean Escapes
The White Isle
with a Green Heart
By Tristan Rutherford
The first invaders of Ibiza were Phoenician sailors. In the 8th century BCE, these Mediterranean middlemen were the seafaring super-rich. The Phoenicians’ famous purple dye required 10,000 crushed Murex shells to make a single gram, making their purple cloaks more valuable than gold. Fashion-conscious sailors wore perfume pressed from myrtle and rock rose. The Phoenicians channelled “quiet luxury” — in a pre-biblical age.
The Phoenician traders were island hoppers. But in the tranquil cove of Sa Caleta, they found their spiritual home. Red mullet slipped through Posidonia oceanica grass. Seafood could be seasoned with salt from the telegenic salt flats — today's Ses Salines Natural Park — that glow amber and ochre like a Mark Rothko canvas. Wildflower meadows described a sensual sparkle of swaying poppies and fragrant fennel. Phoenicians brought olive trees and grapevines to the party, importing culinary excellence and crisp whites.
Ibiza’s tranquil shores encouraged a dozen other empires to sail in. All were seduced then subsumed into Ibiza’s timeless soul. Carthaginians brought almond trees, which turn hillsides snow white each spring. Romans laid mountain paths through forests of figs. The mediaeval Moors dug wells to irrigate lemon orchards. Owners will find similar scenes in Ibiza today.
"From Ibiza’s rugged coast to its pastoral core, a timeless palette of pine, stone, salt and sea remains."
The beach-trimmed Sa Caleta shore, with its bottle-green Posidonia meadows, is preserved as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Only the occasional whitewashed farmhouse has given Ibiza a new moniker: the White Isle.
Bohemian Rhapsody
The final invaders of Ibiza were hippies. From the 1960s, barefoot intellectuals and Vietnam draft-dodgers were the last settlers to arrive by sea. Many hippies copied the Carthaginians and Moors from millennia past. They melted into olive orchards via Roman pathways, adding eccentricity and eco-consciousness to the fabric of this time-honoured escape.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Ibiza’s flower-power generation blossomed. (Most hippies were trustafarians, not penniless travellers, with the funds to fly to mainland Spain, just over 50 nautical miles away.) These bohemian expats created ashrams, fashion studios and farm-to-table restaurants. Beside the windmills where Keith Richards and Joni Mitchell once strummed guitars, Jean Paul Gaultier and Kate Moss posed for Vogue.
"In the 2020s, Owners will discover the same chilled-out charm. They can find inner peace at a breathwork retreat, or press organic olive oil, or meet makers of ceramics, silverware and kaftans. The White Isle aids those escaping from a wearisome world."
And the nightlife? Ibiza’s pulse-popping music arrived by airplane and remains restricted to coastal stretches like San Antonio. By contrast, Ibiza’s indigenous cultures have ebbed and flowed during 28 centuries of human tide. The ocean always offers the best perspective.
Amels 60 MEMORIES in Ibiza
The Wild Child
For a time capsule of Ibiza, sail three nautical miles south. Formentera is Ibiza’s zany little sister, and less than one fifth of its size. The island’s developmental record is, to put it diplomatically, quaint. The first telephone was installed in the 1960s, in Formentera’s town hall. An underwater electricity cable from Ibiza arrived in the 1970s. Formentera’s 12,000 islanders get all the news they need from the weather report.
In short, guests will find the antidote to overtourism on this Mediterranean wild child.
"Owners with a hybrid engine can cruise in near silence between Formentera’s deserted bays. Those with bicycles can pedal 32 rutes verdes, or green paths. Most end in sand dunes where a chiringuito beach bar sells San Miguel under the shade of a tamarisk tree."
More than any other Balearic island, Formentera is a land of sand. Platja de Migjorn is a six-kilometre swoosh of golden beach. Cala Es Ram could herald from the Phoenician era — a beach with no bar, no hotel and no access apart from a sandy path through juniper forest. On Formentera’s northern tip, Platja de Ses Illetes is an endless white sandbar that should belong in The Bahamas. The meadows of Posidonia oceanica between here and Ibiza are reckoned to be 100,000 years old. This ranks them among the oldest living organisms on earth.
The Lost Balearic
Owners can now explore an island that time forgot. In the last decade, the fragrant speck of Cabrera flipped from being a Spanish military outpost to a National Park that welcomes a handful of nightly guests.
Private yachts can moor in a watery wilderness frequented by humpback whales and Risso’s dolphins. Divers can spot up to five hundred species of marine fauna including gawping groupers and unhurried leatherbacks, who seem surprised or blissfully uninterested in human life. On land, a (strictly) guided walk can take hikers past ospreys, Eleonora's falcons and 150 bird species. Forget the Phoenicians.
"Cabrera is the Balearic Islands before civilisation came."
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