Freaking out in Formentera

Formentera

And so it was that we drifted across to Formentera and found it to be pleasantly like Kaka Point but warmer!  We loved the bachy feel of the place and spent some happy days mooching around the back roads, along the cliffs and exploring the fishermans caves but again the nights were not so cutie, cutie and the wind continued to plague us with its fickleness.  We found the only place on the whole island that was secure was Puerto El Espalmador and after a particularly dangerous night in Cala Pujols (or Cala Poohole as we affectionately renamed at 1 am in the morning, as we slammed up and down in an un-forecast NE6, a few short metres from some rather nasty rocks!) we opted to cut our losses and head for Mallorca.

Weird stuff about Formentera or, as we often say, "did you know....?"

Ibiza actually runs the soft-release programme for nudists in the Balearics and Formentera is where the hardened(!) naturists hang(?) out.  Bramble developed an interest in such matters as she soon wised up to the fact that people would rather protect their privates than their other lunchboxes and meat sandwiches were a pretty popular choice of fare.  The resulting chaos had me having some rather close encounters of the more intimate kind with men complaining about certain dogs going for their sausages (or in some cases chipolatas) or some other baloney!  

The aforementioned Cala Poohole also doubles the centre for  tourist SAR’s… on one evening alone Murray rescued a worn out young windsurfer and a pair of the most appreciative people in a dingy who were inadvertently heading for Barcelona or maybe the Gulf di Lion.  Too bad we had to leave before we could cash in on our free drinks… bloody wind! 

You can have an epiphany while watching a Sunseeker and a cigar boat racing each other from Puerto Sabina to Ibiza Town.  We did in fact achieve this feat when we realised what it must cost to fill up and then run these babies at that speed and that by comparison the marina fees here must seem fairly reasonable.  Later we were behind a guy in fuel queue when he ordered over 28000€ worth of diesel to be delivered to his vessel… it wasn’t that big and our theory was proved.
(By the way the Sunseeker won, by miles… superior driving ensured it swamped the cigar boat with its wake within half a nautical mile – still I have never seen a Sunseeker go that fast and I was seriously all ohhh and ahhhs; until the epiphany…) 

Espalmador is supposed to be in the Poseidon weed protection zone and therefore you have to use the provided buoys (now a payable offence – a mere 29€ per night!!), however, when we were there, there were no buoy s and no Poseidon weed… our question is… do they plant the Poseidon weed each season to provide a revenue stream?