Formentera

Hi Guys, hope all is well with you.

We are now on the island of Formentera, just south of Ibiza. There are two main islands here, Formentera and a little one called S'Espalmador. We spent one day anchored off S'Espalmador. It is a private island, with only the owner's house on it. However, there are buoys in the bay which one can use and the owners allow yachtsmen to use the beach and wander around the island. A favorite is to go to a little lake in the centre which has a lot of mud which people wallow in and cover themselves in, believing that it is good for the skin. The result is people walking around on the beach, covered in black mud! It certainly looks weird. We then moved to Isla Formentera and will remain here, in various bays for the next few days. It is the most unspoilt place we have seen in Spain. There is no high-rise, traditional looking houses, stone walls around the fields, fig trees and the water is crystal clear. There are restrictions on where one can anchor and mooring buoys have been laid in sensitive areas. The water is crystal clear and all the sea grasses and fish are clearly visible. Yesterday we took a drive around the island. We watched with interest from the comfort of a seaside restaurant as a tug struggled to re-float a yacht which had been on the rocks for two weeks, since the last Tramontana (strong wind from the north, which we experienced with Heidi and Tony two weeks ago). The mast had been removed and the boat emptied. We arrived at the critical time and I am happy to say that after a lot of pulling and dragging it around, they were successful. The back seemed to be low in the water once it was floated, so I am sure it was taking water, but hopefully they managed to get it to Ibiza with pumps going. There is a small mountain on the island and from the top the view is spectacular. There is also a small village up there with a traditional hippie market on a Wednesday. I could not believe the amount of traffic heading up there for the market as we were heading down. It was a good thing we arrived there early. Formentera is becoming very popular now that the likes of Naomi Campbell and Leonardo di Caprio have spent time on the beach here. Yesterday there was a medium-sized ship anchored just nearby called "Prince Abdul Aziz", owned by a Saudi Prince. I cannot begin to understand why anyone would want an 8-storey ship as a private vessel! Here I had been thinking that the 150ft. superyachts were way over the top.....

Drop us a line sometime. Our land email: dimitridemetriou is still operational and we get the messages every two days or so. You can also reply via Alex: alex_atm email if you wish. We enjoy getting news from home. (If you don't have either of these email addresses please make a comment on the blog and Alex will get back to you. We don't want to list them online or we will get spam)

It is 4.30am here so back to bed for me.

Arti and Dimitri.