Today was Ferry day, with us heading over to Formentera, the Island just off the coast of Ibiza. We got up early to make sure we would leave by around 10, because we were booked on the 11:30 Ferry. Unfortunately for us, according to the schedule, that ferry didn’t exist. WTF?!? We had booked it months in advance, and Manja had not got a cancelation message.
So I gave them a call. Well, I tried to…. but no one answered. I tried the other 3 numbers they had listed, and no one answered there either…. We were starting to get a bit concerned but continued to get ready and pack our gear. As we sat outside and waited for our breakfast (Breakfast was always served in the sun on the verandah overlooking the farm, really beautiful!) I decided to try once more. And someone answered! I asked if she spoke English, and luckily she “did a little”.
I told her of the plight of our ferry and she just said “Okay, you take the 11 or the 12″… and hung up.
So we had breakfast and got going, deciding on the Ferry at 12. That would give us plenty of time to find a carpark and waddle over to the boat.
Bye car, see you in 2 days!
Along the way I decided to be a rebel and specifically ignore some instructional signs….
No! I will not use my index finger!
On the way we even found the booking counter, by pure chance. Given we were already here, I decided to confirm and ask about our tickets again. A lovely young lady explained it in perfect English: “Oh, we do this all the time this season, because the booking system is broken”.
Right.
Well, a stamp and some white-out on our form later, we headed down the pier to our allocated ferry. The ride was nice, a bit choppy at the beginning but calm enough for us to comfortably sit outside on the terrace facing the front.
When we got to Formentera we went straight to the scooter hire place, where we got a scooter with no worries. Because we had taken the fully insured version – apparently uncommon – we had the most interesting introduction. There was a lot of “But you are fully insured, so do whatever you like…”
Like
“This is the locking mechanism, so that no one steals your scooter. But you are fully insured so do whatever you like”
*Mimics throwing away the lock*
and
“This is the luggage box. Be careful opening and closing it, because it can bend. But you are fully insured, so do whatever you like”
*Mimics elbowing the box closed*
and
“This is the centre stand. It will keep the scooter upright, use it rather than the side stand where the bike may fall over. But you are fully insured, so do whatever you like”
*Mimics kicking the scooter*
Ready to scoot!
With the intro done, we also got a map of Formentera, where they recommended their personal top 10 – And told us what places are not worth it at all, with similar expressive and funny gestures.
We loaded up – and I mean loaded up, we took all our electronics as we didn’t want to leave them unsupervised in a car – and headed over to our hotel. With a backpack on Manja, we only just fit on the scooter. Hilariously, we were also followed by a police car for half of our trip, which made me sweat a bit… but they did not seem to care about our load at all. Perhaps they had been told we were fully insured?
One thing to note: A fully automatic scooter has 2 brakes. The back brake is exactly where the clutch is on a motorbike, so I stopped a bit roughly once or twice….
But we managed to get to the hotel in one piece, and we carted all of our non-essential-but-precious cargo into the room. The Hotel and room were really nicely renovated and setup.
After that we jumped back on the scooter and zipped all the way over to the other side of the island. We were going to check out a beach on the way, but the dirt-road really didn’t agree with Manjas foot, or my feeling of being on the right road 😂
So we stopped at a cute old windmill instead, where we also caught sight of a pretty quick black beetle.
Being on that side of the island, we headed to the east coasts lighthouse, which had a charging station for electric vehicles! Go Formentera!
From there we slowly made our way back, one sight or beach at a time. Each time we walked a beach, we collected some rubbish as well. Here are some of the finds today, from otherwise pristine beaches.
When we got back to the hotel it started to cool down, so we dropped by and changed into some slightly warmer clothes, before heading into “town” to find some dinner at around 6:30. We quickly found out that no restaurant was open until 7, and that they all seemed to serve standard Western fare – Pizza, Pasta, Schnitzel – or had a very seafood heavy menu, with little or no fish. As Manja doesn’t like shellfish, and we didn’t really want a standard thing, we ended up settling on a grill place where I had some Charcoal grilled calamari and Manja had a salmon pasta.
As we finished dinner we realised it was sunset time, so we paid quickly and “rushed” to the beach… Well walked as fast as Manja could manage. We knew we didn’t have a perfect viewing angle, and we also knew we would not make it to the beach where the sunset would be most spectacular. So we headed to the local beach and walked toward the sunset, which really was stunning that evening. As we walked, an old hippie lady stopped by and offered to take a photo of us – well, almost demanded. Manja already whispered “If she takes my phone, you have to run after her…” But she was really just a sweet lady wanting to take a picture of us 😁
We enjoyed the sunset before heading back to the scooter in semi darkness. When we got back to the scooter, we rode to the hotel where we dropped into bed without even writing a blog… Which was easy because we didn’t have internet reception in our room 😂
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